Owner Grupo Caribe Floor count 19 | Management NH Hoteles Architect Jose Canaves | |
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Location Calle 21 / Calle N, Vedado, Havana Opening 1957 (original), 2014 (reopened) | ||
The Hotel NH Capri La Habana is a historic high rise hotel located in central Havana.
Contents
History
In 1955, President Batista enacted Hotel Law 2070, offering tax incentives, government loans and casino licenses to anyone wishing to build hotels in excess of $1,000,000 or nightclubs for $200,000 in Havana. This bill brought Meyer Lansky and his "associates" in the mafia flooding to the city to take advantage.
The Hotel Capri de Havana was one of the first to be built. Located on Calle 21, 1 Mp. 8 Vedado, only two blocks from the Hotel Nacional, it opened in November 1957. With its 250 rooms, the nineteen-story structure was one of the largest hotel/casinos in Havana during its heyday. It boasted a swimming pool on the roof that can be seen in the opening scenes of Carol Reed's film "Our Man in Havana" and Mikhail Kalatozov's "I Am Cuba". The main entrance with the adjoining square is also pictured in the Soviet spy miniseries "TASS Is Authorized to Declare..." (episode 2, 55:05-55:43), based on a novel of the same name by Yulian Semyonov.
Owned by mobster Santo Trafficante, Jr. of Tampa, Florida, the hotel/casino was operated by Nicholas Di Costanzo, racketeer Charles Turin (aliases: Charles Tourine, Charley "The Blade"), and Santino Masselli of the Bronx NY(aliases:"Sonny the Butcher"). After it opened, George Raft was hired to be the public front for the hotel's club during his gangster days in Cuba. It was believed that he owned a considerable interest in the club.
The hotel was designed by architect Jose Canaves and owned by the Canaves family. The hotel, along with its famous casino, was leased to American hotelier, "Skip" Shephard.
The hotel was known as the Hotel Horizontes Capri in the 1990s, before it closed in 2003. It reopened in January 2014, following major renovations managed by the Spanish NH Hoteles chain as the Hotel NH Capri La Habana.
Filmography
In Francis Ford Coppola's movie The Godfather Part II, Fredo Corleone brings a suitcase containing $2 million to his brother Michael at the "Hotel Capri". The movie refers to the involvement of the American mafia in the gambling and hotel industry in Cuba during the Batista dictatorship.