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Bugsy Siegel in 1928. Photo sourceThe Flamingo’s founder, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 28, 1906. His parents were Jewish immigrants, but Siegel was raised in Williamsburg, a troubled neighborhood that, at the time, had been home tomany Irish and Italian gangs. No matter their ethnicity or national origin, everyone in Williamsburg was poor and hungry.He soon fell in with the neighborhood’s culture of crime.In 1918, Siegel made an important friend: Meyer Lansky, another young street rough. The pair formed their own criminal collective, the Bugs-Meyer Gang, of Jewish mobsters. They extorted money from street vendors. They threatened their urban enemies. The Bugs-Meyer Gang even reportedly oversaw a subgroup of contract killers known as Murder, Inc.Siegel established himself as a formidable mastermind of organized crime, forging an underworld empire from bootlegging, gambling, and assassinations. His “Bugsy” moniker evidenced his brutal, unpredictable behavior, prone to “bugging out” at will.In the 1920s, he worked with Mafia boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s syndicate. As a hitman, Siegel “disposed of” a number of New York’s prominent mobsters.WESTWARD EXPANSIONBy 1937, Siegel, tired of the East Coast, moved shop to the West. In California, he built a career and lifestyle fromgambling,prostitution, drugs, and bookmaking ventures. He and his family lived in luxury in Beverly Hills. Among his many “activities” in Los Angeles, Siegel threw lavish parties at his mansion.

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In Hollywood, he befriended celebrities, including silver screen legends Cary Grant and Clark Gable. 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 VegaTHE HISTORY OF THE FLAMINGO HOTEL: PRE-CONSTRUCTIONStrip. 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 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 bled his bank account dry.Enter Bugsy.In 1945, Bugsy Siegel, fueled by his interests in gambling and betting, moved to Las Vegas with Virginia Hill. He sought a gambling empire of his own in the nascent city.At the time, Vegas was not the center of tourism and entertainment it is now, but a mostly quiet, traditionally “western” town. Siegel’s vision would help change Vegas, even if, in his mortal life, he never got to see his impact on the city.Prior to the Flamingo, he’d pursued another property, The El Cortez hotel. He purchased the El Cortez for $600,000. He sold the hotel for a $166,000 profit. This effort was the first inauspicious omen of Siegel’s time in Vegas. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t the last.Undeterred, Siegel and his organized crime “associates” from New York funneled the Cortez profit into wooing Wilkerson. Wilkerson caved, allowing his new “partners” to join in the project. Siegel overtook the project and the supervision of its construction.