Speakeasy Dollhouse Takes Audiences Through Prohibition's Dark Alleys It's a book. It's a play. speakeasydollhouse.com Artist, author, and 'Time-Traveling Revealer of Truth' Cynthia von Buhler (née Carrozza) has been haunted by a shocking family mystery for years. Her grandparents, Frank and Mary Spano, owned two speakeasies in the Bronx during Prohibition one that masqueraded as a bakery, the other a secret nightclub. Shortly after Prohibition ended, her grandfather was shot and killed on the street in Manhattan. Her grandmother was pregnant with her mother at the time, and upon hearing the news of the murder she went into labor. Von Buhler's grandfather's body was laid out in one room of their small Bronx apartment while her mother was born in the room next to it. "Nobody still living in my family knows why my grandfather was shot. Nothing was known about the killer, his motive, or a trial. My grandmother took these secrets to her grave. And so, over the past two years, I have been dusting off a complicated, historically significant story," explains Von Buhler. "Nobody still living in my family knows why my grandfather was shot. Nothing was known about the killer, his motive, or a trial. My grandmother took these secrets to her grave. And so, over the past two years, I have been dusting off a complicated, historically significant story," explains Von Buhler. To more thoroughly explore her grandfather's murder and events leading up to it, Von Buhler created an elaborate ...