Las Vegas' newest museum puts the Mafia on exhibit

As an institution, it has generated hundreds of billions of dollars dealing in "services" and "commodities" that remain very much in demand.

Its leaders include some of the most iconic figures in history.

A pop culture phenomenon, it is continually celebrated on movie screens, in best-selling books, and, most recently, on reality TV.

The mob. The Mafia. Cosa Nostra.

A genuine piece of Americana.

Now there's a museum, the brainchild of a former Philadelphian; a repository of artifacts, documents, photos, and memorabilia that underscores its historic significance.

The Mob Museum opens Tuesday - where else? - in Las Vegas . For those with a sense of underworld history, the date should come as no surprise.

Valentine's Day; hearts and flowers for many, but to others, the anniversary of a massacre of historic significance in Chicago in 1929.

Seven wiseguys affiliated with gangster George "Bugs" Moran were lined up against a warehouse wall and executed. The murders were supposedly set in motion by Moran's rival, Al Capone.

Part of that brick warehouse wall, pockmarked with bullet holes, will be on display in the museum.

So will the barber chair from the shop in Manhattan's Park Sheraton Hotel where in 1957 Albert Anastasia had his shave interrupted by a spray of bullets.

Anastasia (no relation) had headed Murder Inc., a problem-solving division of the larger institution that is the focus of the museum. He and his enforcers are believed to have been responsible for anywhere from 400 to 700 murders during a bloody decade that began in the late 1940s.

Capone, Anastasia, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, John Gotti, Whitey Bulger, the list goes on and on. Each has a place in the officially titled Mob Museum, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.

It's in the former federal courthouse and post office building at 300 Stewart Ave. in downtown Las Vegas.

The building, opened in 1933, is itself an artifact. One of the few historic buildings in the city, it was the site of one of Sen. Estes Kefauver's committee hearings on organized crime in 1950.

Those hearings literally brought the mob into the living rooms of America via the then-new phenomenon of television.

"About 30 million people watched those hearings," said Jonathan Ullman, executive director of the museum. "That was about twice as many as watched the World Series."

The courtroom where the hearing was held has been restored to look as it did then.