I was coming home from errands and noticed that the attic windows at 303 W 90 Street, near the corner of West End have been resurfaced.  I used to get a kick out of looking up there and seeing the pockmarks left from the hail of bullets that struck the facade in May 1931 when Francis Crowley held off 150 NYPD officers from the top floor of the five-storey building.


Twenty year old Francis Crowley turned fraternal love for a brother who was killed resisting arrest for disorderly conduct into a consuming hatred for  authority and law enforcement.   In February of 1931 he graduated from petty crime by firing on two American Legion members who tried to eject him from a dance he had crashed at their Bronx lodge.

Ten weeks, one bank robbery, 3 shot cops (one killed,) one dead dance hall hostess, a home invasion, a new nickname “Two Guns,” lots of newsprint, and a high speed running gun battle through the Bronx later, Crowley fled to 303 W 90 Street, then a rooming house.  Crowley and the sixteen year old girl who would later turn evidence against him were hiding out when they were surrounded by NYPD snipers and 10,000 civilian rubberneckers more worried about getting a good view than catching stray bullets.

With NYPD Commissioner Mulrooney himself coordinating on site, police exchanged fire with Crowley for two hours.  Cops scrambled over Upper West Side rooftops and dropped tear gas canisters into the attic room through a hole cut into the roof.   When Police got access to the hallway outside Crowley’s room, “Two Guns” fired at them through the door and walls.

The wounded Crowley was only taken when he had run out of ammunition.  He was arraigned in his hospital room and within three weeks was tried, convicted, and executed.

The incident inspired the 1949 James Cagney star turn White Heat that gave us the villain-killed-off-in-spectacular-explosion set piece so essential to current Hollywood blockbusters.

Looking up at the bullet holes on the attic windows always reminded me of that story.   Now the gunfight scars are gone and I never took a snapshot of them when I had the chance.

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