I heard the Tropicana Hotel is quite comfortable, Agent 007 said.
It was the heyday of the Tropicana. The luxurious casino was a haunt of the legendary group of actors and musicians known as the Rat Pack, while its mafia-related past cemented its place in Las Vegas lore.
After welcoming guests for 67 years, the doors of the third oldest casino on the Las Vegas Strip, also known as the Strip, were closed with chains at noon on Tuesday, April 2. Demolition is scheduled for October and will make way for a new $1.5 billion Major League Baseball stadium, part of the city’s shift to become a sports entertainment center.
Robert Videobob Moseley was one of the last guests to leave the Tropicana before its permanent closure. Saddened by the monument’s disappearance, Moseley paid $600 for a standard room and spent the night at the casino with friends.
“We are losing an iconic part of Las Vegas,” Moseley said. They are going to kill Las Vegas.
Charlie Granado, a waiter at the Tropicana, said it’s a bittersweet ending for the place he’s called his second home for 38 years.
It’s the moment. It has already closed its cycle, Granado said. It makes me sad, but on the other hand, it’s a happy ending.
The population of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, had just surpassed 100,000 when the Tropicana opened on a strip surrounded by a vast desert. It cost 15 million dollars with three floors and 300 rooms divided into two wings.
Its manicured gardens and striking showroom earned it the nickname Tiffany of the Strip. There was an imposing tulip-shaped fountain near the entrance, mosaic tiles and mahogany paneled walls everywhere.
Black-and-white photographs from that era give a glimpse of what it was like inside the walls of the Tropicana in its heyday, when it hosted A-list stars from Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds to Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.
Mel Torm and Eddie Fisher performed at the Tropicana. Gladys Knight and Wayne Newton have held residencies there.
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AP/File
Evolution of Las Vegas and the Tropicana
In a city known for its reinvention, the Tropicana underwent big changes as Las Vegas evolved. In later years two hotel towers were added. In 1979, the now beloved $1 million green and amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor.
Barbara Boggess was 26 years old when she started working at the Tropicana in 1978 as a linen room assistant.
The Tropicana was practically alone here, Boggess said. There was desert everywhere. It used to take 10 minutes to get to work. Now it takes me an hour.
At 72 years old, Boggess has seen the Tropicana through its many incarnations. There was a 1980s name change to Las Vegas Island, with a poolside blackjack table and South Beach-themed renovation completed in 2011.
Today, only the low-rise hotel room wings remain from the original Tropicana structure. However, the casino still evokes the retro nostalgia of Las Vegas.
Gives an old Las Vegas vibe. When you first walk in, you see the stained glass windows and low ceilings, said JT Seumala, a Las Vegas resident who visited the casino in March. He feels like you went back in time for a moment.
The mafia era
Seumala and her husband stayed at the Tropicana as a way to pay tribute to the monument. They toured the casino and hotel, walking down random hallways, and explored the convention center. They tried their luck at blackjack and roulette and chatted with a cocktail bartender who had worked there for 25 years. At the end of their stay, they pocketed some red $5 poker chips to remember the mafia-era casino.
When it opened decades ago, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.
Weeks after the grand opening, Costello was shot in the head in New York. Police found in his coat pocket a piece of paper with the exact figure of Tropicana’s profits and the mention of ‘money to be laundered’ by Costello’s associates, according to the Mafia Museum.
In the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen mob agents with conspiring to steal nearly $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. The Tropicana-related charges resulted in five convictions.
But the famous hotel-casino also had many years of success free of mafias. It was the home of the city’s oldest show, Folies Bergere. The revue show, imported from Paris, featured what is now one of Las Vegas’ most recognizable icons: showgirls in revealing outfits, some topless, and with feathered headdresses.
During its almost 50 years on the billboard, the Folies Bergere It featured elaborate costumes and sets, original music that at one point was performed by a live orchestra, dancers, magic shows, acrobats and comedy. The cabaret appeared in the 1964 Elvis Presley film Long live Las Vegas.
Today, the site at the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip intersects a major thoroughfare named after the Tropicana. It is surrounded by the imposing, huge resorts and casinos that Las Vegas is now known for.
Nearby are the homes of the NFL’s Raiders, who left Oakland, California, in 2020 to move to Las Vegas, and the city’s first major league team, the Golden Knights of the National Hockey League.
The baseball stadium planned for the Tropicana site is expected to open in 2028.
There is a lot of controversy as to whether he should stay or go, Seumala said. But what I love about Las Vegas is that it is always reinventing itself.
FUENTE: AP
