Architecture of Las Vegas

Interest in the architecture of Las Vegas began in the late 1960s, when in 1967 architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown traveled to the city accompanied by students in order to study its architecture.^[1]^[2] They wrote, with Steven Izenour, a report in 1972 on the subject entitled Learning From Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.^[1]^[3] This report, and its thesis that Las Vegas showed the way for architecture in the late 20th century, drew the attention of the architectural world to the city.^[1]^[3]^[4] A quarter of a century later, for a BBC program (a segment of The Late Show entitled "Virtually Las Vegas" broadcast on BBC Two on 1995-01-16) Venturi and Scott Brown revisited the city, and revised their opinions.^[5]

Initial thesis

In the 1970s, Venturi et al. observed that the city had then been structured around the automotive culture that was dominant at the time, with all of the buildings oriented towards the highway.^[3] It was the norm for buildings to have "rhetorical front and conventional behind", in other words a decorated façade visible from the highway but a less decorative aspect where not visible.^[3] The casinos and motels also sported ground-level parking at the front, between the building and the highway, a feature that Venturi considered to be distinctive.^[3] They also drew a contrast between the artificially lit and air conditioned interiors of the buildings and the heat and glare of the "agoraphobic auto-scaled desert"^[6] outside.^[3] The mixture of styles, ranging from what they termed "Miami Moroccan" to "Yamasaki Bernini cum Roman Orgiastic",^[7] they did not view as chaotic but rather as a necessary result of Las Vegas as one of what they termed "the world's 'pleasure zones'" alongside the likes of Marienbad, the Alhambra, Disneyland, and Xanadu and its positioning as a place where a visitor with an ordinary life could indulge in escapist notions of being "a centurion at Caesar's Palace, a ranger at The Frontier, or a jetsetter at the Riviera"^[8] for a few days.^[9]

1990s revision

In the 1990s, Venturi and Scott Brown observed that the automotive-driven architecture of the 1960s had been transformed into a more pedestrianized form, in part as a result of the growth in visitors that it had experienced over the years.^[5] The distinctive neon lighting, that in the 1960s had had Venturi et al. talking of Vegas as a city of signs, had been replaced by giant television screens, which Venturi bemoaned.^[5]^[10] In their original book, and in the later 1977 revised edition, they had focussed upon characterizing Vegas in terms of how most if not all built objects in the (then) city in one way or another functioned as signage.^[10] In the 1990s, Mark C. Taylor opined that the similarities between Disney and Las Vegas that Venturi et al. had touched upon in the 1970s had grown immensely over the years, with much of the urban space being thematized and devoted to fantasies upon fantasies and "worlds within worlds".^[11] He observed that this architectural link to Disney had even been made concrete, with the MGM Grand Hotel directly mimicking (albeit with some differences) the original Walt Disney World.^[11]

Taylor also observed the replacement of neon with the televisual, to create a vast visual space in which "the virtual becomes real and the real becomes virtual".^[12] As an example of this he propounded new Fremont Street, where "city planners have converted the train terminal that was inspired by the glass architecture of Parisian arcades, into a computer terminal", with a 1,500 feet (460 m) canopy comprising 1.4 million computer-controlled lights and lasers.^[12]

Notable works

1900s

SP, LA & SL Railroad station – 1905 [demolished 1939]
First State Bank – 1906, 100 Fremont Street [demolished 1957]
Christ Church Episcopal – 1908, 129 S. 2nd Street [demolished 1954]
SP, LA & SL Railroad cottages – 1909 [32 built, some preserved]

1910s

Clark County Courthouse – 1914, Frederic DeLongchamps [demolished 1957]

1920s

El Portal Theatre – 1928, Charles Alexander MacNelledge, 310 Fremont Street
Las Vegas High School – 1929, George A. Ferris & Son, 315 S. 7th Street

1930s

Las Vegas Post Office and Courthouse – 1931, 300 E. Stewart Avenue
Hotel Apache – 1932, A. Lacy Worswick, 109 S. 2nd Street
Las Vegas Grammar School – 1936, Orville L. Clark, 401 S. Las Vegas Boulevard
War Memorial Building – 1936, Works Progress Administration, 400 Stewart Avenue [demolished 1971]
Union Pacific station – 1939, Henry L. Gogerty [demolished 1970]
St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church – 1939, 315 S. Casino Center Blvd

1940s

El Rancho Vegas – 1941, Wayne McAllister [burned down 1960]
Sears, Roebuck & Co. store – 1941, 601 Fremont Street
Hotel Last Frontier – 1942, William J. Moore [demolished 1964]
Huntridge Theater – 1944, S. Charles Lee, 1208 E. Charleston Boulevard
Hotel Flamingo – 1946, Richard Stadelman [demolished]
Fremont Theatre – 1947, Douglas Burton, 202 Fremont Street [demolished]
F. W. Woolworth store – 1948, 420 Fremont Street [demolished 1999]

