The Gas House Gang was a New York street gang during the late nineteenth century.
Founded in the 1890s, the Gas House Gang was based in the Gas House district of Manhattan and controlled the area along Third Avenue from 11th to 18th Street. Specializing in armed robbery, the gang was estimated to have committed between 30 to 40 robberies a night as well as extorting money from local residents and operating brothels. The gang continued to control the district for over two decades until it was eventually absorbed by the Five Points Gang in 1910.
Famous quotes containing the words gas, house and/or gang:
“Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as fungus,
The gas and grate, the old cold sour grey bed.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I came on a great house in the middle of the night
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through;
And when I pay attention I must out and walk
Among the dogs and horses that understand my talk.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common, and showing us that divinities are sitting disguised in the seeming gang of gypsies and peddlars.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)