VÉHICULE Presents: Meyer Lansky & Hallandale Beach

It was the time of Prohibition, and rum-running was rampant throughout South Florida.

There was still a demand for alcoholic beverages, however, and plenty of illegal alcohol made its way to market. "Rum-runners" took advantage of Florida’s many miles of coastline to bring it in from Cuba, the Bahamas, and elsewhere. Many Floridians in the state’s rural interior made moonshine or other bootleg liquor and sold it to make extra cash. State, local, and federal authorities all attempted to enforce the prohibition laws, but they were never able to fully stamp out these illegal activities.

By the early 1930s, many Americans considered Prohibition a noble experiment that had failed. It did not end alcohol consumption in the United States, but instead drove much of the activity underground. Rum-running, moonshining, and organized crime all increased as a result.

Alcohol was big business for the mob, and when Prohibition ended in 1933, the next big thing was gambling, which would lead to the consolidation of powerful criminal syndicates in most large cities in the United States.

The rum-runner Linwood afire. With capture and arrest imminent, the fire was set by the crew of bootleggers trying to destroy the evidence and sink the ship.

Meyer Lansky, a Polish Jew born in the Russian Pale of Settlement, known as the "Mob’s Accountant", became important in the gambling scene in Miami, while his brother Jake lived and worked in Hollywood. But it wasn’t really Hollywood that became the center of Broward County’s illegal activity going into the 1930s. It was Hallandale Beach, a farming city, which soon had speakeasies, drinking establishments, and stylish gambling houses up and down its Boulevard.

Hallandale was indeed the "hotbed of sin" of the Sunshine State in the 1930s. The local farmers often made good profits selling their products to the casinos, and other residents were happy to take advantage of the employment opportunities provided by the illegal establishments. The city was growing exponentially, and everyone wanted to be a part of it.

Slot machines were ubiquitous in the early 1930s; in 1935, the Florida Supreme Court legalized them, and suddenly Hallandale had legal slot machines everywhere — in drugstores, gas stations, stores, and even fishing camps.

Hallandale was a gambler’s paradise and soon became known as the "Wall Street of South Florida", due to the many banks and other financial companies that had opened there to support the illegal gambling trade that operated around Hallandale under the beneficial eye of a crooked sheriff who once, when a reporter asked why he allowed gambling, replied: "Why? Because I’m a goddamn liberal, that’s why. I will not go around these parts and stick my nose in the private business of the people."

Soon, there were 12,500 licensed machines statewide; most were in South Florida. They brought an estimated $60 million a year into state coffers — at 5, 10, and 25 cents a spin. Within two years of legalizing slots came the real pros — gangsters from New York and Chicago — and their illegal machines.

A bookmaking operation started by two Chicago mobsters in a Hallandale tomato packing shed grew into the Plantation, one of the more famous carpet joints, where pampered patrons could drink and dine in style, watch a show, and, of course, gamble.

Though in 1937 the Legislature outlawed slots, their illegal cousins stayed on.