In the distance, you could hear the whine of power tools of construction workers renovating the second floor of The Mob Museum.
At the podium, Mayor Oscar Goodman talked of officiating weddings.
Just another day in downtown Las Vegas.
“There will be a lot of people who want to get married here,” a hard-hatted Goodman said Monday morning during an event at the old Las Vegas Post Office and Federal Court building on 300 Stewart. “I might become a minister.”
Crazy? Not really. Some political observers and even a few Las Vegas attorneys thought Goodman was a little nuts to run for mayor 12 years ago. Today, he’s winding toward the end of his third and final term. And The Mob Museum could easily serve functions other than marking the significant events in the history of organized crime in America, such as the 60th anniversary of the Kefauver hearings.
The Federal Courthouse in Las Vegas was the stage for the seventh in the nationwide series of 14 hearings. The date was Nov. 15, 1950, and that demarcation of time was the reason for Monday’s event at the under-construction museum. But as the building takes shape, it is becoming clear The Mob Museum can be more than a museum about the Mob.
“We could have any number of events here that bring in conventioneers, especially attorneys,” said Dennis Barrie, creative director of the museum, who has appeared on-site so often wearing a hard hat, he risks being handed a Skil saw himself. “What we’ve done here is so different and so intriguing to a lot of people that they will want to spend time here for special events, absolutely.”
Officials at City Hall have already received requests for parties and weddings, so Goodman’s joking about officiating weddings is not that far-fetched. Nor is his idea that receptions could be held at the downtown speakeasy he envisions opening after he leaves office after his final term ends next year.
“It’ll be right across the street,” he said, grinning.
Both Goodman and Barrie said they anticipated 600,000 to 800,000 visitors annually to The Mob Museum. Barrie also has helped design and assemble the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in his hometown of Cleveland. He said this project is the most-discussed museum in the country, with its promises of wrap-around photography and hologram visages of old Mafia and law enforcement figures and documents.
“People have been wondering how we are going to depict organized crime, the Mob, and if it’s going to be a glorification of that culture. We keep telling them it won’t be, and as we get closer to opening it, it is becoming clear that it won’t,” he said. “This is a part of American culture that has not been examined, and what we’ve done is put it on a different plane. We ran into the same sort of questions with the rock hall, people wondering if it was just going to be fluff and if we were going to be telling the true story of a lot of these artists, and we do.
“With the Spy Museum, we were accused of being a mouthpiece of the CIA. We did talk to the CIA, of course, but we have talked to everyone who plays into this culture, and at the end, all anybody wants is to just be accurate and keep the information in proper context, and we do that.”
When asked if he envisioned weddings in the very room that staged the Kefauver hearings, Barrie smiled.
“We wondered that at the rock hall, and we weren’t too receptive to it until a major rock and roll dignitary (Barrie says he can’t remember which one) wanted to have a wedding there,” he recalled. “We did that one, and then the floodgates opened. Everybody wanted a wedding there. But we’ll make it available for special events. Why not?”
More from the event:
Casually dressed in a brown jacket, dress shirt and jeans, Councilman Ricki Barlow (who represents Ward 5, which includes downtown Las Vegas), apologized for his hoarse voice. “I was yelling during the (Manny) Pacquiao-(Antonio) Margarito fight,” was his explanation. ... When asked if the region could support two multimillion-dollar Mob-themed attractions (The Mob Experience at the Tropicana being the other, and the Sun has a cross-promotional agreement with that attraction in which it shares photo and video content in exchange for brand placement), Barlow said, “As long as they are both in the city of Las Vegas.” When reminded that the Trop is located in unincorporated Clark County, Goodman stepped to the mic and said, “There’s no comparison between the two. That’s an exhibit, this is a museum that’s going to be representative of the conflict between organized crime and law enforcement.” Goodman is growing tired of answering that question, but it will persist. ... Las Vegas attorney Chris Kaempfer attended the event. His father, Alex, was the courthouse’s first court reporter. ... Between 20 million and 30 million viewers watched the hearings on television, double the audience that took in the World Series that year between the Yankees and Goodman’s Philadelphia Phillies. The ratings were higher than any Super Bowl. ... When the Courthouse was dedicated on Nov. 27, 1933, the population of Las Vegas was about 5,000. ... Councilmen Steve Ross (who is a candidate for mayor) and Gary Reese (who is not) also were there. ... To be displayed in the museum is the old bottle of Boord’s Gin, with about a thimble full of liquid left, that was found during construction by an electrician. The bottle was found on a beam, likely left by a construction worker during the building of the structure in the late 1920s, when Prohibition was still the law of the land, even the land of Las Vegas. ... “Very sad” is how Barrie described how he felt about the closing of The Liberace Museum. He and his wife, Kathy, who also is on The Mob Museum’s design team, visited the attraction and were swayed by the collection. He was encouraged by plans for pieces of the museum to tour nationally, but did agree that Liberace’s fans were ebbing away and not being replaced by a new order of followers.
Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at twitter.com/JohnnyKats.
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