The forerunner of this gleaming black glass-and-metal-clad 740-room hotel and casino—the largest on the lake—was a log cabin erected in 1944 by Harvey Gross as the south shore's first casino. The success of this venture after World War II coincided with increasing residential and commercial development around the lake. The casino gained notoriety in 1980, when an extortionist detonated a bomb that extensively damaged the hotel. Stern Architectural Associates of Beverly Hills, California, redesigned the complex, adding the seventeen-story Lake Tower. Martin Stern, Jr., firm princepal, designed numerous hotels throughout Nevada but specialized in high-rise hotel-casinos. Metal-clad surfaces and reflective glass combined in boxy towers are typical of Stateline casinos, and Harvey's is no exception. Stern's use of zigzag angles for the hotel room windows in the Lake Tower takes advantage of the views and is similar to the motif he employed in the Riverside Hotel and Casino (1982–1983) in Laughlin, Nevada.