Holy Name Cathedral

A historic Catholic cathedral that sat at the center of Chicago's most violent gang wars. Dean O'Banion was killed across the street in the early 1920s, and his protege Hymie Weiss was shot dead on the cathedral steps in 1926. The bullet holes were kept as a reminder.

Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago's grand Roman Catholic cathedral, bears visible scars from the city's bloodiest gangster era. The cornerstone still shows bullet holes from a 1926 assassination that helped ignite a five-year gang war culminating in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

In 1922, Dean "Dion" O'Banion bought an interest in Schofield's Flower Shop directly across the street from Holy Name Cathedral, where he had once served as an altar boy. The shop doubled as headquarters for the North Side bootlegging gang during Prohibition. O'Banion ran the North Side operations while Johnny Torrio and Al Capone controlled the South Side.

On November 10, 1924, three gunmen—believed to be Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Alberto Anselmi (the "Murder Twins")—entered the flower shop, ostensibly to pick up flowers for a funeral. Yale grabbed O'Banion in a tight handshake while Scalise and Anselmi pumped five bullets into his head, neck, and chest. The former altar boy was denied burial from the cathedral he had grown up in due to his criminal life.

Hymie Weiss took over the North Side gang and dedicated himself to avenging O'Banion. On October 11, 1926, Weiss and four associates were returning from the Cook County Courthouse. As they crossed Superior Street heading toward the flower shop headquarters, gunmen opened fire from a window above. Weiss fell to the ground with ten bullets in his body.

Several stray bullets lodged in the cathedral's cornerstone. One hole remains clearly visible, and legend holds that despite numerous repair attempts, the holes cannot be permanently covered—repair materials either never harden or fall away.

The ghost of Hymie Weiss now haunts the street where he died. Witnesses describe a solid, lifelike figure wearing a fedora and expensive gangster-era clothing who vanishes when approached. Staff and late-night visitors report hearing a woman crying inside the empty cathedral, sometimes glimpsing a translucent female figure kneeling in prayer—perhaps the echo of the countless wives, mothers, and daughters who mourned lost loved ones during Chicago's most violent years.