Flamingo
The Flamingo Las Vegas is a hotel casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada and is owned and operated by Harrah's Entertainment. The property offers a 77,000 sq ft (7,200 m2) casino along with 3,626 hotel rooms. The 15 acres (6.1 ha) site's architectural theme is reminiscent of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne style of Miami and South Beach, with the central outdoor area housing an exhibit of flamingos as part of a wildlife habitat. It was the home of penguins, but they have since been moved to the Dallas Zoo. It was the third resort to open on the strip. It is the oldest resort on the strip still in operation today.
The Flamingo has a Las Vegas Monorail station at the rear of the property.
The Flamingo site occupies 40 acres originally owned by one of Las Vegas' first settlers, Charles "Pops" Squires. Mr. Squires paid $8.75 an acre for the land. In 1944, Margaret Folsom bought the tract for $7,500 from Squires, and she then later sold it to Billy Wilkerson. Billy Wilkerson was the owner of the Hollywood Reporter as well as some very popular nightclubs in the Sunset Strip: Cafe Trocadero, Ciro's and La Rue's.
The Pink Flamingo Hotel & Casino
Siegel finally opened The Pink Flamingo Hotel & Casino at a total cost of $6 million on December 26, 1946. Billed as the world's most luxurious hotel, the 105-room property and first luxury hotel on the strip, was built seven miles (11 km) from Downtown Las Vegas, with a large sign built in front of the construction site announcing it was a William R. Wilkerson project, with Del Webb Construction as the prime contractor and Richard Stadelman (who later made renovations to the El Rancho Las Vegas) the architect.
Siegel named the resort after his girlfriend Virginia Hill, who loved to gamble and whose nickname was Flamingo—a nickname Siegel gave her due to her long, skinny legs. Organized crime king Lucky Luciano wrote in his memoir that Siegel once owned an interest in the Hialeah race track and viewed the flamingos who populated nearby as an omen.
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