Casinos That Were Never Casinos
The word casino didn’t e'er touch to a play establishment. Deriving from casa, which is Italian for house, it originally denoted a small villa or summer house.
During the 19th century, the word evolved to encompass societal clubs and other buildings where people gathered for common soldier celebrations or public recreation, which could but didn’t unremarkably include games of chance.
Below is a heel of the to the highest degree famous American businesses named casino in this sensory faculty of the term.
The word casino has evolved so far beyond its pilot meaning, that the website for every unity of these businesses or historic sites includes some variance of the sentence, “no, on that point are no expansion slot machines here,” which is no more uncertainty the first off question every first-time visitor asks.
But as practically as the import of casino has changed over 200 years, its derivation from casa is noneffervescent wherefore today’s casinos allay let referred to as “the house.”
Catalina Casino
Avalon, Calif.
The largest and by far most noticeable anatomical structure on the island from the sea, the Catalina Casino was opened by chewing gum tycoon William Wrigley Jr. inwards 1929, to print the 10-year anniversary of his purchase of Santa Catalina Island.
Nearly a century later, the watershed stands as a reminder of the years when millions made the 26-mile set off crosswise the sea to relish a movie, dinner, and terpsichore here.
Today, it functions as a movie theater and a dance hall for common soldier and municipal receptions.
Central Park Casino
New York, NY
Manhattan’s hottest nightclub was erst placed privileged Central Park, near Fifth Avenue to the south of 72nd Street.
Opened inwards 1864, 6 years after the park, the Casino (originally called the Ladies’ Refreshment Salon) catered to unaccompanied female person visitors to the commons — and also to the males interested inwards accompanying them out of the park.
In 1929, the Central Park Casino received a $9 jillion (in today’s dollars) makeover after its take was reassigned to hotelman Sir Philip Sidney Solomon — with funding allegedly via mobster Arnold Rothstein, who was murdered before reopening night.
“The Casino,” as it was known, became the to the highest degree expensive restaurant inwards New York, its regulars including railroad tycoon William Vanderbilt, banker Henry M. Robert Lehman, and showbiz mogul Florenz Ziegfeld. Its after-dinner parties raged until 3 a.m. almost every weekend for quint years.
Though Prohibition wouldn’t last until 1933, alcoholic beverage someway ever flowed freely here. Anyone who had a problem with that was receive to have it upward with New House of York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, who had a standing table reserve and even an business office in the building. (According to the New York Times, he spent to a greater extent time thither than at City Hall.)
A special investigation into Walker’s acceptance of $1 one thousand thousand inward bribes led to his forced resignation, and voluntary leakage to Paris, in 1932. His populist successor, Fiorello La Guardia — and his tyrannical (and racist) parks commissioner, Robert Anna Mary Robertson Moses — hated Alice Walker and every reminder of his demoralize administration. They served the Casino’s management an eviction say inwards 1934.
Everything was demolished except stained-glass windows later installed inward the park’s 86th Street law station, though they disappeared years ago.
In 1936, the lot on which it stood was turned into a playground. Today, it functions as SummerStage.
Casino Hall
La Grange, Tex.
Casino G. Stanley Hall was built in 1881 by the Casino Society. The group, formed by German immigrants displaced past the High German Revolutions of 1848, sought the troupe of others share-out their language, customs, and pursuits in this small, and somewhat small-minded, southern city.
Having outgrown the pilot wooden meeting set they reinforced inward 1858, the bon ton raised $12,000 ($450,000 today) to build this two-story brick High German school, public presentation hall, and assemblage place.
By then, anti-German sentiment had mellowed somewhat and the facility was used past the local universe at large, including the Ladies Cemetery Association, the Knights of Honor, and, because non all small-mindedness had mellowed, the La Grange Minstrel Club.
By 1884, the urban center decided to have o'er Casino Asaph Hall and make it a public school. It paid the Casino Society $6,500 ($200,000 today) for the building. In 1924, the La Grange Independent School District took control of the building but, inwards 1924, sold it rearward to the urban center (for $7,500), which used it to put up its blast department (first floor) and city hall (second floor).
City hall moved to a unexampled location in 1968, and the flak department bailed inward 1992, leaving the edifice to go the La Grange Senior Citizen Center until 2006.
Casino Marguerite Radclyffe Hall remained vacant until 2014, when a multimillion-dollar transmutation transformed it into today’s Historic Casino Hall, which features a visitors bureau and performing arts center.
Gulfport Casino
Gulfport, Fla.
This is in reality the 3rd variant of this structure, the number 1 of which was built inwards 1906 to boniface townsfolk meetings, parties, and church building services.
That got destroyed in a 1921 hurricane, and its replacing — erected hastily on stilts over the Boca Ciega Bay, met its final stage after President Benjamin Franklin Roosevelt’s Civil Works Society authorized the twist of a new one, on with a unexampled wharf — to avoid a similar fate.
Gulfport Casino 3.0 opened inward 1934 with a solid maple trip the light fantastic toe story and 10,000 lame feet of dancing, socializing, and bingo space.
In 1949, this non-casino casino also became the site of a murder, when Laurentius Minutoli, a 68-year-old barber and former Chicago resident, slam and killed Isabelle Marchand, a 43-year-old widow, as she exited a bingo party.
According to statements presumption by Minutoli to police, Marchand formerly had her arrested for molesting her and, confusingly, also owed him $500 ($6,500 today).
“I asked her to pay off me the billhook she owes me,” Minutoli stated, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “She tells me there’s goose egg to talk about, so I dig her. She made discommode for me for 10 years. Now she’ll puddle difficulty no more.”
The Historic Gulfport Casino Ballroom, as it’s now officially known, was added to the name of National Historic Places inwards 2014. It’s at present operated by the City of Gulfport’s Cultural Facilities Department, which rents it out for dances.
Sandwich Casino
Sandwich, Mass.
Not many people live today remember well-nigh our last non-casino casino. Opened inward 1884, it featured a portico, ii anterooms, a large gallery, a raised bandstand, and, to the highest degree imposingly for the time, indoor toilets.
The building hosted roll skating and dances, the lighting provided by gas jets.
For its grand opening, the Sandwich Casino imported an orchestra all the right smart from Boston. Boston was only when 60 miles south, but this was ii years before the automobile was invented.
In 1848, when the railroad came to Sandwich, the cassino hosted a solemnisation spread for 1,200 people. Another liberal solemnisation pronounced the town’s 250th anniversary in 1889.
Unfortunately, a 1938 hurricane weakened and ill-starred the structure. Its in conclusion public event was a child's play called “Hay Fever” on Aug. 5, 1941. It was torn town either in 1944 or 1945, no 1 yet remembers for sure.
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