1950s

Desert Inn – 1950, Hugh E. Taylor [demolished]
Friedman Building – 1950, Aloysius MacDonald, 300 Fremont Street
Simon Building – 1951, A. Lacy Worswick and Elmo C. Bruner, 220 Fremont Street [demolished]
J. C. Penney store – 1951, 520 Fremont Street
Sahara Hotel – 1952, Max Maltzman
Las Vegas High School Auditorium – 1952, Claud Beelman & Associates, 955 E. Clark Avenue
Las Vegas Public Library – 1952, Vernon Welborn, 400 E. Mesquite Avenue
Sands Hotel – 1952, Wayne McAllister [demolished]
Las Vegas Park grandstand – 1953, Paul R. Williams [demolished 1965]
Royal Nevada – 1954, Paul R. Williams and John Replogle [demolished 2007]
Riviera Hotel – 1954, Roy F. France & Son [demolished 2016]
New Frontier – 1955, Albert Criz [demolished 1964]
Fremont Hotel – 1955, Wayne McAllister, 200 Fremont Street
The Hacienda – 1955, Homer Rissman [demolished 1996]
The Dunes – 1955, John Replogle and Robert Dorr Jr. [demolished 1994]
Clark County Courthouse – 1956, Welton Becket & Associates, 200 S. 3rd Street [demolished 2014]
The Tropicana – 1957, M. Tony Sherman [demolished 2024]
The Mint – 1957, Zick & Sharp, 100 Fremont Street [demolished]
Las Vegas Convention Center – 1959, Adrian J. Wilson [demolished 1990]
Southern Nevada Telephone Building – 1957, 125 S. Las Vegas Boulevard
Nevada State Bank – 1959, Ira C. Marshak, 201 S. 4th Street [demolished 2010]

1960s

McCarran International Airport Terminal – 1960, Welton Becket & Associates
La Concha Motel – 1961, Paul R. Williams
Landmark – 1961, Gerald Moffitt and Edward Hendricks, 364 Convention Center Drive [demolished 1995]
Frontier Fidelity Savings & Loan Association – 1962, Hagman & Meyer, 801 E. Charleston Boulevard
Guardian Angel Cathedral – 1963, Paul R. Williams, 302 Cathedral Way
Sands Hotel (reconstruction) – 1964, Martin Stern Jr. [demolished 1996]
The Mint (tower addition) – 1964, Martin Stern Jr.
The Dunes (tower addition) – 1964, Milton M. Schwartz [demolished 1994]
Foley Federal Building – 1964, Zick & Sharp, 300 S. Las Vegas Boulevard
First National Bank Building – 1964, Zick & Sharp, 302 E. Carson Avenue
Caesars Palace – 1965, Melvin Grossman
Bank of Nevada Building – 1965, Kent Attridge & Associates, 225 Bridger Avenue
Las Vegas Cinerama – 1965, Perry Neuschatz, 3900 Paradise Road [demolished 1984]
The Frontier – 1966, Rissman & Rissman [demolished 2007]
Las Vegas Country Club clubhouse – 1967, Julius Gabrielle
International Hotel – 1968, Martin Stern Jr.

1970s

Nevada National Bank – 1970, Edward Hendricks, 233 S. 4th Street
Union Plaza Hotel – 1970, Zick & Sharp
MGM Grand – 1972, Martin Stern Jr.
Valley Bank Plaza – 1973, Albert C. Martin & Associates, 300 S. 4th Street
Las Vegas City Hall – 1973, Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, 400 Stewart Avenue
Nevada Savings & Loan – 1974, Zick & Sharp, 201 S. Las Vegas Boulevard
Flamingo Hilton (tower addition) – 1975, Rissman & Rissman

References

Cross-reference

^ ^a ^b ^c Jaschke & Ötsch 2003, p. 7.
^ Hoeveler 2004, p. 89.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f McGuigan 2006, p. 22.
^ Hoeveler 2004, p. 91.
^ ^a ^b ^c McGuigan 2006, p. 23.
^ Venturi, Scott Brown & Izenour 1977, p. 49.
^ Venturi, Scott Brown & Izenour 1977, p. 80.
^ Venturi, Scott Brown & Izenour 1977, p. 53.
^ McGuigan 2006, pp. 22–23.
^ ^a ^b Stierli 2013, p. 282.
^ ^a ^b Taylor 1998, p. 200.
^ ^a ^b Taylor 1998, p. 202.

Sources used

Jaschke, Karin; Ötsch, Silke, eds. (2003). Stripping Las Vegas: A Contextual Review of Casino Resort Architecture. El verso. Vol. 7. Verl.d. Bauhaus-Universität. ISBN 9783860681923.
Hoeveler, J. David Jr. (2004). The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742533936.
McGuigan, Jim (2006). Modernity And Postmodern Culture. Issues in cultural and media studies. McGraw-Hill Education. ISBN 9780335219216.
Stierli, Martino (2013). Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror: The City in Theory, Photography, and Film. Getty Publications. ISBN 9781606061374.
Taylor, Mark C. (1998). "Stripping Architecture". In Beckmann, John (ed.). The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781568981208.
Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven (1977). Learning from Las Vegas Revised Edition. MIT University Press. ISBN 9780262720069.

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