The Grand Avenue Social Club

This is the former location of the Grand Avenue Social Club.

It is situated at 6964 Grand Avenue in Queens, New York.

The club served as a hangout for the Bonanno mafia family during the 1980s and 1990s.

At the time, it was common to see groups of mobsters standing outside and chatting in the adjoining alley.

The property was reportedly owned by a capo named Vincent Asaro (pictured above, bottom left). Asaro was charged and later found not guilty of taking part in the infamous Lufthansa heist.

In December of 2017, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for ordering his men to torch the car of a motorist who had cut him off in traffic. However, he was released on compassionate grounds in April of 2020 due to his age and poor health.

During the early 1990s, the FBI put this building under surveillance as part of "the Grand Finale", which was the name given to an operation that aimed to take down the Bonanno family.

Federal agents spent months photographing senior mob figures coming and going. These included Asaro, Salvatore Vitale, James "Louie" Tartaglione, Patrick DeFilippo, and Vincent Basciano.

The surveillance team was situated in a rented apartment across the street, overlooking the alley to the left. To avoid raising any suspicions, the agents parked their cars a few blocks away and entered the building via a side door.

The operation failed to take down the hierarchy of the Bonanno family, as its members were extremely mindful about wiretaps. The mobsters used a nearby payphone instead of the phone inside the club. Although the FBI immediately bugged the payphone in question, none of their main targets made any damaging calls on it.

At the time, the authorities were far more concerned about a bloody internal war that had erupted inside the Colombo crime family. As a result, the surveillance team on Grand Avenue was stretched pretty thin.

Further information is available in the "Photos" section below.

Photos

Photos of the club and other related images.

6964 Grand Avenue

This Google Street View image of 6964 Grand Avenue was captured in September of 2018. The red circle on the left highlights the location where the payphone used to be.

The FBI surveillance team overlooked the alley beside the building. The alley in question contains a side entrance that the Bonanno family used to enter the club.

These days, the social club is no more, as it is now the office of a law firm belonging to Michael J. Falco.

Public records show that the property was last sold for $600,000 in December of 2019.

Surveillance

These photographs were taken by the FBI surveillance team. We have circled Vincent Asaro in red.

FBI

Judging by the angle of the surveillance photographs, the FBI was situated in an apartment at 6965 Grand Avenue, which was directly across the road.

The agents accessed the building by using the side entrance on 69th Lane (out of frame to the right).