If you picture the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. were the leaders of the Rat Pack, an assortment of entertainers who were famed for their Las Vegas shows in the 1950s and 1960s) in Vegas, you’re likely picturing the Sands. Business magnate Howard Hughes bought it in 1967, 15 years after its opening; decades later, new owner Sheldon Adelson shuttered and demolished the property to make way for The Venetian.
The Sands’ implosion on November 26, 1996, symbolized a pivot from mid-century showrooms to mega-resort spectacle.
The Stardust was the Strip’s neon poetry—home to the Lido de Paris and a star-spray sign that practically defined Vegas typography. The Las Vegas Strip, for the small number of you who don’t know, is a part of Las Vegas Boulevard that’s famous for having a lot of resort hotels and casinos.
Boyd Gaming, a gambling and hospitality company, closed the resort on November 1, 2006, nearly 50 years after the opening, to clear the site for the never-completed Echelon project; both towers were imploded on March 13, 2007. The beloved roadside sign now glows at the Neon Museum, a reminder that signage can be as iconic as the buildings themselves.
From Frank Sinatra residency lore to Steve Wynn’s ultimate do-over, the Desert Inn, opened in 1950, traced Vegas from lounge-era chic to luxury redevelopment.
Wynn bought the “DI” in 2000, closed it that August, then staged a multi-phase demolition: the Augusta Tower, the venue’s southernmost building, fell in October 2001, and the remaining towers were imploded in November 2004. The site became Wynn Las Vegas, proof that the Strip perpetually reincarnates itself.
The Dunes was the first great Vegas implosion spectacle of the 90s—and a marketing masterstroke. After closing in January 1993, 38 years after it started its operations, its North Tower was imploded that October before 200,000 spectators; the South Tower followed in July 1994.
The Dunes’ fall cleared ground for the Bellagio and kicked off Vegas’s era of theatrical demolitions.
Famed for topless revues and old-school glamour, the “Riv” lived 60 years before the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority bought the site for convention expansion.
It closed May 4, 2015; towers were imploded in two acts, on June 14 and August 16, 2016. Even in demolition, it staged a farewell in sequenced curtain calls.
Opened in 1942 as the Last Frontier, this was the Strip’s second property and a rare survivor of multiple rebrands.
It closed July 16, 2007, and was imploded November 13, 2007, to make way for a planned Plaza-branded mega-resort that never materialized after the Great Recession—leaving a tantalizing void across from Wynn and Encore.
The original Aladdin—home to Elvis and Priscilla’s 1967 wedding—closed on November 25, 1997, and was imploded on April 27, 1998.
A much larger New Aladdin rose in its place (later becoming Planet Hollywood), but the implosion marked the final chapter of a classic Strip address and another notch in Controlled Demolition, Inc.’s Las Vegas playbook.
Open for just six months in 1955, the Moulin Rouge was the first racially integrated hotel-casino in the United States—a civil-rights milestone where black entertainers who headlined the Strip could finally stay and be seen.
The casino’s operations ended quickly, and across decades of false dawns, the remaining structures suffered fires and partial demolitions (including removal of the façade in 2010). Its legend endures as a symbol of Vegas’s cultural turning point.
Opened in 1957 to be one of the last true mob-era landmarks—and a film star in its own right (“Viva Las Vegas” and “Diamonds Are Forever”)—the Tropicana closed on April 2, 2024, and was imploded on October 9, 2024.
Its exit cleared space for a planned $1.5 billion MLB stadium for the Oakland Athletics, a sign that the Strip’s future is as much sports as slots.
A Boardwalk (The Atlantic City Boardwalk is the longest boardwalk in the world, spanning nearly 5 miles long. It has stores, restaurants, hotels, and fun things to do) stalwart that opened in 1980 (after a stint as the Brighton), the Sands Atlantic City closed in November 2006 and was imploded on October 18, 2007—the first casino-hotel implosion on the U.S. East Coast.
Plans for a new Pinnacle property evaporated in the economic downturn, leaving another empty canvas in a city perpetually trying to redraw itself.
Opened in 1984 and shuttered in 2014, Trump Plaza had a front-row spot at the Boardwalk’s boom-to-bust saga. The derelict tower was finally imploded on February 17, 2021, in a cathartic public spectacle that the city tied to charity.
Few properties have worn more headlines on their facade.
