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Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana

Mobster Charles Lucky Luciano presided over gambling at The Chicago Club, located on Woodlawn Ave in Saratoga.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-2

Meyer Lansky, right, with his attorney, Moses Polakoff, in September 1952 after posting $10,000 bail and surrendering to the state prosecutor in Ballston Spa in the extraordinary grand jury investigation into illegal gambling in Saratoga Springs.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-3

Meyer Lansky received a fine and jail time for his involvement in Arrowhead Inn.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-4

Meyer Lansky owned a piece of Piping Rock at Saratoga Lake.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-6

The Arrowhead Inn featured top entertainers like Xavier Cugat and his orchestra.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-7

Meyer Lansky received a fine and jail time for his involvement in Arrowhead Inn.

Meyer Lansky: When His Casinos Shuttered in Saratoga, He Created a Gambling Empire in Havana
Digging into the Spa City's seedy past, which includes mobsters and mountains of money.
Meyer-8

The Arrowhead Inn featured top entertainers like Xavier Cugat and his orchestra.

In the spring of 1953, as mob mogul Meyer Lansky began a three-month sentence in the Saratoga County Jail in Ballston Spa his only jail term ever he may have dreamed of the welcoming warmth of Havana. Just the year before, Lanskys good friend, President Fulgencio Batista, had retaken the Cuban government in a military coup and was running the show.

Lansky may have had bad dreams, too. The unfortunate consensus at the mafias Havana Convention, held just before Christmas 1946 at the Hotel Nacional, was that Bugsy Siegel, his friend since childhood, must be removed. Mob leaders from around the nation had become convinced that Siegel was skimming money from the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Shortly after, Siegel was shot dead in his girlfriends home in Beverly Hills.

Still, Lansky could have had reasons to be optimistic that good times would return as soon as his jail time was up. Another decision of that historic Havana gathering: Charles Lucky Luciano, another young friend of Lanskys, would be kingpin of the mob, calling the shots as he bided his time in Cuba, hoping to return to the U.S. after being deported.

Frank Sinatra came down to croon for the mobsters in high style. The syndicate knew that top-of-the-line entertainment, the best chefs, honest gaming, classy accommodations and beautiful women would draw the big gamblers and celebrities a winning combination in Havana, Las Vegas… and Saratoga.

The story of how Saratoga Springs became a center for mob glitz dials back to the 1919 opening of The Brook, a casino and cabaret where tuxedos were required. By 1936 no one could open a casino in Saratoga Springs without the approval of the Combination and its head, Luciano, according to Colliers magazine. And it didnt slow down one bit when Luciano, dubbed Public Enemy No. 1, was sent to prison later that year in upstate New York. Joe Adonis simply took his place.

Lansky, Luciano and Frank Costello were all proteges of famed 20s gambling and narcotics czar Arnold Rothstein, the reputed fixer of the 1919 Black Sox World Series, who owned the classy Brook casino out on Church Street in Saratoga, where Lansky and Luciano learned their trade. Rothstein and Luciano were silent partners in the Chicago Club on Woodlawn Avenue in Saratoga.

By 1951, Costello, Adonis and Lansky had formed the eastern axis of a combination of racketeers working through the nation, according to a U.S. Senate committee report on organized crime. Sen. Estes Kefauver investigated organized crime in 14 cities across the country and heard testimony from more than 600 witnesses, and it was televised, riveting millions to their TVs to watch slot machine king Costellos hands twitch as he testified. The TV cameras focused only on his wringing hands, giving a sinister impression as he spoke in a gravelly voice.

The rise of Saratoga casinos was documented and aired in the congressional hearings, including a 1943 letter Lansky had written to his accountant. Lansky had always told associates to keep all figures in their heads, but didnt follow his own advice. The letter stated that Costello had a 30 percent interest in the Piping Rock casino in Saratoga Springs; other partners included Lanskys brother, Jake, and Adonis, New Jerseys gambling kingpin.

Before the ink was dry on the Kefauver congressional report, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey ordered grand jury investigations into the link between organized crime and local governments. And that led to a Saratoga County grand jury indictment for Lansky and three months of jail time. He also was fined $2,500 for his involvement in the Arrowhead Inn on Saratoga Lake.

