March 07, 2025
Provided image/Founding Footsteps
The Philly Mob Tour explores organized crime during the city's Prohibition era. The trolley departs from Craft Hall.
Learn about the kingpins who ran Philadelphia's illegal liquor trade during Prohibition on a new BYOB trolley tour.
The Philly Mob Tour offers a history course on organized crime, with an emphasis on the speakeasies and bootlegging operations that proliferated in city in the 1920s. The trolley stops at the Clarence B. Moore House and Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company in Center City, both properties operated by mobster Max "Boo Boo" Hoff. The former proprietor of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, then the Continental House, was busted for selling liquor; passengers will hear his story when the trolley arrives at the hotel on Sansom Street.
Eventually, the tour travels south to the Italian Market, where numerous turf wars raged. Hoff rival Pius Lanzetti was fatally shot at a luncheonette on Eighth and Fitzwater streets in 1936. John Avena, aka "Big Nose John," also died in the area that year; he and his bodyguard were killed in a drive-by attack.
Founding Footsteps, the company behind the tour, hopes to continue its journey into the criminal underworld with a sequel. It plans to host a tour on '50s Philadelphia mobsters like Angelo Bruno at a later date.
The Philly Mob Tour departs from Craft Hall at 901 N. Delaware Ave. each Thursday, Friday and Saturday through the end of March. (A few dates have already sold out.) Tickets start at $55.
Now through Saturday, March 29
Various times | $55
901 N. Delaware Ave. Philadelphia
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