John Gambling House
We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. When WOR ended Rambling with Gambling in 2000 after 75 years on the air, John R. Gambling moved up the dial to WABC, taking over the post-morning-drive 10 am – noon slot. Gambling was fired by WABC on February 29, 2008 in a cost-cutting move.
In My Father's House are Many Rooms
1“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well. 23And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.…Little children, I am with you only a little while longer. You will look for Me, and as I said to the Jews, so now I say to you: 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'
John 13:36
'Lord, where are You going?' Simon Peter asked. Jesus answered, 'Where I am going, you cannot follow Me now, but you will follow later.'
John 14:28
You heard Me say, 'I am going away, and I am coming back to you.' If you loved Me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.
Hebrews 6:20
where Jesus our forerunner has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.
In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
my.
2 Corinthians 5:1
For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Hebrews 11:10,14-16
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God…
Hebrews 13:14
For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
if.
John 12:25,26
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal…
John 16:4
But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.
Luke 14:26-33
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple…
I go.
John 13:33,36
Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you…
John 17:24
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
Hebrews 6:20
Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
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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 | Click here for short biography of 'Tiger' |
| 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.' |
| Matchbook advertising for the Big House at 3326 Michigan Avenue, Indiana Harbor, Indiana. The name 'Big House' c.1940s |
Two views of downtown East Chicago (1953 and 1956) with the 825 Club building on the right. East Chicago was one of the very few cities with a passenger train tracks and service in a central downtown location from 1906 to 1956. This provided easy access to gambling in East Chicago for customers from Chicago, Hammond, Gary, Michigan City and South Bend. Exchange Street as shown here in 1929 or 1930 was renown for another gambling den, next to one of East Chicago's most popular eateries, 'Hot Dog John's' that opened in 1929. |
'Hadie' | TELEFLASH wired telephone PA |
| 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.' This was in reference to the Illinois Sports News service using the Teleflash technology. See above. 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, dating as far back as 1870 (See illustration below). The Hammond Times newspaper regularly published the locations of East Chicago gambling joints and their owners, who were required to have federal gambling stamps. The total number of gambling stamps issued in 1954 was 29. As published in 1967, these stamps revealed addresses and owners, including The 825 Club, 825 Chicago Avenue (Harold L. Layer and William Gardner); The Forsythe Club, 4610 Indianapolis Blvd. (Angelo Papalambro); The Elks Club, 4942 Alexander Avenue; The Sportsman Club, 3215 Block Avenue; The Auditorium Grill, 3436 Michigan Avenue (Joseph Kovich); Palace Recreation, 4605 Indianapolis Blvd--next to Hot Dog Johns (George Anaston); and The L&N Club, 3407 Michigan Avenue (Johnny Nan). | |
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. |
| 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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John Gambling House Movie
| e m a i l | © 1998/1999/2006 H. Layer, all rights reserved |