GalvestonHistory.info

These days, Galveston, Texas is a tourist destination. It is Houston’s easy access to the beach. It is a cruise ship port. It is a city of restaurants, museums, historical sites, and shopping destinations. But one of the city’s early distinctions was its reputation for being a wide open town.

Galveston’s open city period spanned the years from 1918 through 1957, but the reputation probably started much earlier on Post Office Street. In the late 1800s, a section of the street became notorious for its bordellos. Eventually, the “street” became more of a “district”. Young men from all over Texas and sailors from all over the world were regular patrons.

In addition to prostitution, smuggling and rumrunning have always flourished on Galveston Island. But rumrunning had blossomed with Prohibition. The illegal booze was off-loaded outside the three mile limit from schooners that sailed from the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, or British Honduras. The ships would carry thousands of cases of brand name liquor, and it was a potentially profitable endeavor for a bootlegger. An operator could make tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from a shipment of alcohol that was eventually distributed to eager consumers throughout the Southwest and Midwest.

The organized bootlegging started about 1918 with Prohibition and ended with the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933. But by then the bootlegging—along with gambling, which had existed in Galveston since Jean Lafitte’s days—had started a trend toward an atmosphere of well organized illegal enterprises.

The prime players were the Maceo brothers. They weren’t the first, and there were many others, but the Maceos’ influence on Galveston: the city, the Island, and the county, cannot be denied.

Sam and Rose Maceo were born in Palermo, Sicily and immigrated with their parents to the United States in 1900. They moved to Galveston in 1910. They were barbers, working at Cappadona’s at 25th and Market Street. Sam then became a barber at the Galvez Hotel when it opened in 1911, and Rose cut hair on Murdoch’s Pier.

The Maceo brothers’ careers changed in 1919 when Rose was approached by Dutch Voight. Voight worked with Ollie J. Quinn. Their rumrunning operation, the Beach Gang, controlled the south side of the Island. (The north side of the Island was under the control of the Downtown Gang.) Voight suggested to Rose that if he could hide 1,500 cases of liquor under his beach cottage, they were willing to pay him $1 a case for his trouble. Rose was cutting hair for 25¢ at the time, and he quickly saw the potential. The Maceo’s became partners with Voight and Quinn in subsequent deals. This was the beginnings of the Maceo syndicate.

In 1921, Sam opened a cold drink place and began to sell liquor to the public. Ollie Quinn agreed to share some of his gambling territory with the Maceos. In 1923, Sam and Rose made made their first attempt into the entertainment business when they bought the Chop Suey at 21st and Seawall Boulevard. The syndicate changed the name of the place to Maceo’s Grotto. It was later called Sui Jen.

Ollie Quinn had opened the more elaborate Hollywood Dinner Club and speak-easy on Stewart Road at 61st Street. The club was just outside the Galveston city limits at the time. The Maceos bought a piece of the club, and made it into a showplace. The Hollywood Dinner Club was the first air-conditioned night club in America. It could seat 500 people for dinner. There were crap tables, blackjack tables and roulette wheels. There was live entertainment by the biggest names in show business. They served fine food and drinks. The service was outstanding, and the prices were moderate.

By the 1940s, the Maceos expanded the Sui Jen club on its pier over the Gulf and decorated in a South Seas motif. The name was changed to the Balinese Room, and the club became the most infamous of the illegal casinos in Texas.

The Maceos owned or had interests in many other clubs and businesses as well, including the Turf Grill, Western Room, and Studio Lounge above the Maceo (Turf Athletic Club) offices on Market Street in dountown Galveston. The Maceo clubs had some really big years after World War II. Since 1935, Texans had been able to buy liquor in retail package stores, but in the years after the war they still could not by liquor by the drink, except places like the Maceo’s clubs.

Sam Maceo died in 1951. His brother died in 1954. After that, the Maceo holding company (Turf Athletic Club) and all of its holdings were run by the Fertitta brothers, Victor and Anthony. But by then the open city days of Galveston were near their end. In 1957, the state of Texas closed down the illegal gambling industry. And that was the end of the era.