Covington does little to tell the stories about the city’s colorful history as one of the most criminally and politically corrupt places in the United States.
Those stories are easy to find in old newspaper articles, federal and congressional investigation records and in the many books and academic journal articles written about gambling and vice in Northern Kentucky. Covington’s mobbed-up history got a little harder to recognize in 2021 after city officials approved a restaurant’s new sign proposal.
The Riverside Korean restaurant is located at 512-514 Madison Ave., inside the Covington Downtown Commercial Historic District, which includes more than 200 buildings first listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The restaurant is also inside a City of Covington Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. The National Register listing is honorific only and carries no regulatory burden for property owners unless there a federal project involving federal funds or permits.
For example, before demolishing the IRS site, the National Historic Preservation Act required the city take several steps to protect historic properties before breaking ground. The city didn’t follow the law in that case, and in September, it issued a draft Programmatic Agreement document inviting public comment.
Because 514 Madison is inside the Downtown Commercial Historic Preservation Overlay Zone, one of the city’s seven zones, the building’s owner had to get a certificate of appropriateness for exterior alterations, including the addition of a mural to the historic sign attached to the building’s façade.
City staff approved the mural of a tiger that was painted over the sign’s original numbers, which designated the building’s address and historic name, the 514 Club.
Established in 1946 by Greek immigrant James Kappas, the 514 Club became one of Northern Kentucky’s premier illegal gambling clubs. It ranked up there with the Lookout House, south of Covington, and Newport’s Beverly Hills Supper Club, destroyed in a deadly 1977 fire.
Kappas and his brother Pete owned several Covington and Newport restaurants and nightclubs, including the one where Newport’s Brass Ass has been located since 1974.
Both brothers also had multiple arrests for running illegal casinos. They, along with better known local racketeers, were among the region’s mob elite.
Like many other casinos and speakeasies, the 514 Club used its street address as its name. This helped taxi drivers deliver patrons right to the front door. It also helped make it more difficult for law enforcement to keep track of it.
Northern Kentucky was full of casinos with numbers. Newport had the 633, the 333 and the 339 clubs. Covington had the 514, along with other notable casinos with colorful names like the Golden Horseshoe, the Kentucky Club and the Press Club.
“We have the Kentucky Club, the Kenton Club, the 514,” committee associate counsel Downey Rice told Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver in a 1951 hearing on organized crime. “I think the Kentucky is also known as the 627.”
The 514 Club had a long and colorful life. Kappas sold it in 1958. Subsequent owners continued to host municipal club functions attended by Covington’s political and business elite and they kept the casino open, according to newspaper accounts of arrests there in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1968, Kentucky Post reporter Alan Markfield got into the 514 Club casino. “I walked into the 514 Club, one of Madison Avenue’s oldest bars, and ordered a beer and a pack of potato chips,” Markfield wrote.
Markfield observed well-dressed patrons working their way through the bar to a reinforced metal door in the back. After a few tries, Markfield made it into the back room.
“I saw where all those people had gone to,” Markfield reported. “They were in a bright, smoke-filled room that resembled a miniature Las Vegas casino.”
Gambling accusations followed the 514 Club and its owners and patrons into the 1970s, spurring several federal investigations and prosecutions. In later years, the club featured go-go dancers.
Throughout its history, the sign in front featured bold numbers, 514, with neon highlighting. The sign was as much of the building’s history as the activities carried on inside.
None of that matters to the City of Covington. Though Covington’s historic preservation planner, Kaitlin Bryan, wasn’t on the job back in 2021 when her predecessor approved the sign mural, she nonetheless believes it was the right decision.
“To be honest, that permit would still probably be approved as proposed,” Bryan told LINK nky. “I would find that it’s refurbishing the historic sign that is on the building, and we’re retaining that.”
In Bryan’s opinion, only the sign body itself is historic, not the words painted on it. “Our goal is to retain just the elements themselves. They don’t need to be preserved,” Bryan said. “Our guidelines are consistent with the national standards for rehabilitation, which is the act of making something continue to be compatible and continue to be used.”
Bryan’s position is at odds with National Park Service guidelines on the preservation of historic signs. “Historic signs can contribute to the character of buildings and districts,” wrote Michael J. Auer in a 1991 Park Service report titled, The Preservation of Historic Signs. “They can also be valued in themselves, quite apart from the buildings to which they may be attached.”
Auer’s report emphasized that it was important to preserve signs if they convey information about the businesses conducted inside historic buildings. “A sign may be the only indicator of a building’s historic use,” he wrote.
The Kentucky Heritage Council, which functions as Kentucky’s State Historic Preservation Office, agrees. “The sign and its messaging are both important. One reflects the design style of the period while the other communicates the building’s historic use and context,” KHC program administrator Nicole Roth told LINK nky. “Whenever possible, both should be preserved as part of the building’s historic character.”
The agency, Roth wrote in response to emailed questions, encourages retaining and reusing historic signs. “This includes preserving design details that contribute to the sign’s historic character,” she wrote.
There seems to be a disconnect between Covington’s Bryan and historic preservation guidelines and best practices. A historic sign that speaks to a very important chapter in Covington’s history isn’t important enough to preserve for future generations.
“I understand that some people find that the 514 Club was a locally significant place, I understand that,” Bryan said. “But from my regulatory side of things, it’s not a local landmark. It doesn’t have a preservation covenant.”