Encore Las Vegas

This guide to Encore Las Vegas opens on the night of December 22, 2008, three months after Lehman Brothers collapsed, when Steve Wynn opened a two-point-three-billion-dollar tower and dared the city to keep gambling. You'll hear how he cut room rates, added dining credits, and pulled in over ten thousand reservations in a single day to fill it. It traces designer Roger Thomas's own obsession folded into the building's woodwork and glass, and why the elevator buttons skip every floor numbered four or thirteen.