The Toyland Social Club

This is the former Toyland Social Club.

It is located at 94 Hester Street in Manhattan, New York.

The Toyland Social Club was a mob hangout belonging to the Bonanno crime family.

A senior Mafia figure named Nicholas Marangello ran the club and used it as his headquarters.

Nicholas Marangello

Marangello was nicknamed "Nicky Glasses" and "Little Nicky" because he was short and wore thick glasses.

He previously served as the underboss of the Bonanno family under Carmine Galante. However, he was demoted following Galante's assassination in July 1979.

Initially, there were plans to kill Marangello as well, but other family members reportedly held him in high regard.

Consequently, the conspirators behind Galante's murder demoted him to the rank of soldier.

Marangello ran the club like a formal place of business. Unlike the other social clubs, mobsters were not allowed to show up unannounced and hang out. Instead, it operated like an office with set opening hours.

Associates would visit the club between 12 p.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays, talk business with Marangello, and then leave. Despite the name, there was no "social" aspect to it.

One mobster who regularly visited Marangello was Joseph Pistone, an undercover FBI agent who had successfully infiltrated the Bonanno family under the alias Donnie Brasco.

Pistone said that only one person was allowed in at a time. If someone else was already speaking to Marangello, you had to wait outside.

Meetings were kept short and to the point. You told him how much money you earned, and he would ask you questions about the scheme you were running. Once business was concluded, you left.

In Pistone's case, he provided Marangello with a weekly report on Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero's bookmaking operations.

Pistone was photographed visiting the Toyland Social Club on several occasions, as it was kept under heavy surveillance by both the NYPD and the FBI.

Because the NYPD was unaware Pistone was an undercover agent, they identified him as "Don Brasco, an associate of the Bonanno family."

Marangello was convicted of RICO charges in the early 1990s and sentenced to 4-8 years in prison. Following his release, he retired from the Mafia.

He died on December 30, 1999, at the age of 87.

Hester Street

During the 1970s and 1980s, Hester Street sat between Little Italy and Chinatown. However, Chinatown has since absorbed it. The borders of Little Italy have been shrinking for decades due to rising rents and property prices.

Growing economic prosperity also gave many Italian-Americans the freedom to relocate from their cramped apartments in Manhattan to larger family homes in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and New Jersey.