Adam Harrington is a web producer at CBS Chicago, where he first arrived in January 2006.
West 22nd Place in Chicago's Chinatown is an unassuming street branching off from the bustle of Wentworth Avenue with its lively restaurants and shops. With a restaurant, a hotel, and a community center lined by unassuming brick and wood-frame homes, it represents all different idioms of Chicago architecture.
According to the late Chicago ghost hunter Richard T. Crowe, the 200 block of West 22nd Place -- between Wentworth and Princeton avenues -- is also the most haunted block in the entire city of Chicago.
A stroll down 22nd Place heading west from Wentworth Avenue will first take you past the side of the Pui Tak Center, the ornately designed building with its pagoda towers and terra cotta flourishes formerly known as the On Leong Merchants Association Building. Across the street is the side of the building housing Tai Wah Grocery Store with its white brick façade.
Across the alley from the Tai Wah building is the first building to front 22nd Place, a sturdy old brick building at 211 W. 22nd Pl. that houses the Star Light Market and most famously the Original Triple Crown Restaurant -- touted by Eater for its seafood dishes, hundred-flavored beef, and other delights.
Legend has it that Original Triple Crown is also one of the most haunted restaurants in Chinatown.
One of the specters reportedly haunting Triple Crown Restaurant is a friendly ghost who helps out by washing dishes and cleaning up. According to Mysterious Heartland, paranormal researcher Scott Markus said kitchen staff reported cases of dirty dishes turning up mysteriously clean.
Reddit user "wilkamania," commenting on a 2022 Halloween post asking for people's creepiest Chicago story, added that a helpful ghost has also been found in the bathroom at Old Triple Crown.
"If you use the stall, a ghost hand will reach from under the wall and... give you a roll of TP," wilkamania wrote. "This is by far my favorite."
Others have reported seeing shadowy apparitions around the Original Triple Crown, according to ghost hunter Tony Szabelski of Chicago Hauntings Tours.
As to the source of the ghost or ghosts in the Old Triple Crown Restaurant building, Szabelski says there was a claim for years that someone -- probably a woman -- had died by suicide there. But there is no official information to back up that claim.
There are also reports of paranormal activity at the Chinese Community Center operated by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of Chicago, across the street and a jog to the west at 250 W. 22nd Pl. The organization helps new Chinese immigrants start new lives in Chicago, helps local Chinese families learn English and teach their children Chinese, and works with the city's Department on Aging to assist seniors, according to the group's website.
The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association was founded in 1906. The building was constructed between 1956 and 1958, with roof tiles believed to be imported from East Asia and an architectural style that follows traditional Chinese concepts, according to the Chinese American Museum of Chicago.
Published reports note that the community center houses a 400-seat auditorium that was at one time used for Cantonese Operas.
For years, Szabelski says, people have reported seeing apparitions looking out the octagonal windows on the second story of the building—including a little boy and girl and an elderly woman. An elderly woman is also seen throughout the building cleaning up and organizing things—another helpful ghost, Szabelski said.
Reddit user wilkamania reported a personal spooky experience in the community center building, which they described as looking like "a time capsule of ancient Chinatown:"
"Back when I was forced to go to Chinese school, I would try to hide in the building to avoid class. I was hiding at the stairs in front of the basement. It was blocked off by one metal fence door. I was trying to hide to stay quiet, then a small ball comes bouncing and rolling from somewhere in the basement.... I heard no other person/noises and went back to class lol."
Plans were announced nearly three years ago to have the current Chinese Community Center demolished and a new structure built in its place. Chicago YIMBY reported that in January 2023, plans were revealed for a new mixed-use building at the site that would house a new community center on 15,000 square feet of space on the lower floors, with 52 one-, two-, and three-bedroom residential units on the upper floors.
However, there has not been much news since about the proposal for the CCBA Apartments.
While there are two examples of helpful ghosts lurking on 22nd Place, Szabelski also says there are also reports of poltergeist activity in homes on the block, though a web search didn't turn up any specific details. Poltergeists are ghosts that cause physical disturbances; they might create loud noises, smash plates and lamps, or move furniture around.
Szabelski points out that 22nd Place has a violent history dating back before Chicago's Chinese community arrived in present-day Chinatown, part of the Armour Square community area.
The most infamous legend associated with West 22nd Place involved the leader of a vicious gang and a choir boy who lived on the block and got mixed up with him.
In the mid-1870s, as recounted by the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, Chinese immigrants settled the area on Clark Street between Van Buren and Harrison streets downtown. While not necessarily called Chinatown, this area nevertheless matured into a thriving Chinese business district by 1889 -- with 16 Chinese-owned businesses along the two blocks.
It was not until 1912 that Chinese residents began moving south to Armour Square. Before that, Italian immigrants settled the area, establishing the Roman Catholic parish of Santa Maria Incoronata by 1899, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
From the 1880s until raids shut everything down in 1912 the surrounding area was infamously seedy, with the Levee District located just to the east. Bounded by 18th Street, Clark Street, 22nd Street (now Cermak Road) and Wabash Avenue, the Levee District was a vice district that as of the 1890s was full of all kinds of disreputable saloons, gambling halls, houses of prostitution, and other such establishments -- one of the bars was known as Bucket of Blood, while the area of the district with the sketchiest brothels of all was known as "Bed Bug Row."
