Kelly & Cawley's
The country casino at the heart of Little Reno
641 First Street, LaSalle, IL
Three-story brick, glazed tan facade, a neon sign that lit the block in every direction. The first floor was the cover — a long bar, dining tables, a baseball pool, slot machines, and a racing-wire that clattered out results live. Up the stairway to the second floor was where the heavy money played: an ornate round counter bar, a huge roulette wheel, fifty more slots, poker rooms, and a bandstand where Donald O'Connor and George Gobel worked the nights. Steak dinners cost fifty cents, chicken twenty-five — Cawley's slot revenue covered the giveaway. He had a quiet policy with ruined housewives: he refunded their husband's losses without argument, on the condition the family never came back.
State's Attorney Harland Warren timed his raid for the Saturday afternoon before Washington's Birthday, 1953, so the banks would close and Cawley couldn't post bond. They came down the stairs with two craps tables, the roulette wheel, the bingo barrel, racing forms, and chips. The phone in the cashier cage rang the entire time. Warren picked it up himself, smiled, and told the callers there'd be no bets today.
Thomas J. Cawley
1890s — January 18, 1961
The Czar of Gambling
A stocky LaSalle Irishman, son of a coal miner, who quit his streetcar conductor job in the mid-1920s to go in on a pool hall and cigar store with Vincent Kelly. Took out a bank loan in 1937 to convert the cigar store into a full casino at 641 First Street. For the next twenty years he was 'the Czar of Gambling' — paid off four mayors and three police chiefs, kept the Chicago Outfit out of his territory, refunded ruined housewives without argument on the condition the family never came back. When the U.S. Senate hauled him in front of Estes Kefauver in October of 1950, he answered every question — no Fifth Amendment, no 'I don't recall.' After the 1953 raid he liquidated his gambling fortune into commercial real estate, where he was again successful. His descendant Daniel Cawley runs Cawley Chicago Commercial Real Estate today. The name on the casino sign lives on as a brokerage.
Vincent 'Vice' Kelly
?–1932
The original partner
Bought into the First Street pool hall with Cawley in 1926. Died in 1932 before fame found them. The 'Kelly' in Kelly & Cawley's.
Herbie Hummer
1930s–1950s
House bandleader at Kelly & Cawley's
The piano player Tom Cawley hired in the 1930s. Around 1939 Hummer assembled a six-piece band that worked the second-floor bandstand six nights a week, often until three or four in the morning. He stayed for nearly sixteen years. The single best primary-source quote we have on Little Reno is his: "Man, those were the days. You actually had to fight the crowds on the streets and sidewalks to get from Cawley's place to the Silver Congo down the way. The Rock Island Rocket would bring trainloads of folks down from Chicago and you couldn't find a motel or hotel room within miles of LaSalle. Cawley's was a well-known place. I once saw Jack Dempsey and Dizzy Dean there."