What is the oldest building on the Strip?

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Didn't one of the newer resorts (MGM maybe?) keep the hotel that was on location and just add a facade, and build up around it?

I forget where I read it, but I think the MGM did just that. The Marina hotel if memory serves.

Quote: kenarman

The MGM Grand incorporated the Marina hotel into it when it was built it is now the west wing. The Marina was built in 1975 so not all that old.

So it doesn't qualify as old enough. That's fine. At least I got the MGM part right.

Funny you should ask. I also go with the Little Church of the West, where my wife and I got married. Just today I walked past it and remarked about it.

OK who has the oldest active gaming license in NV?
No (Google) peeking

Quote: kenarman

The MGM Grand incorporated the Marina hotel into it when it was built it is now the west wing. The Marina was built in 1975 so not all that old.

That's the current MGM Grand. The first MGM Grand was built in 1973, and turned into Bally's in 1986. But still, not all that old.

Quote: Wavy70

OK who has the oldest active gaming license in NV?
No (Google) peeking

My first guess would be the Golden Gate, and my next guess would be the El Cortez.

Quote: mkl654321

My first guess would be the Golden Gate, and my next guess would be the El Cortez.

Nope. Get on 95 South.

Quote: Wavy70

Nope. Get on 95 South.

Railroad Pass?? Hacienda??

Quote: mkl654321

Railroad Pass?? Hacienda??

Yes the Pass. Lic # like 001 or 002 if me brain serves me well.
Post your address and the years supply of Rice-a-Roni will be sent shortly.

Taught my wife craps on the $1 table there. I think I may have taught the dealers some of the rules too.
Went to play $1 craps at the Western a few weeks ago but the tables were closed. So we just went to the High Limit room and dranke rose'

Railroad Pass is license #4, but I think 7 licenses were given out the first day in 1931. I just don't know how old the buildings are.

The La Bayou at #15 Fremont Street was another one of the original licenses. For most of it's life it was the Northern Club.

But before it became the Northern Club, in the 1900s it was the Las Vegas Coffee House. In 1920, Mayme Stocker opened the Northern Club on the property. Originally it was a soft drink emporium but Northern was code, back in the day, for miners and veterans of mining camps and they knew it was a place, despite Prohibition, where they could not only get a real drink to wet their whistle but also take a chance at Lady Luck. Mayme was the owner of record. Her husband, Oscar, worked for the Union Pacific which seriously frowned on their employees having outside interests.

Despite the anti-gambling law, their were five games of chance that could be played in Las Vegas back then: stud, draw and lowball poker, 500 and bridge, according to Mayme's son, Harold. Harold had quite a colorful childhood moving with his mother between Montana and Las Vegas and then to Los Angeles when the Grammer School burned down. One summer, Harold went down to Tijuana and got a job learning to deal. He was only 17 years old. After WWI, Harold returned to Las Vegas and got a job, like his father and brothers, working for the Railroad.

The Northern was said to be a stand up place that didn't cater in women. That was for Block 16, the red-light district, just off Fremont Street. Harold, ever the entrepreneur, however invested in a few brothels on Block 16,

In 1931, with the anti-gambling law repealed, Mayme Stocker applied for and was awarded the first gaming license in Las Vegas. Harold's older brother Lester was a professional gambler and according to Harold, was largely responsible for getting the anti-gambling law repealed. The $10,000 that the Stocker family helped raise to fight the anti-gambling law probably didn't hurt either.

After Lester and Oscar died, Mayme retired from the Northern Club, letting others handle the daily operations of the place. In 1945 she leased the place to Wilbur Clark who promptly renamed it the Monte Carlo Club. Clarence Stocker continued to run the Northern Hotel on the second floor.

Harold built and operated the Chief Autel Court, the largest apartment building in the State in its day. It was a brick building located at Fremont Street and Maryland Parkway.

Clarence died in 1952, Mayme died in 1972 at the age of 97 and Harold died in 1983 at the age of 82.

In the late 1970s, the Coin Castle with its giant King atop the building, opened on the site. The Coin Castle closed shortly after the turn of the century. The King's head and his body are in the Neon Museum boneyard