Recalling Buchanan Street's NAAFI that became Glasgow's first casino
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It was the post-war Glasgow landmark that became home to the nation's first ever casino.
For more than 30 years the NAAFI building stood sentinel-like at the junction of three major city roads: Buchanan Street, Sauchiehall Street and Parliamentary Road.
Located roughly where the Royal Concert Hall's steps rise today, the distinctive-looking eight storey building was constructed on the site of the Imperial Hotel in 1953 at a cost of £100,000. It originally had three of its floors occupied by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institute (NAAFI), which provided goods and support to British servicemen and their families.
By the end of the decade, however, the future was not looking so bright for the NAAFI as it emerged that the service was shedding thousands a year. The facility closed in the summer of 1960.
In 1964, the top two floors of the building were bought over by Cypriot entrepreneur Reo Stakis and reopened that April as the Chevalier Club - Glasgow and Scotland's first foray into the world of casino gambling.
At the time it was built, the Chevalier was also the largest casino in the UK.
This was also new ground for Stakis. The 51-year-old restaurateur had enjoyed a meteoric rise to success after arriving in Glasgow during the Second World War and now owned a chain of top restaurants and hotels.
But Stakis' new casino would endure a rather bumpy start. Within weeks of its opening police raided the building and removed a roulette table and other gambling equipment after it emerged that a group of men had been attempting to fix games.
In the following couple of decades, the Chevalier witnessed great change in its immediate vicinity. Urban renewal was very much the order of the day and familiar streets around the casino, such as the old Parliamentary Road were swept away en masse, while further road realignments arrived with the construction of the new Buchanan Street bus station.
The former NAAFI building endured until 1988 - coincidentally the same year Reo Stakis was knighted - when it was demolished to make way for what would become the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. The Buchanan Galleries shopping complex would follow in the 1990s.
None of this meant the closure of Sir Reo Stakis' casino operations. While no longer situated at one of Glasgow's busiest shopping junctions, the Chevalier continued for a spell at nearby Hope Street.
