Casino & Gaming Cities
From desert spectacles to Belle Époque salons, these cities made the wager an architecture and the casino a civic institution. Even non-players come for the theatre of chance.
A gambling town is one where a licence created the economy, and the licence is always the beginning of the story.
Legalisation has a date and a motive. Monaco licensed a casino at Monte-Carlo in 1863 when the Grimaldis were nearly bankrupt and abolished income tax on the proceeds. Portugal legalised gambling to fund an administration; Nevada legalised it in 1931, the same year it cut the residency requirement for divorce to six weeks, which is why Reno filled with people waiting out a clock.
The building predates the machines. San Remo's Liberty casino of 1905, Estoril's of 1931 and Mar del Plata's of 1939 are architecture first, and several are the best buildings in their towns.
Say what it does not fix. Atlantic City legalised casinos in 1978 to revive a declining resort; several have since closed, and the town is an unusually clear case study in what gambling repairs and what it does not.
The rest of the town matters. Macau kept 442 years of Portuguese baroque a few streets from the tables.
Look at the room, not the table.