This listing is the bee’s knees, though it’s going to cost you a few clams.
A former Prohibition-era speakeasy has hit the market in South Boston. The single-family home at 2 Vinton St., a gangster hangout in the 1930s, went up for sale on Oct. 3, with an asking price of $1,050,000.
With high ceilings and gleaming wood floors, the 1,572-square-foot renovated home boasts four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a state-of-the-art kitchen with stainless steel appliances, a 36-inch Italian range, and quartz countertops.
Out back, there’s a meticulously landscaped yard, and flower boxes adorn the windows that face the sidewalk out front.
But behind the unassuming brick facade lies a rather sordid history. The home once served as a private clubhouse of sorts for the Gustin Gang, one of the most notorious of the Prohibition era.
Members of the Gustin Gang were known to be violent, and that was certainly evident on one night in January 1933, when a Boston police officer named Daniel J. McDonald ventured inside the speakeasy. He walked up to the second floor, where gang leader Stephen Wallace was drinking with other gangsters.
Wallace saw McDonald and said, “Give this bum a drink.”
McDonald accepted and drank their whiskey. But he didn’t realize that Wallace had slipped a powerful drug into his drink, which knocked McDonald right out. The gangsters had some laughs as they lit matches in McDonald’s shoes. When they pulled him out of his chair, he hit his head on a stove. Then they threw him down the stairs and kicked his limp body out the front steps and onto the sidewalk, according to court records and news reports at the time.
They shoved him into a car and drove him over to D Street, where they left him in a field before driving away.
McDonald survived the brutal attack, but never fully recovered from his injuries.
Thomas Curran, known as “Red,” was an acquaintance of the Gustin Gang who was at the speakeasy the night that McDonald was drugged and beaten.
Curran ended up cooperating with police and agreed to talk about what he witnessed that night. It was a decision that would cost him his life.
Soon after he testified against two members of the Gustin Gang, Curran disappeared.
About a week after he vanished, a couple of kids getting ready to swim at a quarry in Quincy noticed something strange on the ground: tire tracks that led right to the edge of the quarry cliff, as if a car had gone over and plunged into the water below.
The kids told police what they saw, and a professional diver came out to search the water. More than 100 feet below the surface, the diver found a car and Curran’s bullet-riddled body.
The current owners of 2 Vinton St., Kevin Crets and Jessye Aibel, bought the property in September 2016. That’s when they first became aware of the home’s history.
“I will say, it’s pretty funny thinking about the contrast of our lives now,” Aibel said. “From a pretty dark, rough history to toys everywhere and kids running around.”
Over the course of eight years, and two children, they renovated the home. They removed wood paneling and layers of old wallpaper. They uncovered some original plaster molding and a ceiling medallion in the entryway. They restored the original double doors and arched transom window in the front of the house.
Did they find anything from the speakeasy days?
“Surprisingly not much,” she said. While doing the renovations, they found an old milk bottle and “some sort of old-fashioned women’s undergarment or bloomers.”
Aibel said while they are sad to leave the home, describing it as a “very special place,” it was time to move on.
”We need more space as the kids grow,” she said.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.