Visual Public Relations

7A time and place

The Las Vegas Mob Museum’s experiential public relations

Jessalynn Strauss

It only took one dollar. For $1 – perhaps the least well-known but most important dollar spent during the development of Las Vegas, Nevada as a tourist destination – the City of Las Vegas secured possession of an old courthouse and post office that had outlived its federal duties. Today, located in the same building that housed some of the very events it recreates, the National Museum of Organised Crime and Law Enforcement – or, as it is more colloquially known, the Mob Museum – plays a pivotal role in Las Vegas’s ongoing reinvention as a multifaceted tourist destination.

In its first four years of operation, the Mob Museum welcomed over one million ...