Buried Structure at Chicago Hotel Could Contain Booze or Bodies : Vault May Hold Capone Treasure

A dank basement under an abandoned and debris-filled 10-story building south of the Loop business district may turn out to be Chicago’s equivalent of King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

A long concrete “vault” believed to have been built by the late Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone has been discovered by workers in the ruins of the building, a former Capone headquarters. Workers have also uncovered hidden stairways, including one leading to the building’s basement near the vault.

Like Archeological Dig

“I feel like I’m on an archeological dig,” said Patricia J. Porter, executive director of the Sunbow Foundation, the building’s current owner.

Speculation about what, if anything, the so-called vault holds ranges from booze to bodies. The structure of crudely poured concrete--six feet wide, six feet high and about 125 feet long-- is under the sidewalk in front of the old Lexington Hotel, which was a 400-room brothel in the Capone era.

It has been suggested that the vault could hold gold or even an automobile. One well-known treasure hunter--the Internal Revenue Service--has already laid claim to whatever is inside. The IRS has placed an $800,000 lien on its contents to satisfy a payment of $201,347.68, plus interest, owed by Capone’s estate since his death in 1947. And the agency has warned Porter that she must inform the IRS before the vault is opened.

“They sent me this letter and then sent these two agents over. They must think there’s money in there,” Porter said.

Vault May Be Solid

Porter said that some construction experts who have examined the structure think that it is solid, but others disagree.

“We can find no structural reasons for this thing being there,” Porter said.

Before anyone tries to break into the vault, she said, X-rays will be taken in an attempt to determine what, if anything, is inside and pinpoint where it is.

“I was thinking bodies more than anything else at first,” Porter said. “But what I’m hearing from cops and relatives of cops that used to hang around here (is that) there could potentially be money or gold.”

The Sunbow Foundation bought the hotel, now a Chicago and national historical landmark, as a site to train low-income women for apprentice positions in the building trades.

Porter, wearing a hard hat, travels through the Capone digs like a tour guide at an Egyptian pyramid, pointing out holes in walls that peer into hidden passages and staircases.

“The cops tell us that Capone in the ‘30s brought in immigrants to dig tunnels to try to link the hotel up with the city’s underground system of railroad tunnels, and that he did link up . . . and then sent them back to Italy,” she said.

A network of railroad tunnels under Chicago’s central business district was once used to move coal to furnaces of downtown offices and stores. Later, steam pipes were laid through them. Now, they are being coverted to house optic fiber cable networks.

Underground Routes

Porter believes that the tunnels were also used to transport bootleg liquor during Prohibition in the late 1920s and early 1930s and as escape routes. They could also have provided Capone with underground routes to City Hall and other key city offices.

“Old-timers claim Capone could empty out the hotel in 15 minutes without anybody ever going into the streets,” she said. Histories of Capone and yellowing newspaper files report a number of hidden escape exits.

Porter said sewer workers have told her that in the past they have found gold coins and a diamond and sapphire stickpin in a sewer under the building.

The hotel, built on south Michigan Avenue in 1891, housed visitors to the 1893 World Fair. Capone took over the turreted building with its distinctive banks of bay windows in 1928.

Hidden Stairway

One entire floor was reserved for him, and his mistress lived in quarters directly above. Sunbow workers this year found a stairway behind a medicine cabinet in what was believed to be Capone’s bathroom that led to the room directly above. Porter speculates that this was how Capone and his mistress traveled between floors to avoid sentries and bodyguards who patrolled the hotel, protecting the gangland boss.

The hotel is midway between Chicago’s Chinese business district and the giant McCormick Convention Center. Sunbow’s plan is to rehabilitate it, training and using low-income women as construction workers.

In addition to luxury hotel rooms, the remodeled building is to have a day-care center and a women’s museum.

If the vault should give up a bundle of money or gold, that might help the foundation complete its effort, now badly underfunded.

Porter said that she hopes to open the vault later this summer--after funding for a proper “unburial” can be found.

Then there is the IRS.

“I don’t know how they’re going to prove it was Capone’s. That stuff could belong to Frank (The Enforcer) Nitti or one of the other guys that hung around,” she said. “I said to the (IRS) agents, ‘If it’s money, you want it, but what if I find a lot of booze?’ They just smiled.”