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Downtown Las Vegas mainstay El Cortez showcases its 80-year past as it builds for the future

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El Cortez, 1976
Photo: Sun File

Kenny Epstein is in the executive boardroom of the El Cortez Hotel & Casino, putting 80 years of history and energy into one word—and it fits. “There’s a Jewish expression, it sort of describes a feeling,” says Epstein, the Downtown institution’s owner. “It’s called hamish. This place is a hamish place."

Kenny Epstein

The Yiddish term stitches together several concepts: of being warm, cozy, homey, unpretentious. Here, at the corner of Fremont and Sixth, it’s found in the clang clang clang of the payout hitting the trays on the coin slots, some of the only ones left in Las Vegas. It’s in the 24-hour prime rib special, the tropical-print carpet, the distinct Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, Frank Sinatra’s croon (“You Make Me Feel So Young,” natch) wafting through the speakers.

“It just makes you feel good to be here,” Epstein says. “That’s what we want to make the El Cortez.”

The more times change, the more things more or less stay the same at the El Cortez. The plumbing and electrical have been upgraded, sure. Expansions have upped the room count sixfold, and those rooms have been refurbished, more than once, to modern tastes.

But on the greater scale, the gambling house has changed hands only four times, never into a corporate grip. And Epstein—himself 80 years old—has no plans to change the local character. It’s for locals, by locals.

El Cortez, 1947

El Cortez, 1947

He praises his colleagues in Vegas’ current era of sleek and classy megaresorts. He knows his predecessor and mentor, the Vegas hospitality icon Jackie Gaughan, would be impressed with Fremont Street’s resort renaissance, led by the likes of the Stevens brothers.

But the El Cortez, heading into its 80th anniversary, holds something extraordinary, a feeling that could be ephemeral, especially in raze-and-reinvent Las Vegas, but that Epstein is determined to keep as a feature.

“We wouldn’t be special if all of Las Vegas remained the same,” says Alex Epstein, Kenny’s daughter and the El Cortez’s executive manager.

Alex says consistently local ownership shows in employee loyalty. For example, the building engineer, who knows the complex down to its nuts and bolts and its bricks and pipes, has been there since 1979. And that translates to an emotional attachment Epstein says wouldn’t develop under corporate ownership.

Gaughan’s penthouse apartment, where he lived until his death in 2014, could have been gutted and transformed into an exclusive restaurant, or hollowed out to become an on-trend rooftop bar. Instead, the owners kept it in its original 1980s state, awash in Mrs. Bertie Gaughan’s favored blush and gold tones. It can be booked on special request.

“When you have the sentimentality and the appreciation for the history, it’s almost more special to leave it as it was,” Alex says.

THE VETERAN

Alex Epstein has been working at the El Cortez her whole adult life. At 36 years old, that’s still well short of the tenure of Liz Butler.

Liz Butler

Butler remembers her first day at the El Cortez—December 8, 1970. She was a change girl, carrying rolls of coins in pouches around her waist. She later became a cashier, and then, in 1974, a cocktail waitress. She still serves drinks—eight hours a day, five days a week—at age 77.

At the end of one recent shift, her tray, rubbed smooth and pale in spots by countless tumblers and bottles, was scattered with margarita salt, a tip in the form of a $1 slot machine token, and a security guard’s badge. Security has deputized Butler, who has a sharp eye for who should be bounced—like the freeloader who was sitting at a machine but not playing, just sipping complementary Southern Comfort.

Butler says she adores Gaughan. She’s happy to explain the man with the friendly smile seen in so many black-and-white photos mounted in the halls. He was generous and kind, she says, and she asked him directly if she could become a server.

Though she’s the casino’s longest-tenured employee, Butler isn’t a supervisor—by choice. “I’m just a cocktail waitress like everybody else, only I’m more knowledgeable than most,” she says.

THE REGULAR

Butler loved Gaughan. Lana Goedert loves Butler. She’s been around almost as long.

Lana Goedert

Goedert, 67, pulled her first slot arm here around 1977. She was a fresh college graduate who followed her mother, who worked for the Pinkerton detective agency, to Las Vegas for a temporary assignment, and stayed.

The women would try to hit up two casinos every Friday night. They started on the Strip before drifting Downtown. “And I liked this place,” Goedert says of the El Cortez. “I liked it then, and I like it now.”

Gaughan would stroll the casino floor with galvanized buckets of silver dollars to give customers a few bets on the house, she recalls during a break from playing a U1 multi-game console in what, according to the stained glass ceiling panel above her, was once a poker room.

A former classroom aide who now works graveyards at pawn shop windows, Goedert brings visitors here. She visits other locals joints, too, and enjoys the perks of loyalty clubs— lots of free small appliances, she notes—but the El Cortez is her favorite.

She enjoys the company of the casino’s inhabitants. Goedert and general manager Adam Wiesberg talk about life. Kenny calls her “doll.” The bellman greets her with, “Welcome home, Lana.”

Once, many summers ago, her air conditioning went out and she learned it would take days to fix. The El Cortez comped her a room. When the citywide pandemic lockdown lifted in June, she was there when it reopened its doors.

Goedert is here two or three days a week, gambling money she knows she can afford to lose, enjoying what she wins as a bonus. “I just come to chill,” she explains.

