Latest fire sears the last flicker of life out of the historic Moulin Rouge

The smiling African-American man with a salt-and-pepper beard peeks down from the care-worn billboard through a pentimento of torn paper at the wreckage of the Moulin Rouge.

His eerie grin is frozen in time. At the moment, the site of the historic casino and hotel looks like a chunk of Gaza after an airstrike. Only a ghoul would laugh.

Behind an iron gate, ribbons of white tape flutter in the hot breeze and make a thin line meant to warn anyone thinking of venturing too close to the small mountain of charred wreckage that was once a piece of local history and mythology. The maws of a dozen dumpsters are overwhelmed. A sprinkler sprays the rubble with an incessant, "Tsk, tsk, tsk."

Other signs warn of the presence of asbestos in the property, but in this neighborhood mesothelioma is the least of your worries.

There's no sign of life here after last week's fire.

Although the Las Vegas Fire Department hasn't determined a cause, the fact the property changed hands within hours of the fire will surely cause some skeptics to scratch their heads.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk."

But the property, which spreads out at 900 W. Bonanza Road, has been a firetrap for many years, and it's not the first time the Rouge burned red. I suspect decades of dysfunction, disappointment and neglect are not far from the most recent flash point.

If ever a place embodied the fleeting fabrication of a Westside renaissance, this is the spot. The Moulin Rouge, open so briefly in May 1955 during its supposed heyday, has been portrayed in occasional newspaper features as ground zero for the great West Las Vegas comeback that somehow has managed to sputter through boom times and recession.

Historians and some locals might recall that Joe Louis was a greeter and percentage owner, and the "Tropican-Can" show headlined in the Cafe Rouge theater. A few old-timers could tell you they ate in the Deauville Room Restaurant and had a cocktail at the Lucky Pierre Bar. But even the Moulin Rouge's biggest boosters would admit that was a lifetime ago.

In the late 1950s, the bankrupt and shuttered Moulin Rouge was considered as a potential lease site for the Atomic Energy Commission. It bombed in that capacity, too.

Even before the latest fire the odds against the Moulin Rouge regaining its past vitality were a million-to-none. The city's downtown redevelopment dreamers years ago wrote off this part of Bonanza Road as a dumping ground for day laborers and homeless Harrys. The joint's supposed niche faded like old newsprint with the end of segregation and the rise of the local civil rights movement.

Local myth paints the history of the Moulin Rouge in romantic hues, but the casino was fated to fail as Las Vegas slowly relinquished its unofficial moniker as the "Mississippi of the West." In a business world that cries "location, location, location," casinos on a homeless corridor at the gateway to a poor neighborhood won't set profit records.

Despite a lot of sweat equity and some very game efforts to make a go of the old club, the lights of the Moulin Rouge flickered for decades, its marvelous script sign burning into local memory like a postcard from a long-past vacation. James Walker and Sarann Knight Preddy leased the club that decades earlier had briefly seen Sammy Davis Jr. and Lou Rawls perform, and dreamed of transforming it into another Apollo theater. Their dream was deferred like all the rest.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk."

"It's a shame that in this country we don't preserve old, historic buildings," Las Vegan Faye Gregory says. She admits her heart rooted for its return to glory, but her eyes saw the obvious.

"It was in a blighted area. The Moulin Rouge should have been preserved, if nothing else, because it's a part of Las Vegas history."

But Las Vegas has rarely shown much respect for its history. Now this place that almost never was is bulldozer-ready.

A faded cloth sign lashed over the Moulin Rouge's blown-out marquee proclaims "Coming Soon!" and depicts a flashy high-rise resort with sports cars parked out front.

One more wishful thought that went nowhere, the message flaps in the wind. The Moulin Rouge is graveyard quiet.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk."

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith/.