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East Chicago is the home port to Resorts East Chicago, a 400-foot boat containing a 53,000-square-foot casino. It opened in 1997 and features 1,900 slot machines and 71 gaming and live poker tables, but is not the first "full-service" casino to operate in the city. That honor probably belongs to Indiana Harbor's famous "Big House" which operated from 1929 to 1950 at 3326 Michigan Avenue. |
 1910 view of building |
 1950 view of building |
 short biography of: "Tiger" |
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The Big House was reported to maintain "...a free taxi service to and from Chicago's southside... One of the midwest's most lavish gambling emporiums...[it was also] the racing wire nerve center of all bookie establishments in the county. It boasted oriental rugs on the floor of the second story, which housed costly mahogany roulette and dice tables...Roughly 125 persons were employed in the place... The Big House also had 15 branch handbooks, six in Hammond, two in Whiting and seven in East Chicago." Virgil Peterson, head of the Chicago Crime Commission, reported to the Kefauver Committee in 1950 that the Big House had a gross take of $9,000,000. Its closure that year did not seriously harm the timely communication of racing results to Hammond, East Chicago or Whiting because the wire service continued from a hideout in Cedar Lake. Historian Archibald McKinlay called the Big House, "...Chicagoland's casino of casinos, thanks to the early backing of Frank Nitti." |
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Matchbook advertising for the Big House at 3326 Michigan Avenue, Indiana Harbor, Indiana. The name "Big House" apparently was not officially recognized nor appreciated! c.1940s |
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 "Hadie" |
| The 825 Club (aka: "South Shore Smoker") located at 825 West Chicago Avenue was one of the successors to the Big House and was in continuous operation (except during occasional police raids) from about 1949 to the 1970s. One reporter wrote, "I found myself in one of the biggest and best-equipped gambling joints I had ever seen. It was a long room, brilliantly lighted with overhead lights, and there must have been 40 or 50 men milling around listening to race results coming in over a loudspeaker." The "825 Club, like other similar places throughout the Calumet Region, operated under the unofficial permission of local authorities. But, to be safe, its rear door was equipped with a two-way mirror and a look-out post was staffed in the front lobby area. Police raids occurred often, usually just before a political election, and were a benevolent ritual that included advanced notice by friends of the Club. In fact, Indiana along with most other states, has had a very long tradition of police raids on gambling establishments. | |
Raid in progress at Mason Long's Faro Room Fort Wayne, Indiana, c.1870 |
Rear entrance of 825 Club always used when "the heat was on" after raids, 1950s & 1960s. |
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About thirty miles from East Chicago in Long Beach, Indiana, Johnny "Fix-'Em" Condon established in 1901 a gambling establishment , "The Long Beach Turf Exchange" that used a special train to bring gamblers from Chicago. Its invitation read: "You are invited to the finest equipped and only Monte Carlo in America, delightfully situated in Lake County, Ind., near the Standard Oil Company's Works at Whiting. No 'interference' from county or State officials. Open the year around...Ample accomodations for 5000 people... Why go to the race tracks when you can come here and play all the races at...Washington Park, Brighton Beach, Fort Erie, Newport, St Louis, Harlem and Hawthorne...All the finest brands of wines, liquors and cigars..."Herbert Asbury wrote that it was ."the most extraordinary gambling house ever projected in the United States--a castle protected by stockades, barbed wire and picket fences, armed lookouts in sentry boxes, alarm boxes, ferocious bloodhounds...and with tunnels leading outside the grounds and arrangements for setting fire to the place if the police succeeded in gaining an entrance." However, its size and notoriety caused by its advertising doomed it from the beginning. The Long Beach Turf Exhange lasted only a few months before being closed by Indiana authorities and by opposition from other vested interests in gambling, such as the Chicago race tracks themselves. The Big House was its Lake County successor in the 1920s or early 1930s, but on a smaller scale. |
I would like to hear from anyone who has any photographs,
stories, or information about these enterprises.
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