The Mob Museum: Quiet Cork, Loud Gangsters

Ww Courtroom Lg
Courtesy of The Mob Museum

The floor of the former federal courthouse in Las Vegas, like many government buildings built in the first half of the 20th century, was cork tile. Cork is quiet, and that’s a good thing, because the courthouse saw many a mobster whose personalities were loud enough, like “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel” Meyer Lanksy and the short and violent Tony “The Ant” Spilotro. The courthouse is now part of the Mob Museum. Before the museum opened in 2012, the cork floor had to be replaced; glue used to stick carpet on top of the cork made the original floor unsalvageable. Staff sent a couple original tiles across the country to Globus Cork in Bronx, N.Y., to see if they could match them. “They had so much dirt and grime on them that we couldn’t see what color we were looking at,” says vice president Jennifer Biscoe. There were even feathers (Biscoe thinks perhaps pigeon) stuck to the tiles. The company scrubbed each tile until the true color emerged. Then they created a custom matching stain and applied it to more than 2,500 square feet of 9-by-18-inch and 18-inch-square cork tiles. The new color is a spot-on recreation of the old color, Biscoe says. When visiting the Mob Museum, be sure not to turn a blind eye to it. Visit the Mob Museum in the heart of old Las Vegas at 300 Stewart Ave. (not far from Fremont Street) or online at TheMobMuseum.org.

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