Las Vegas in the 1940s Cortez Hotel and Casino. The Arizona Club, also known as the "Queen of Block 16", was the first Las Vegas saloon to have second story constructed for prostitution and was unchallenged until 1941. In 1942, Las Vegas closed its prostitution district, accommodating a request from the military, and by December 1942, bars and casinos were closed for an eight-hour period, starting at 2:00 AM. The West Side Club opened for African American customers in the early 1940s as, in 1942, Las Vegas city commissioners denied a permit for an interracial hotel-casino in the Downtown area. The Hotel Last Frontier was
Las Vegas in the 1950s on 10 January 1957. The Tropicana opened on 3 April 1957 at the Tropicana – Las Vegas Boulevard intersection. In 1955, Ben Jaffe, an executive of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, came to Las Vegas and bought a 40-acre parcel at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Bond Road (now Tropicana Avenue). Jaffe aimed to build the finest hotel in Las Vegas, featuring a Cuban ambience, with four room themes for guests to choose from: French Provincial, Far East, Italian Renaissance, and Drexel. Construction ran over schedule and over budget, due in part to competition for labor with the under-construction