Whole-hog cottage industry

By Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Normally if someone builds a gypsy wagon in his yard, outfits it with electricity, gas and plumbing, adds a titanium stove, a minibathroom and a grandfather clock, neighbors might raise a brow or two.

Some would hit the speed dial to their homeowners association.

But it’s a matter of context.

At the Clark Cottages on North Seventh Street in downtown Las Vegas, the gypsy wagon blends in well with the Victorian streetlamps, the water fountains, the wind chimes and the 1940s music coming from one of the five bungalows.

It’s as unquestioned as the water-damaged antique organ, which is a stone’s throw from the vintage-looking pool and within earshot of the bird-song CD that helps drown out traffic noises from U.S. 95 looming above.

The oddity isn’t the gypsy cart at Clark Cottages. The oddity is that the cottages still stand.

Built in 1929, the bungalows were spider-webbed, boarded-up, rundown shacks with questionable tenants and junk piled inside when Joe Clark and his brother, Will, happened across them 14 years ago.

They learned of the property from a dancer in the Siegfried & Roy show (where Joe Clark worked until it ended) who was moonlighting as a real estate agent.

The brothers, who grew up on a farm in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, had wanted to live together, just not in the same house. The idea of living in and restoring vintage homes fit their interests.

Both are advocates of saving downtown’s old homes.

“We just want to show that there are other options ... living in Las Vegas,” says Joe Clark, 43, a props technician at “Le Reve.”

He and Will, 47, who has an architecture degree and works as a facility shift manager at the Mirage, began restoring the 300- to 500-square-foot homes while living in them, something Joe Clark equates with “building a ship in a bottle while living in the bottle.”

They saved what they could of the homes, each with a front porch and shutters, and gutted the rest. They replaced the old motel-style doors with French doors.

“We did not want to change the integrity of the property. We wanted to maintain the vintage charm,” Joe Clark says. “But we also didn’t want to live in a museum.”

The dreamy village in a sketchy neighborhood is now a little bit Hearst Castle and a little bit Mayberry, and serves as an example of what can be saved downtown.

It’s the type of reuse that Veronika Holmes-Litvak, owner of Gypsy Caravan Antiques, would like to see more often.

Like the Clarks, she is a strong advocate of restoring old Las Vegas homes. About seven years ago she and her husband bought 10 railroad cottages on the south side of Colorado Avenue between Third Street and Casino Center Boulevard. They turned them into businesses and give tours of the cottages to schoolchildren.

“There is a neat history in this town if we could just quit tearing it down,” she says. “There are so many nooks and crannies that people don’t pay attention to.”

Other downtown areas that have made similar efforts have been successful. Joe Clark praises the area of Seventh and Eight streets near Charleston Boulevard where the old homes were turned into businesses.

The neighborhood the Clarks are in, however, isn’t as quaint. But that could change. They’ve purchased the house next to the cottages for their parents. Holmes-Litvak owns the house across the street and has plans for creating a charming continuum between South and North Seventh streets.

The brothers commit to their project from 10 a.m. to noon daily. Will Clark’s house is the size of a two-car garage. He has a sunbaked tile floor, a fireplace mantel from an old movie theater in Seattle and a vast assortment of collectibles purchased on family vacations.

Joe Clark’s home is decorated with antiques. He removed two layers of carpet and a layer of linoleum in his home before he could refinish the original pine floor.

While removing his kitchen floor he found a postcard from 1957 from a woman who had just taken a job as a cocktail waitress at the Mint and found a “great little house on Seventh Street.” She wrote that she was putting shelf paper in her cabinets.

Tenants are anyone who is of like mind and can see “past the ZIP code and the freeway,” such as Rick Martinez, a designer, and Tim Miano, who is in charge of wardrobe at “Love.”

“Its a nice haven,” says Miano, a resident of Clark Cottages. “Once you get off the Strip, the highway, once you open the gate, it’s tranquil, restful, peaceful.”

The potted plants, fountains, rock gardens, nut and fruit trees, benches and gazebo with chiminea and ceiling fan help create the ambiance.

The gated community at Clark Cottages is close. Tenants, most of whom are in entertainment, pitch in and help with the projects. When they are home during the day, they leave their front doors open so their dogs can run in and out of each home.

The Clarks have salvaged items from downtown buildings that were set for demolition. The gate surrounding the pool, which is still under construction, was rescued from a motel pool on the Strip. The drawers that were installed in the walls of the loft in Joe Clark’s cottage came from hotel rooms. The bricks that were laid for the patio came from the chimneys in the cottages.

Standing under a craggy old elm tree that shades the entrance to the cottages, Joe Clark sighs. “When the music plays it’s like somewhere between living on a movie set or being in a time machine.”

For now, the pool is the talk of the compound.

But everyone is patient, knowing that like everything else at Clark Cottages, it’s a matter of time.

Clark Cottages is all about time.

When asked what he loves most about the cottages, Joe Clark says, “The way that the light comes in. There is a sleepy quality that I love. I love the fact that so many people have passed through here, that so many people plunked keys down on my kitchen counter back when it was their kitchen counter and made coffee in the morning.”