The Mob Museum Opens (2012)

About

The Mob Museum occupies the first federal building in Las Vegas, a neoclassical post office and courthouse dedicated on November 11, 1933. It was designed under James A. Wetmore, the U.S. Treasury Department's Acting Supervising Architect, and is an example of the Depression-era federal buildings of the 1920s and 1930s. It served the government continuously until 2005, when the post office moved out. In 1945 Roger T. Foley became the city's first full-time federal judge here, and a newer federal courthouse opened in 1967.

Its courtroom is where the building's national significance lies. On November 15, 1950, the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, led by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, held the seventh of its 27 hearings in 14 cities there. Across 1950 and 1951 the committee heard more than 800 witnesses, and the televised hearings drew an estimated 20 to 30 million viewers, which the museum notes was twice the audience of the 1950 World Series. The committee concluded that organized crime operated across the country, not in any single community.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Work to turn it into a museum began in 2011, and The Mob Museum opened on February 14, 2012, with Mayor Oscar Goodman presiding. The date was the anniversary of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The restored courtroom became the museum's centerpiece.

The museum is run as a nonprofit dedicated to explaining organized crime's role in American history and the law enforcement effort against it. Its best-known artifact is the brick wall from the Chicago garage where seven members and associates of Bugs Moran's gang were shot in 1929. The bricks were sold in 1967 when the garage was torn down and, after 42 years in a traveling exhibit, a short-lived crime museum and a nightclub restroom, were reassembled at the museum.

What to expect

The Mob Museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 300 Stewart Avenue downtown, and the museum suggests allowing one to three hours. Exhibits run over three floors: the top floor covers the birth of the Mob, including the St. Valentine's Day Massacre wall and ballistics evidence; the second floor holds the historic Kefauver courtroom, the history of the building and an exhibit on Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo; the first floor covers the modern Mob and the Mob in pop culture.

In the basement, The Underground is a Prohibition-era speakeasy and working distillery with a copper still that makes moonshine. It keeps its own hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

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Before and after

• The First World Series of Poker (1970)

Good to know

• The opening date, February 14, was chosen for the anniversary of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
• The Kefauver hearing in this courtroom was one of 27 the committee held in 14 cities.
• The massacre wall's bricks were lettered and numbered from their first sale in 1967, so the museum could rebuild it close to the original. Some bullet holes were later touched up with red paint.
• The building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1983.
• The Underground speakeasy keeps later hours than the museum itself.

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