The county grand jury handed down 24 indictments involving 49 people; 41 were convicted, including Louis J. Doc Farone, who was connected with Smiths Interlaken, Rileys and the Meadowbrook, and received a sentence of nine months.

Even before then, the press saw the good times coming to a halt.

Saratoga Moans the Blues; Cops Put Lid on Gambling, read the headline in the New York Daily News in August 1948 … The moaning was terrific. Piping Rock, for instance, has booked a show that will cost the management $25,000 a week with attractions like Joe E. Lewis and Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers and you cant meet that on the income from food and liquor even at Saratoga prices…

But Jack Lait, a columnist for the New York Daily Mirror, proclaimed the end was near in August 1951: It took a century to break the heart of Saratoga… Saratoga is terrorized and paralyzed. The little the Kefauver Committee missed last year by its threats to give the burg the business by taking away its principal business. Gov. Deweys State Crime Commission has mopped up.

Almost everybody, including bartenders and waiters, is under subpoena… The spark of the Spa has gone out.

But a new spark was born: Cuba. Lansky, who served jail time with Farone, made him an offer that Farone refused. An associate of Farones told this writer in a 2013 interview that Meyer Lansky offered [Doc] a piece of Cuba-locals couldnt gamble, only those from outside the country-and a piece of Nevada. But Farone turned him down. Someone would have shot him, too.

As the heat had increased in Saratoga, Lansky, always looking ahead, established a relationship with Batista after they met at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in the late 1940s. Then, they agreed on kickbacks in exchange for mob control of racetracks and gambling in Cuba. After Batista retook power in a military coup in 1952, the golden era for mob-run casinos in the Cuban Las Vegas would soon begin, and Lansky had elaborate visions.

But all good things must come to an end. On New Years Eve 1958, more than a year after Lansky opened his opulent Hotel Habana Riviera, Batista fled the country. Eight days later, Fidel Castro set up his revolutionary government in the Hilton, but by then Lansky had slipped out of the country, too, escaping to the Bahamas. Then came the final blow: On Oct. 30, 1959, Castro nationalized the casinos and outlawed gambling.

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Piping Rock casino talk planned

An old photo shows the interior of the former Mafia-run Piping Rock casino, which was destroyed by fire in 1954.

An image of an old post card shows the exterior of the former Piping Rock casino on Saratoga Lake.

WILTON, N.Y. Saratoga Springs native Joe Cutshall-King will discuss his historical mystery novel, The Burning of the Piping Rock, at 11 a.m. Monday, April 23 at The Summit at Saratoga, 1 Perry Road, off Route 50 Wilton.

The presentation is free and open to the public.

Built on a foundation of historical events, the book tells the story of The Piping Rock, a Mafia-controlled nightclub and casino formerly located at the corner of Union Avenue and Gilbert Road, which closed following the United States Senate Kefauver Commission hearings on organized crime in the early 1950s.

On Aug. 16, 1954, the Piping Rock burned to the ground. The casino was uninsured at the time of the arson.

I plan to discuss the real history of Saratoga Springs that provides the background of the novel and its central theme, the unsolved arson of Piping Rock casino, said Cutshall-King, who lives in Cossayuna. I will talk about Saratoga during the time of its illegal casinos, as well as the mob and crooked politicians who made them possible.

Cutshall-King said the novel came about because of his fathers involvement with the political machine that greased the gears for the mob in the years following World War II. We were living in Saratoga at the time and my father, a pharmacist, was working for James Leary, owner of MacFinns Drugstore, an attorney, the head of the Republican machine, and as big a crook as his dear friend, mobster Meyer Lansky, he said. Ill explain my fathers involvement in all that and how it led to my creation of the novel.

Cutshall-King, whose writing draws on his varied work experiences ranging from a Wall Street brokerage firm to college administration, has written several books of regional history, including Hospital By the Falls, Con Amore: The Italian History of Fort Edward, N.Y. and Cornerstone of the Future.

Most recently, he wrote the introductory essay for the book Water Light: S.R. Stoddards Lake George, published by the Chapman Historical Museum.

Copies of Burning of the Piping Rock will be available for sale at The Summit, a senior community.

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