Club Copa Casino and Bar, Las Vegas, Ladies Cotton Tee

Venue History

Club Copa, also known as Copa Club, was a small but colorful early Las Vegas Strip nightclub that operated during the late 1940s, when Highway 91 was still evolving from a desert roadway into the entertainment corridor that would become the world-famous Strip. Owned by Al Mengarell, the club stood on the site now occupied by Casino Royale, placing it in the heart of what would later become one of the busiest stretches of Las Vegas Boulevard. Unlike the large hotel-casinos that would define the Strip in later decades, Copa Club belonged to an earlier generation of modest roadside venues. These clubs were intimate, personality-driven establishments that combined cocktails, dining, music, socializing, and occasional gaming-style atmosphere in a compact setting. Their appeal came less from scale and more from character, service, and location. The building itself had already been part of early Strip history. Before its Copa identity, it had was the Bon Aire Club, another mid-1940s roadside venue connected to the formative years of Las Vegas nightlife. After the Copa period, the same structure was later known as Louigi’s Broiler, showing how frequently early Strip properties changed names, operators, and concepts as owners experimented with ways to attract passing motorists and visitors. Copa Club’s name evoked a sophisticated nightclub image, drawing from the era’s fascination with supper clubs, Latin-inspired glamour, and big-city nightlife. Though little detailed documentation survives, the club likely offered the kinds of amenities common to small Las Vegas venues of the period: cocktails, food service, music, dancing, and a lively social setting for locals, travelers, and gamblers moving along the highway. Its significance lies in its place within the Strip’s earliest commercial layer. Before megaresorts, corporate ownership, and massive casino floors, Las Vegas Boulevard was built by small clubs like Copa, venues that tested the possibilities of entertainment in the desert. Today, Copa Club is remembered as a brief but meaningful piece of vintage Las Vegas history, representing the scrappy, experimental, neon-lit world that existed before the modern Strip took shape.