West Side Club: Chinese-American Operators and Black Nightlife

An early Westside business

The city's historic-resource survey dates the club to 1943 and identifies Harry Lee and Rose Fong among the leading operators. The establishment offered public gaming, food and liquor in a district whose commercial growth responded to segregation.

This was not the Strip's later integrated-resort model. It was a neighborhood business connecting gambling and tavern service. Its importance comes from providing access and economic opportunity within the unequal social geography of wartime Las Vegas.

A court case opens a window onto the club

Johnson v. Fong preserves an unusually specific account of the business in April 1943. The complaint describes craps and other gaming devices, a tavern selling food and liquor, and an employed guard or bouncer named Louis Smith.

The case arose from an alleged assault outside the club. The Nevada Supreme Court opinion concerned attachment of property during the litigation; it did not finally decide every allegation or assign liability to everyone named. Its description of the establishment is useful, but a legal pleading is not a neutral inventory of proven misconduct.

The named defendants also should not be converted automatically into a precise ownership chart. Litigation can involve people with different alleged roles and different relationships to an operation.

A handoff in May 1943

Joe La Due's affidavit said he purchased and reopened the establishment with Bob Kroloff on May 14, 1943. A period advertisement reproduced in specialist history announced Smokey Joe's Club Alabama as formerly the Westside Club on the same date.

These independent pieces converge on a rapid operating transition. They do not fully resolve the legal relationship among the Fongs, La Due, the Kroloffs and the successor company. West Side Club and Club Alabama should remain distinct phases rather than being combined into a long-running parallel pair.

What customers could actually find

Craps, other gaming devices, food and liquor are directly supported by the legal description. A complete game list, menu, table count, hours and entertainment calendar are not. It would be misleading to add a showroom or famous band because such attractions existed elsewhere in the neighborhood.

The employment of a guard shows that security was part of the business structure. The single incident behind the lawsuit does not establish that violence defined an ordinary visit. The record instead offers a bounded view of a small public gaming and hospitality operation.

A name easily confused

UNLV catalogs a later photograph of D. D. Cotton with friends at a Westside Club, but the description does not securely identify this address. A neighborhood label can resemble a business name, and the photograph should not be assigned to the 1943 establishment without confirmation.

The club's brief life and successor advertisement remain its strongest chronological anchors. Together with the court record, they recover a small but important piece of the Westside: Chinese-American entrepreneurs and Black customers building public social spaces in a city whose larger hospitality industry excluded many of them.