Las Vegas Embraces Bad Guys of Its Past

Lefty, Lucky, the Ant, Bugsy, the Snake, the Chin, Scarface, the Brain. The monikers of mobsters are like the nicknames of odd superheroes. They are two syllables of rat-tat firing, evoking creepy animals, physical protrusions or uncanny powers.

And now, here in a city where such figures were once as comfortably in their element as Zeus and his family on Olympus, they are finally getting something close to the museum they deserve: the Mob Museum, a $42 million survey of the American gangster, unfolding in 17,000 square feet of exhibition space, on three floors of a 41,000-square-foot landmark building on Stewart Avenue.

With artifacts, clever interactive displays, atmospheric exhibits and photographs and videos, we learn how Las Vegas developed out of the early-20th-century desert, and how workers on the nearby Hoover Dam gave the town its first population explosion. We see how the mob maneuvered into businesses of pleasure, not releasing its hold until late in the 20th century, when corporate casinos trumped their almost quaint predecessors.

We learn, too, of these Jewish and Italian immigrants who treated the “land of opportunity” as “the opportunity to grab what they could,” and by trafficking in blood and booze built up national empires, until they were brought down with wiretaps, informants and more blood.

Like many things in mob-related American culture (even those nicknames), the museum mixes attraction and repulsion, sentimentality and hard-edged realism, relish and disgust. Like a gangster movie, it seduces us with these figures on the one hand, and with the other reminds us of the demands of justice. Its alluring, colloquial title, Mob Museum, is countered with a stern subtitle on the facade of this 1933 neo-Classical former post office and courthouse: the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.

And while the museum seeks a kind of romantic appeal by opening on Tuesday, Valentine’s Day — the 83rd anniversary, it points out, of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, where members of George (Bugs) Moran’s gang were murdered by Al Capone’s rival thugs posing as police officers — it also makes sure to deflate gangster romance by reminding us that this cold-blooded episode was so horrific that it led to a turning point, spurring expanded federal investigation. We even see part of the original brick wall where the massacre took place, pockmarked by circled bullet holes; it serves as an eerie screen on which one of the museum’s many short films, “Bootleg Wars,” is projected.

The tension between allure and disgust recurs throughout. We may be shocked by the description of Bruno Facciola’s murder in New York City in 1990 (shot in both eyes, stabbed and a dead canary jammed in his mouth), but we also see photographs of 1950s celebrities in mob-run casinos and of glamorous film stars playing criminals. The mob is portrayed as weaving a web of evil (the museum believes John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the result of mob involvement in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro) but also as an object of fascination.

The exhibition designers, Gallagher & Associates, and the “content developers” Barrie Projects and the curator, Kathleen Coakley Barrie, begin their double-edged treatment soon after you enter the lobby, where the original post office boxes are still in place behind video screens and text panels.

You are lured in with an overused museological conceit: you are treated as a mobster “under suspicion.” The elevator to the third floor, where the exhibitions begin, includes a video of a police officer sternly reading you your Miranda rights, and the first “gallery” is a police “lineup” where photos are taken (eventually to be sold at the museum shop).

That conceit, though, is soon left behind. The emphasis is ultimately placed not on the mysterious appeal of the mob, but on the fight against it. The museum’s heart is a splendidly restored courtroom, where the Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce held its seventh hearing in 1950, led by Estes Kefauver, a Democratic senator from Tennessee. The Kefauver hearings were held in cities across the country, televised live and seen by 30 million people — the first media sensation. Here that courtroom becomes the backdrop to a film about the hearings.

This emphasis on enforcement grows as the exhibitions proceed, with accounts of bugged homes and telephone booths, informants marked for death, and undercover agents trying to prevent killings. The museum never leaves behind hints of mob romance — one gallery includes heart-warming family photos of mob figures — but such fascination is never allowed to go unanswered: the next gallery is a chronicle of thuggery and blood.

There can be no surprise in the ultimate emphasis. The president of the nonprofit governing board of the museum, Ellen B. Knowlton, was an F.B.I. special agent for 24 years and had been in charge of the agency’s Las Vegas division. Another board member and one of the forces behind the museum is Oscar B. Goodman, who served as Las Vegas mayor until term limits forced his retirement; he was then able to swear in his wife, Carolyn G. Goodman, the current mayor, in his place.