Chicago wards had two aldermen each back then, and aldermen "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse John" Coughlin -- the latter of whom has no relation to the late Channel 2 weatherman -- brazenly ran protection rackets to allow the vice to keep going.
West 22nd Place in Chinatown was not in the Levee District, but Szabelski notes that it had its fair share of seediness too, given the presence of a hoodlum so infamous and brutal that his eventual execution caught the attention of Ernest Hemingway.
Sam Cardinella -- sometimes also spelled Cardinelli -- was the leader of an offshoot of The Black Hand, a grisly racket that could be considered a predecessor to the Chicago Outfit in pre-Prohibition times. As explained by Encyclopedia Britannica, the Black Hand was not the name of a specific gang; rather it was a name given to extortion rackets run by Sicilian and Italian immigrants in Chicago and other cities like New York City, New Orleans, and Kansas City.
The Black Hand sent Italian merchants and property holders threatening letters demanding money and warning of death or destruction of property if the recipient did not deliver.
But ghost hunter Adam Selzer notes in a post on Mysterious Chicago that Cardinella's gang was focused on a pool hall on 22nd Place, reputedly next to the present-day Original Triple Crown building. Selzer wrote that at the pool hall, the mysterious Cardinella, known as "Il Diavolo" or "The Devil," drew in kids and taught them how to commit crimes -- how to rob and even to kill.
Cardinella, like a real-life Fagin in Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist," would then send the youngsters out on "errands" and take the money, Selzer wrote.
One of the kids who got caught up in Cardinella’s gang was Nicholas Viana, a former choir boy who lived right down the street on 22nd Place in a house that still stands and now features green siding,Szabelski said.
After getting mixed up with Cardinella and rising to become one of his chief lieutenants,Viana was arrested on suspicion of at least 15 murders,according to writer Jason roberts.
Viana provided authorities with evidence that helped convict Cardinella,but did not receive any leniency in return,Selzer wrote.
In December 1920,Viana was hanged on his 19th birthday in the old Cook County Jail on Illinois Street in what we would now call River North.
Viana was known as the "songbird" of the jail because he sang daily for other inmates. The contemporary New York Times report said Viana sang Rudyard Kipling's "Mother o' Mine" as his terminal selection for an audience of family members on the eve of his execution. But Selzer writes that Viana’s vocal selection was “Miserere” from the Verdi opera “Il Trovatore,” and that afterward,Viana said,“Goodbye,boys! Goodbye to all but Sam Cardinella. May his soul be damned.”
The next day,Viana was led to the gallows.But a story that circulated among prisoners afterward alleged Viana’s friends absconded with his body using a basket lined with hot water bottles,and then transported him in an ambulance with a medical team waiting.Selzer wrote that this ambulance was driven to a funeral home where doctors attended to Viana’s body while “strange men in robes stood around chanting something—no one knew what—in Sicilian.”Viana allegedly opened his eyes and began to groan,but fell dead again as soon as these doctors and men in robes stopped and backed off.Selzer wrote they never intended to revive Viana;they knew Cardinella was next.
Before Viana was executed,Cardinella had been charged with the murder of saloonkeeper Andrew Bowman at his saloon at what is now Canal Street and Cermak Road.Viana and Thomas Errico another member of Cardinella’s gang who was sentenced to death,testified against him.A third member Leonard Crapo also pleaded guilty testified against Cardinella according to contemporary Chicago Tribune report.
Cardinella was convicted,and his execution inspired vignette that became Chapter 17 Ernest Hemingway's fragmentary novel "In Our Time."
"While they were strapping his legs together two guards held him up and the two priests were whispering to him. 'Be a man, my son,' said one priest. When they came toward him with the cap to go over his head Sam Cardinella lost control of his sphincter muscles. The guards who had been holding him up dropped him. They were both disgusted. 'How about a chair, Will?' asked one of the guards. 'Better get one,' said a man in a derby hat."
Cardinella was tied to the chair as he was hanged,and then cut down once dead.Selzer wrote that afterward friends took him away ambulance where team doctors nurses tried revive him injecting stimulants chest pumping electrical current.Selzer further wrote that Cardinella had purportedly engineered plot survive execution—from breakdown prompted guards tie him chair so neck would begin drop lower losing weight jail less pressure noose.Idea如果Cardinella’s neck broken rope，chance resuscitated，Selzer wrote。
It didn't work.The warden Cook County Jail had ambulance sent undertaking parlor，Cardinella pronounced dead，Selzer wrote。
Szabelski did not mention anything about Cardinella or Viana’s ghosts haunting Original Triple Crown Restaurant or any other spot 22nd Place.They are alsomnot mentioned by name ghosts haunt site old Cook County Jail brutalist Engine Co.42 firehouse now stands，though there are few captivating stories hauntings there。
The connection hauntings 22nd Place has more do all murders alleged have happened block，some which may been linked Cardinella’s gang，as pool hall right there。