The Hotel Nacional still stands as an Art Deco icon, but its casino—once a glittering hub of pre-revolutionary Havana—doesn’t. After nationalization, Fidel Castro closed the casino in October 1960, 30 years after the opening, bringing down the curtain on a glamorous, mob-tinged chapter of Cuban nightlife.
The hotel’s history tours today nod to that lost floor.
This seaside Art Nouveau landmark might be the most cinematic building on this list. Once a lavish Black Sea playground, it was closed in 1990, 80 years after it was introduced to the world, due to operating costs and spent decades as a haunting shell—a poster-child for endangered heritage sites.
After a multi-year restoration, it reopened to visitors in May 2025 as a cultural venue (not a gaming hall), transforming an abandoned casino into a preserved monument.
Imagine a casino floating above the Mediterranean, built on a pier, crowned with glass domes and ornate ironwork that shimmered at sunset. That was the Jetée-Promenade, opened in the 1880s.
To British travelers, Russian nobles, and European high society, it was a fantasy palace—part theatre, part concert hall, part ocean-view salon. It became a model for coastal leisure architecture worldwide.
During World War II, occupying forces dismantled the metal structures to reuse the material for the war effort. The casino was not demolished by choice—it was harvested. Wind, rust, and time erased the rest.
Today, nothing remains but postcards and an empty stretch of sky where chandeliers once caught the sun. Its disappearance symbolizes a whole era of the French Riviera elegance that the modern coastline can imitate, but never reclaim.
Before the Lebanese Civil War, Casino du Liban was the glamorous entertainment capital of the Eastern Mediterranean. Opened in 1959, it became known as the Riviera of the Middle East — a place where European aristocrats, Arab royalty, actors, musicians, diplomats, and Beirut’s intelligentsia gathered.
Its revue shows, orchestras, marble foyers, and seafront terraces appeared in magazines from Paris to Buenos Aires. In the 1960s and early 1970s, it symbolized Beirut as a cosmopolitan crossroads — confident, stylish, outward-facing.
The outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 changed everything.
The casino was closed, looted, damaged, and left dormant. The building remained, but the cultural ecosystem that animated it — the nightlife, the fashion, the sense of global ease — evaporated.
After the war, it eventually reopened in 1996 following major reconstruction. But what returned was not the same world. The casino came back as a modern venue; the mythic Beirut of Sinatra-style gowns and French-Lebanese cabaret didn’t. So while Casino du Liban still exists physically, the original casino — the cultural era it represented — no longer does.
Vegas erases by spectacle.
Old casinos are imploded in fireworks and televised countdowns — dramatic, deliberate reinvention.
Havana lost its casinos due to ideology.
A single law ended an entire nightlife economy overnight.
Nice lost a casino to war.
The most beautiful building on the Riviera disappeared without ceremony.
Lebanon lost a casino to broken cultural continuity.
The building survived; the city around it didn’t.
Even when the structures are gone, these casinos endure through:
Casinos aren’t remembered for roulette wheels. They are remembered for the worlds they created.
We remember them because they were stages for eras, and eras, like fortunes, eventually run out.
| Pros | Cons |
| Urban renewal and modernization: Older casinos are often replaced by larger, more efficient, more profitable developments that align with current tourism demand. | Loss of architectural and cultural heritage: The Jetée-Promenade casino in Nice and the early Vegas hotels were all important historical, artistic, and visual icons. When they went away, they lost a part of their cultural memory. |
| Opportunities for economic growth: New gigantic resorts, exhibition halls, sporting venues, and multipurpose hubs typically create jobs, attract investment, and bring in tax money. | The local identity is disappearing: Casinos typically change the way a city is seen around the world. If you lose them, a city’s unique character can be lost in favor of standardized commercial aesthetics. |
| Better safety and standards: Taking down old buildings can get rid of old infrastructure and business methods that are tied to crime, corruption, or areas where the law is not clear. | End of social and artistic scenes: Old casinos weren’t simply places to play games; they were also places for performing arts, fashion, nightlife, and socializing that modern venues don’t often have. |
| Cultural restructuring: In urban areas like Havana or Beirut, shutting down casinos was a purposeful change in their cultural makeup or political direction—a new social narrative. | Myth → commodity: When historical places are turned into corporate mega-complexes, cities typically sacrifice the value of stories for the efficiency of making money, which makes culture less interesting. |
We look back at lost casinos for the same reason people keep old playing cards, matchbooks, and postcards: Because glamour is more powerful when it becomes memory.
A casino that still exists can be visited. A casino that’s gone must be imagined. And imagination is where myth begins.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
