Originally a premier jazz club that attracted top talent, including Count Basie, Club 26 jumped on the 1950s drag craze big time. "Oh boy, what a floor show!" screamed an advertisement.

Famously, the Brazilian Sensation Billie Herrero played her last show at Club 26 on New Year's Eve 1953. Despite being one of the world's first true international drag stars for two decades, Billie would never work in drag again.

Club 26 suddenly closed in 1962. It became Villa Venice, a high-end Italian club named after the infamous Chicagoland trattoria operated by known Mafia boss Sam Giacana. Frank Sinatra and the Brat Pack performed sold-out shows at the Chicago Villa Venice for a full week in 1962. Villa Venice was the well-known front for a highly profitable (and highly illegal) casino operation.

As usual, the Balistrieri crime family saw a formula and tried to replicate it in Milwaukee. It's not clear how they acquired Club 26, but the rebranding was a deliberate choice. They wanted to tap into Giacana's reputation, so customers might associate the two (totally unconnected and vastly different) properties. "Villa Venice" might have worked in the affluent north suburbs of Chicago, but it was a hard sell to get customers out to 26th and North Ave. in 1962.

And the Feds were definitely on to the Balistrieris. In 1963, the FBI raided Villa Venice (and related properties in the Roosevelt Hotel on 4th & Wells) and seized evidence. What were they looking for-- and why Villa Venice? No charges were filed; perhaps this was pure reconnaissance. But the message was clear: the FBI was watching and waiting.

The Balistrieris moved on to the Ad Lib nightclub (323 W Wells.) in June 1966. In 1967, the Chicagoland Villa Venice mysteriously burnt to the ground. Milwaukee's Villa Venice location had already closed, and the vacant building was badly damaged in the race riots that July.

Over time, the Ad Lib repeated the same profit formula the Balistrieris tested at Club 26: start with high-end jazz, but eventually shift to exotic dancers, and finally low-cost female impersonators. By 1969, all but of one the Ad Lib girls were actually men in drag.

Incredibly, the Club 26 building still stands today at 2601 W. North Avenue. If those walls could talk!