Arizona Club: Las Vegas Before the Strip

The railroad town and Block 16

Las Vegas's new townsite was laid out in 1905. Block 16 became the principal district for saloons and associated nightlife. Banks, churches and ordinary businesses existed alongside a deliberately concentrated vice economy rather than replacing it.

Sources place the Arizona Club's beginnings in 1905 or 1906. Later recollection by Pop Squires describes an earlier building moved aside and a more elaborate replacement opening around 1908. That may explain apparently contradictory early dates, but the precise construction sequence remains uncertain.

A saloon advertised through luxury

Squires remembered beveled glass, private wine rooms and an elaborate bar and back bar. The club's reputation was for refinement relative to other establishments in the district. Its luxury was not the luxury of a later hotel resort, but a carefully furnished social and drinking space.

J. O. McIntosh and A. James appear in the early operating trail. A 1912 newspaper account records a saloon-license payment dispute involving James that ended when payment was made. The club therefore interacted with formal municipal licensing even within a vice district.

Gaming and upstairs rooms

Historical accounts associate the Arizona Club with liquor, gambling and prostitution. A UNLV interior record identifies craps and faro, offering stronger property-specific evidence than a generic list of Block 16 games. Exact table numbers and limits are not known.

Retrospective sources also describe slots, roulette and blackjack, but the legal changes of the period make dates important. Nevada's gambling prohibition after 1909 and national Prohibition later altered what could be openly offered. An activity visible in one era cannot be assumed to continue lawfully through all of them.

The upstairs rooms changed use over time, including a later lodging phase. The building's history is consequently more varied than labeling it simply a brothel or casino.

The end of the district

By the early 1940s, legal and military pressure challenged Las Vegas's prostitution arrangements. A short-lived concentration at the Meadows was followed by closure under Army pressure in 1942. The older Block 16 system ended as the wartime city changed.

The Arizona Club's famous bar and fittings were moved into the Horn Room at Hotel Last Frontier. This was reuse of architectural material, not continuation of the old club under a new hotel name.

That afterlife is revealing. As Las Vegas shifted from railroad saloons to themed resorts, pieces of an actual early establishment became part of a manufactured Old West atmosphere. The Arizona Club thus connects the city's working vice district with the later resort industry's appetite for its own past.