Toni Clark (born Lena Gaglionese) spent her youth in Seattle, Washington where she was born on April 4, 1915 to Angelene and Salvatore Gaglionese. Her father and mother moved to the Seattle area when they immigrated to the United States from Naples, Italy years earlier. Salvatore worked as a street cleaner for the city of Seattle and Angelene cared for the house and family until her early death. Toni grew up with three siblings, her father and step-mother, and an uncle and cousins next door. After attending Seattle’s Franklin High School for three years, she left. “I just didn’t like school so I quit,” she said, and spent the next couple of years at home. From these simple origins, Toni became “the first lady of Las Vegas” as some admirers called her, referring to the role she played in the transformation of Las Vegas from a frontier town into a glamorous resort town during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1941, before the Second World War began, Toni traveled to San Diego to visit friends and decided to stay. After a year of caring for a young boy, she moved into the Barbara Worth Hotel which was owned by Wilbur Clark. Clark’s father ran the hotel and suggested that Toni apply for a job at his son’s new bar and restaurant, the Monte Carlo. She had not met Wilbur Clark at the time and her shyness dissuaded her from making the move. Nevertheless, she did apply and went to work as the hostess of the Monte Carlo in downtown San Diego. Wilbur and Toni’s courtship began slowly. He gave her the name Toni, saying she “looked more like a Toni than a Lena,” and she kept it. In 1944, around the time Wilbur Clark relocated to Las Vegas where he had purchased the El Rancho Hotel, the couple married in Reno, Nevada and permanently made Las Vegas their home. Clark’s involvement in Las Vegas clubs and gambling expanded with the Monte Carlo downtown and the Player’s Club on the strip. But his dream to create a luxury resort hotel came to fruition when the Desert Inn opened in 1950. The fifth major property on the strip, the Desert Inn had several features that distinguished it from other places. The Skyroom offered a private club atmosphere for talking, music, and dancing. The Monte Carlo Room served French cuisine. The Doll House provided round-the-clock childcare for children of hotel guests. The Painted Desert Room, the property’s showroom, featured top performers and the Donn Arden Dancers. All these features combined to create a resort that offered guests an exquisite setting for a gambling vacation. Toni Clark had a special place at the heart of the Desert Inn’s social life. She brought a gracious and elegant charm to social events associated with the property. Although she said she was never involved in the business of the hotel-casino, she played a unique role setting a new tone for the enterprise. She entertained guests and dignitaries at the hotel as well as her home; organized fashion shows featuring the top designers of the time for the wives of high-rollers; and created celebrations of special events, notably her husband’s late December birthday, with annual parties. When Wilbur Clark died in 1965, Toni Clark remained active in the city’s social life. She did not disappear as others had, but continued to plan and attend social functions. As part of her service to the community, she took particular pleasure in her work with the Variety Club. She continued to reside in Las Vegas until her death in 2006.
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The Taylor Construction Company Collection (1954-1973) consists primarily of publicly distributed information and provides a glimpse of some of the hotels, housing, public buildings, and remodeling projects handled by the company. It contains two booklets on the construction projects of the company from 1954 to 1972. It also includes Las Vegas International Hotel's projected revenues from 1969 to 1973, a newspaper article on Taylor Construction Company projects in Florida, and an invitation to the groundbreaking ceremony for the MGM Grand Hotel.
Archival Collection
The Stuart and Flora Mason Photographs (1940-1999) contain photographs of hotels, casinos, and other buildings constructed by Taylor International Corporation, which was owned by the Mason Family. The photographs depict the Aladdin, Venetian, Tropicana, Riviera, MGM Grand, and International hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada. The photographs also depict buildings in Miami and Coral Gables, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Archival Collection
The MGM Mirage Records on Mandalay Resort Group consists of materials from Mandalay Resort Group’s office of public relations and community affairs records, which was closed after Mandalay’s corporate merger with MGM Mirage in 2005. The files, dating from 1968 to 2005, provide documentation of Mandalay Resort Group’s external affairs and internal operations. They contain subject files, photographs, negatives, slides, correspondence, VHS tapes, corporate publications, press releases, press kits, wholesale room agreements, hotel ephemera, employee newsletters, and press clippings. Of particular interest are files and photographs documenting the planning, development, construction, and opening of the Mandalay Resort Group properties.
Archival Collection
Collection is comprised of photographs of Las Vegas, Nevada community leaders Flora and Stuart Mason and three event programs from Temple Beth Sholom (Las Vegas, Nevada). Materials date from approximately 1965 to 2010.
Archival Collection
The collection is comprised of architectural records (1947-2001) of American architect, Homer Rissman and the architectural firm, Rissman and Rissman Associates Ltd, a partnership of Homer Rissman and his brother Marshall. The collection includes 825 items from over 40 major projects and over 110 minor projects. The Rissmans' work represented in the collection focused on Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Los Angeles, Southern California, and Arizona, with Homer's early career design work in Chicago, Illinois. The materials feature hand-drawn architectural drawings, ranging from pencil and ink on tracing paper preliminary sketches to ink on Mylar (TM) construction documents, and a number of artist’s renderings, used for presentations and promotional materials. The drawings also contain work from a number of consultants, engineers, and other architects who collaborated on the development of the various projects. The collection includes architectural drawings for: hotels, casinos, integrated casino resorts, office towers, multi-family residential developments, and custom single-family homes.
Archival Collection
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