Mob Museum promoted on 60th anniversary of Kefauver hearing

Officials noted the 60th anniversary of the Kefauver hearings on organized crime Monday and used the occasion to promote the under-construction Mob Museum downtown, which will be in the federal building where the Nov. 15, 1950, hearing in Las Vegas was held.

It was the seventh of 14 hearings across the country organized by the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce led by Sen. Estes Kefauver, D-Tenn.

The hearings are credited with drawing public attention to organized crime, boosting crackdowns in other states and pushing gambling operators to Nevada.

"It was the first time that the public was being advised of the possibility that organized crime existed in the United States," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said.

"Las Vegas was what was called an 'open city.' There was no particular mob here, or organized crime affiliation here, so when the senator came here and conducted his hearing, it brought national attention to the fact that Las Vegas was a locale that the federal government was interested in."

Interest was high in the hearings, with more than 30 million people tuning in to the new technology of television to see a live, national news event.

Elsewhere, the hearings led to crackdowns on illegal gambling. But "in the wake of the Kefauver committee investigation, the Las Vegas Strip underwent one of the largest construction booms in its history," noted a report nominating the courthouse to the National Register of Historic Places.

One estimate said that by 1962, the mob had invested $300 million in Las Vegas, roughly $2.1 billion in today's dollars.

The courtroom where the hearing took place will be the centerpiece of the Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, aka Mob Museum, which is expected to open sometime next year.

That room, on the second floor of the 1930s-era building at 300 Stewart Ave., will be restored to the condition it was in at the time of the hearing, said Dennis Barrie, the museum's creative director.

The rest of the museum will have exhibits on money laundering, mafia violence and the role organized crime played in cities across the nation, including its influence on the city Las Vegas has become.

"It's a history of the American Dream that hasn't been told before," Barrie said.

The building itself has historic value. It served as both a courthouse and post office during its life as a federal building and was built between 1931 and 1933 as Hoover Dam's construction was starting.

"The building really is a great symbol of federal authority," said Paul Westlake Jr., a planning and architecture consultant working on the museum. "The government needed a presence in the area."

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.