THE LONG HAUL

The El Cortez was pretty swank from the start. The $245,000 the founding partners spent on its construction equates to almost $5 million today. It opened with 59 rooms; today there are 364.

El Cortez, 2015

Pioneering gaming investor John Kell Houssels, with Californians John Grayson and Marion Hicks, built the El Cortez and debuted it on November 7, 1941 as the first major resort Downtown. After about four years, they sold to a collective of mobsters for a tidy profit. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel wasn’t the sole owner, but as the Siegel’s 1941 restaurant just off the gaming floor shows, he was the most photogenic.

After the El Cortez provided proof of concept for making a lot of money in the desert, the gangsters moved to the Strip and sold the El Cortez back to Houssels. In 1963 Houssels sold to Jackie Gaughan.

Epstein met Gaughan when Epstein was just 15 during a 1956 family road trip from Chicago to Lake Tahoe’s north shore. Gaughan took him on a behind-the-scenes-tour of one of his properties, the Tahoe Biltmore.

Teenage Kenny Epstein was impressed. His dad, Ike, was sage. The elder Epstein told his son that Gaughan was “a go-getter, he’s smart and he’s on the square,” Kenny recalls, a straight-shooter. He says Gaughan became like a second father to him.

In 1975, Gaughan sold Epstein—then a baccarat dealer at Caesars Palace—a 5% interest in the El Cortez. Epstein also partnered with Gaughan and others in the Coast casinos, and when Boyd Gaming acquired the Coasts in 2004, Gaughan suggested Epstein use his share to buy the El Cortez.

The Ike Gaming era—that’s Epstein’s company, named for his father —started in 2008. The Jackie Gaughan era might never truly end, though. Epstein says Gaughan provided the lasting influence upon which the Epsteins continue building today.

Next up: a refresh of the original rooms—accessible only by stairs, the same creaky ones Bugsy once climbed.

The Dunes, the Stardust, the Riviera, the Sands, the Desert Inn. All rose after the El Cortez. All are long gone.

“Thankfully,” Kenny Epstein says, “not the El Cortez.”

El Cortez: A Timeline

1941: The El Cortez opens

John Kell Houssels, John Grayson and Marion Hicks build the El Cortez Hotel-Casino for $245,000 ($4.8 million in today’s dollars). With 59 rooms, the El Cortez becomes Downtown Las Vegas’ first major resort.

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel

1945: Bought by Bugsy

Houssels and his partners sell the El Cortez to a group of mob heavy-hitters including Gus Greenbaum, Moe Sedway, David Berman and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel on behalf of Meyer Lansky, for $600,000.

1946: Bought back by Houssels

Houssels reacquires the El Cortez and announces an expansion, including a barber shop, nightclub, swimming pool and a four-story wing. Siegel and his crew move on to the Flamingo. Siegel is assassinated in 1947, likely over mismanagement and skimming at the Flamingo.

1952: The “new” El Cortez

The “new” Hotel El Cortez opens with a pirate theme … which lasts only until 1957. The signature turquoise and pink neon signs —the “gambling” arrow, marquee and large rooftop signs —that still illuminate the vintage building are installed.

Jackie Gaughan

Jackie Gaughan

1963:Bought by Gaughan

Jackie Gaughan purchases the El Cortez from Houssels for $4 million. That’s roughly $36 million in 2021 dollars.

1980: Tower built

Guest Tower II is constructed, bringing the El Cortez’s room count to 297.

2008: Bought by Epstein

Jackie Gaughan sells the property to his protegee and longtime friend Kenny Epstein while continuing to live on-site in a penthouse suite until his death in 2014 at age 93. Epstein and his family and partners still own and manage the resort.

2009: Cabana suites debut

The El Cortez Cabana Suites open in the former Ogden Hotel just north of the original property, bringing the room count to its current 364.

2013: Officially historic

The El Cortez is added to the National Register of Historic Places.

A Life Is beautiful mural

2013: Beautiful music

The Life Is Beautiful music and art festival debuts on Fremont Street, enveloping the El Cortez within its first-year footprint (subsequent editions work around the hotel).

2015: Siegel’s 1941 opens

Siegel’s 1941 replaces the El Cortez’s classic steakhouse and begins serving up prime rib, stone crab, matzo ball soup and other fine meals in a dining room chock full of images of the hotel’s most notorious owner. Ike’s Bar, named for Epstein’s father, also opens.

2015: Ellie rides

British pop star Ellie Goulding films the video for her song “On My Mind” in and around the El Cortez. It features a horse strolling past the valet stand, onto the casino floor and hanging out in the beauty parlor.

Carpet remnant

2021: Renovations and high rollin’

The El Cortez continues a two-year, $25 million refresh that includes modernized guest rooms and a brighter lobby, fresh carpet on the gaming floor and a new high limit room. Remnants of the old, rose-print carpet are offered for sale in the gift shop and sell out almost immediately.

2021: Turning 80

El Cortez’ 80th anniversary celebration will include a speech by Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, a fireworks show and free champagne. The party starts at 9 p.m.

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Hillary Davis joined Greenspun Media Group in 2020 as a general assignment news reporter after spending 14 years reporting for ...

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