LaVey, the colorful character who professed a "religion" of individualism and materialism --and who wrote a whole bunch of pretty interesting essays during his "reign" as the high priest of his own Satanic Church--was born in Chicago on April 11, 1930 and died in San Francisco, after a larger-than-life adulthood in his "black house" on street.
In his sometimes critically-acclaimed volume of essays, "The Devil's Notebook," LaVey put forth his now-infamous "Law of the Trapezoid," in which he referenced the very building in question, believing that the strange angles of this and other modern structures could wreak havoc on the tenants inside.
But what of LaVey's sensational claim that he, in fact, was born on the very property where the building would be erected, some forty years after his birth?
The truth is that LaVey--born Howard Stanton Levey-- does have a rather mysterious birth record, but only because his parents do not seem to have had a common residence at the time of Howard's arrival.
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The former Franklin Boulevard Hosptial, birthplace of Howard Stanton (Anton)Levey |
Fasincating connections have been made online to a Michael and Gertrude Levy, who in 1930 lived near the Evanston, Illinois border of Chicago, in the historically and architecturally pristine Casa Bonita apartments. But though the connection would be lovely--the building is known by many paranormal researchers to have a "dark" feel and history--the connection is nonexistent.
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Anton's mother, Gertrude, is listed as residing with her parents in Garfield Park just five days after Anton's birth. |
As for rumors that the young Anton may have been born in a relative's home at the Hancock site--a common occurrence well into the 1940s--a look at the infant's birth certificate, right, nixes that possibility. The document clearly states that Howard Stanton Levey was born on April 11, 1930 at the Franklin BoulevardCommunity Hospital (later Sacred Heart Hospital). The certificate also states that both of his parents, resdied at the Maypole Avenue address.
By 1933, the Leveys had left Chicago, presumably on the heels of a new sales job in Modesto, California, where they moved into a ten-year-old bungalow at 416 Sycamore Avenue. pictured below. The entire family would remain in the St. Francisco Bay area for the rest of their lives, but little Howard would never cease to feel his "Chicago" roots--even going so far as to "plant" some in his own imagination.
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