Siegel’s vision would help change Vegas, even if, in his mortal life, he never got to see his impact on the city. He sought a gambling empire of his own in the nascent city.Īt the time, Vegas was not the center of tourism and entertainment it is now, but a mostly quiet, traditionally “western” town. In 1945, Bugsy Siegel, fueled by his interests in gambling and betting, moved to Las Vegas with Virginia Hill.
The mogul couldn’t realize his dream alone, though, as World War II’s fallout drove up the cost of building materials shortly after the war. Wilkerson hoped to establish a kind of Sunset Strip in Vegas: an opulent, European-styled hotel, complete with a spa, health club, golf course, nightclub, showroom, and restaurant. The Flamingo started construction under Billy Wilkerson, then-owner of The Hollywood Reporter and several nightclubs in the Sunset Strip. The History of the Flamingo Hotel: Pre-Construction He also started an extramarital affair with a starlet, the actress Virginia Hill, the woman who would later become his partner-in-crime in Las Vegas.
In Hollywood, he befriended celebrities, including silver screen legends Cary Grant and Clark Gable. Among his many “activities” in Los Angeles, Siegel threw lavish parties at his mansion. He and his family lived in luxury in Beverly Hills. In California, he built a career and lifestyle from gambling, prostitution, drugs, and bookmaking ventures. Westward Expansionīy 1937, Siegel, tired of the East Coast, moved shop to the West. As a hitman, Siegel “disposed of” a number of New York’s prominent mobsters.
In the 1920s, he worked with Mafia boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s syndicate. His “Bugsy” moniker evidenced his brutal, unpredictable behavior, prone to “bugging out” at will. Siegel established himself as a formidable mastermind of organized crime, forging an underworld empire from bootlegging, gambling, and assassinations. The Bugs-Meyer Gang even reportedly oversaw a subgroup of contract killers known as Murder, Inc. The pair formed their own criminal collective, the Bugs-Meyer Gang, of Jewish mobsters. In 1918, Siegel made an important friend: Meyer Lansky, another young street rough. He soon fell in with the neighborhood’s culture of crime. No matter their ethnicity or national origin, everyone in Williamsburg was poor and hungry. His parents were Jewish immigrants, but Siegel was raised in Williamsburg, a troubled neighborhood that, at the time, had been home to many Irish and Italian gangs. The Flamingo’s founder, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 28, 1906. The Man Behind the Flamingo: Early History Bugsy Siegel in 1928. It’s not the new ownership’s fault, though-it isn’t easy to shake the legacy of the larger-than-life Bugsy Siegel… especially when his spirit refuses to leave the premises. Though the Flamingo has since tried to minimize Siegel’s legacy, its many renovations haven’t managed to remove the mobster from the resort. After all, the Flamingo was the brainchild of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, one of America’s most infamous gangsters. The legendary Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, in the heart of the Strip, is notorious for its checkered history.
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