VEGAS COURTHOUSE TO BECOME MOB MUSEUM Building Originally Used to Try Mobsters Will Now Chronicle Their History
BY TERRY CARTER
Years ago, Oscar Goodman spent a lot of time in federal court in Las Vegas defending mobsters. He often held forth to news reporters on the courthouse steps that they were not mobsters. There was no such thing in Sin City, at least in the world according to Oscar.
Wink. Wink.
Now that he is mayor, Goodman has pushed through a new drawing card for Las Vegas, one to lure tourists and others downtown, a few miles from the Strip: a mob museum. As in mobsters. The city’s intertwined history with organized crime is coming out of the realm of whispers, harrumphs and myths to go on full display.
"It’s an important part of the city and its history," says Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell, who is overseeing the project. The museum is expected to be completed in 2008 in, of all places, the old federal courthouse and post office building.
Goodman, 67, is known for a good time. When he travels to promote Vegas, he usually takes along two showgirls and an Elvis impersonator, says John Smith, a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of a book about the mayor: Of Rats and Men: Oscar Goodman’s Life from Mob Mouthpiece to Mayor of Las Vegas.
"He’s as much showman as politician," Smith says. "He’s usually the smartest guy in the room. But he’s also the class clown. Everybody knows the type."
When Goodman first broached the idea of a mob museum in 2002, there was a quick and loud rebuttal. City and civic leaders had fought many years to clean up the old reputation and tout a legitimate gaming industry—and at first blush, this looked like a leap backward.
Clearly a different kind of wiseguy from the ones he represented, Goodman shot back that he really meant a "mop museum."
"At first, the idea looks like pure Oscar," says Michael Green, a historian at the Community College of Southern Nevada and a member of the museum advisory committee. "Then you see that it’s also a good idea."
Someday there may be a museum dedicated to Goodman himself. It’s not enough to say he is an atypical big-city mayor. He was elected in 1999 and is in his second four-year term. His knack for grabbing headlines runs in nearly all directions.
Last year when speaking to a class of fourth-graders, Goodman was asked by one what he would want with him on a deserted island. His answer: a bottle of gin.
In 2002, he became a spokesman for Bombay Sapphire gin, but he wasn’t pushing product in grade schools, just telling the truth. One kid asked his favorite hobbies, and Goodman included drinking in the short list.
For more than 30 years, Goodman represented some of the biggest organized crime bosses, including Meyer Lansky, former Stardust Casino boss Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal and Anthony Spilotro. So he knows whereof he speaks as far as organized crime’s place in the history of the city.
Continuing earlier efforts of his predecessors, Mayor Goodman has worked to change the perception that the Strip is the city. The Strip is a four-mile stretch with the biggest hotels, casinos and resorts, not unlike one of those sticky bug strips in the way it attracts and grabs tourists.
City leaders want downtown, just a few miles away, to be a draw, too: for businesses, residents and tourists.
But glamorizing the mob in the old federal courthouse? "It’s a great building, and organized crime is part of the city’s history," says Fretwell, who despite her surname isn’t bothered by this.
The building was finished in the early 1930s but more recently is known in Las Vegas as the "POST Modern" building—because they’re spending $30 million to modernize it and, well, it used to be a post office.
The city commissioned a survey to determine what sort of museum would be best. It floated five possible themes: illusionists; the history of gambling; the mob; "vintage Vegas," meaning the architecture, music and people who set the scene from the 1930s through the 1950s; or a tribute to performers such as Elvis, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
Tourists by far favored the mob. Locals leaned more toward "vintage Vegas."
"It’s going to be a combination of those two," Fretwell says. "They’re really related, anyway."
The mobsters, after all, built casinos, picked the gaudy designs and varied entertainment—and led lives that couldn’t help but be noticed. "You could build a museum just based on Oscar’s clients," says Smith, the newspaper columnist-cum-biographer.
One question to be faced later will be Goodman’s place in the museum—surely he belongs there. "Instead of doing wax, maybe we could just tie him up and put him in there when his term limit ends," the historian Green jokes.
Goodman was unavailable for comment. First, he was observing Yom Kippur. Then he headed for Europe to promote the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, which will be in Las Vegas.
It was not known whether he took along two showgirls and an Elvis impersonator.
©2006 ABA Journal
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