Columnist Susan Snyder: Casino’s history is fireproof

Friday, May 30, 2003 | 9:36 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Moulin Rouge can't seem to get a break, but it manages to persevere.

From its 1955 opening to the fire that destroyed all but its distinctive cursive sign Thursday, the city's first integrated casino has struggled to hold its spot among local landmarks.

"It seems to me something has been against the Moulin Rouge from the start. They just can't get it going," said Sarann Knight Preddy, who operated a casino there from 1985 to 1997.

If a building could be weary, the Moulin Rouge would have good reason. A whole city's worth of desegregation and black history has been laid at its doorstep over the years.

It sits on Bonanza Road at H Street, a road also named for author Langston Hughes. The lettered streets in the neighborhood surrounding the Moulin Rouge also carry names of famous black Americans.

The historic casino building sits at the edge of what once was the McWilliams Townsite, a bustling community of non-whites that existed in 1904. In 1905 U.S. Sen. William Clark convinced his railroad company to divert its water from McWilliams to his Las Vegas Ranch, creating a new town and scuttling McWilliams.

"It's water that makes the world go 'round," Michael Green, a Las Vegas historian, said Thursday. "In 1905 (McWilliams) caught fire, and there was no water to put it out."

The area struggled economically until the the 1940s when black professionals brought their talents and sophistication to the neighborhood, Green said. The Moulin Rouge opened in the ensuing building boom.

"The Moulin Rouge was built at a time when there were more educated and cosmopolitan people who were in a position to fight for the rights those residents had always been denied," he said. "The Moulin Rouge has become, somewhat unfairly, a symbol of that (fight)."

Preddy was here when it first opened, and her father was one of the construction workers who built it. She operated a nightclub-casino in Hawthorne and two clubs in Las Vegas before opening a gaming operation with her husband and son in the Moulin Rouge in 1985.

They pushed to place the building on the National Register of Historic Places before closing in 1997. She is firmly convinced, however, that those who hope to re-open it as a museum will prevail.

"It's too bad it had to burn like this," Preddy said late Thursday morning. "But I'm looking forward to it coming back better than it was."

Green says there is no replacing some of the Moulin Rouge. Its dancing girl murals, the old mahogany wall coverings and the chandeliers are gone forever. But we still have the photographs, written essays and historical accounts.

"So many people think Las Vegas has no history," he said. "But we have a lot of history. We ought to take advantage of it."

History has shown the Moulin Rouge is nothing if not persistent.

"History outlives a building," Green said. "Just because the Moulin Rouge building isn't there, the history of its existence isn't gone."