The world where Art Rooney was raised was known simply as The Ward, a bustling neighborhood teeming with clapboard homes and mill workers and a culture all its own.
It’s not clear when he got his start in the rackets, but it all began in this neighborhood — the North Side — where he lived in an apartment above his father’s bar along General Robinson Street and began to forge the friendships that came to define his life.
In 1922, when Rooney was 21, he would be joined by another man: Milton Jaffe -- a longtime racket partner who would go on to run the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas for the Cleveland and Chicago crime families.
At the time, Jaffe, five years older than Rooney, already was steeped in running what were considered illicit “cabarets” in Pittsburgh as well as other illicit enterprises, according to FBI records.
Sometime in the mid-1920s, Rooney himself would emerge in what became known as the “numbers” operations — illegal lotteries before Pennsylvania’s public lottery was approved in 1971 — games that were built into the fabric of life in Pittsburgh.
Like today’s lotteries, they were played by factory workers as well as business executives as a form of recreation that was clearly unlawful — but often allowed to exist by law enforcement and local politicians.
Four men interviewed in early 1980s by local historian Rob Ruck said Rooney ran the games on the North Side for decades. One of them, Jack Parker, said he actually worked for Rooney’s numbers business and two others — Joe Ware and Sam Soloman — said it was well known by North Siders that Rooney oversaw a booming numbers enterprise.
“He was the head man,” said Nick Raddick, a former Pittsburgh homicide detective, told Mr. Ruck. “I worked over there, and he had bookmaking establishments, too.”
Jim Rooney, Art’s brother who was publicly named in the 1940s as the front for many of Art’s racket operations, also told Mr. Ruck in an interview in 1982 that his brother was involved in the numbers, but “he left them a ways back.”
Rooney’s role in the numbers games wasn’t just in Pittsburgh. A 1944 FBI crime survey said he joined his longtime partner Barney McGinley in running the same illegal enterprise in Braddock, where McGinley lived.
One anonymous source in 1976 identified for the FBI two people who would become lifelong associates of Rooney: David Lawrence, who was later one of the city’s legendary politicians and Nate Farber, a sports book who became an integral part of Pittsburgh’s rackets.
While the source who spoke to the FBI said both men were involved with Rooney in the numbers, there is no supportive documents to show that’s the case with Lawrence, who later became Pittsburgh’s mayor.
Lawrence was one of Rooney’s earliest mentors and political backers. In 1963 as Pennsylvania governor, he approved giving the Steelers founder control of the state’s first horse track, Liberty Bell, located outside Philadelphia.
As early as 1913, they struck up a friendship about the time Rooney was 12 and Lawrence was twice his age and running semi pro ball teams that Rooney helped with.
Farber, sometimes known as Nathan or Nat, was about the same age as Rooney and who took the fall for Rooney’s illegal enterprises during law enforcement crackdowns. He would later be arrested and convicted of running an illegal horse betting room in the Fort Pitt Hotel in 1948 that Rooney and McGinley oversaw together.
In the FBI’s annual crime survey of Pittsburgh in 1946, it notes that Farber “served as the front man” not only for Rooney, but Jaffe and another racketeer, Slim Silverheart, “in any gambling enterprise in which they desire to take part.”
Like Jaffe, Farber shows up connected to Rooney, Jaffe or McGinley in multiple FBI documents in various enterprises, including the numbers, illegal horse betting and card rooms in the city.
Rooney’s second oldest son, Art Jr., wrote in his book that his father was never part of the numbers, and would have likely fessed up to it, just like he admitted to his family that he was involved in running the Show Boat and slot machines.
But while Art Sr. may have been upfront with his family members about the Show Boat and slots, he never divulged his involvement to the public.
When he was once asked if the city's ward chairmen — a position Art Sr. once held on the North Side — controlled the numbers operations in their areas, he said: “I don’t know if they had numbers when I was a ward leader. I don’t know if they had numbers on the North Side.”
Asked if operators of bootlegging, prostitution, gambling and numbers had to get ward leaders’ permission to run their schemes in various parts of the city, Art Sr. replied: “I don’t say that they operated without our knowledge.”
“I think that the numbers were pretty much restricted to the Hill and places like that. I don’t think that it was widespread until later on,” said Art Sr., referring to the years after he was ward leader in the 1930s.
The Hill was indeed a center for a numbers operation. It was run by a good friend of Art Sr.’s, Gus Greenlee, a legendary Pittsburgh figure in the Black community in particular. In 1930, Greenlee turned the Pittsburgh Crawfords into one of the best-ever professional Negro League baseball teams, and later built their ball field in the Hill.
But Art Sr.’s public stance that he didn’t even know much about the numbers game, differed markedly from what he told the FBI in 1959 when he was informed the interview would be kept confidential.
The FBI was looking into the ties between sports, gambling and the mob, and in the interview, Art Sr. — who was interviewed by the FBI at least three times over the years and always asked that his name be kept confidential — demonstrated then that he knew a lot about numbers operations.
“Mr. ROONEY made reference to possible organized gambling in the numbers racket but added that he was of the opinion that this was localized and certainly not nation-wide [sic],” the FBI document says, in part. “He said that he heard of the prevalent play of numbers in the Pittsburgh area and that several years ago he knew that any individual who desired could set up his own ‘bank’ or ‘book’ in the numbers racket if the individual remained in his own territory or ward.
“He added that over the past several years certain numbers banks have been more successful than others because the person who controlled the bank was smart enough and ‘laid off betting himself.’ Further that the ‘smart bank’ gained financially where the ‘dumb bank’ lost and as a result there are now but a limited number of success[ful] numbers operators in Pittsburgh; however, on occasions small banks do originate.”
Reporter: Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579 or Twitter: @seandhamill
Development: Laura Malt Schneiderman: lschneiderman@post-gazette.com
