Tony Cornero

Stardust Hotel

The Stardust Hotel became the dream of Tony Cornero, who in a sudden burst of inspiration while drinking with friends at the Louigi's bar on the Las Vegas Strip in the mid-1950s, determined to build the world's largest resort. Cornero would not live to see the completion of his dream, but his Stardust Hotel would survive for more than half a century as one of the aging icons of the Strip.

SS Rex Club

Tony Cornero, a one-time 1920s bootlegger from California and a former casino operator well known in Las Vegas, opened the S.S. Rex Club casino at Second and Fremont streets in downtown Las Vegas in 1944. Cornero, born in Italy in 1895, named the club after an ill-fated gambling ship he owned off the coast of Southern California, six years before.

Meadows Club

The Meadows Club was one of the first casinos to open in Las Vegas in the weeks after the Nevada legislature legalized casino gambling in March 1931, during the prohibition era. In its early years, the Meadows, with its live entertainment and fancy interior, was regarded as the finest casino in Las Vegas, and a forerunner of the modern casinos that followed in the 1940s.

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