Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Architecture gems: Las Vegas is more than just cookie-cutter homes

Architecture

Mikayla Whitmore

The Flora Dungan Humanities building at UNLV.

Like any city, Las Vegas is defined by its landscape and history, growth and industry, pleasure pursuits and architecture that weave together the narrative.

But visible signs of the city’s heritage can be lost amid its progress, partly due to our well-documented practice of wiping out old buildings and replacing them with new ones.

When Las Vegas turned 100 in 2005, decades of rapid development, growth and spontaneous redesign had plowed over chapters of the city’s story, erasing context with every building that went down and sprawling subdivision that popped up across the natural landscape.

But in pockets well-known to preservationists, historians and some natives, the civic buildings, businesses, religious institutions and other structures past and present are visible and even championed. With so many sightseeing opportunities out there in mid-century modern neighborhoods, Downtown corridors and spectacular off-Strip designs, we spun the wheel and landed on gems, from old Las Vegas through today.

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Las Vegas Nevada Temple.

Las Vegas Nevada Temple

827 Temple View Drive

Completed in 1989

The Las Vegas Nevada Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sits at the far eastern edge of the city and at the base of Frenchman Mountain. Like a hilltop castle, the pristine and stunning building is sealed off to the public and offers no glimpse of its interiors from the lush grounds surrounding it. Its six white spires pierce the sky from the sloped copper rooftop. Its dramatic angles accentuate the contemporary and somewhat minimalist hexagonal structure placed in the lush 10.3-acre campus. Sidewalks lead visitors around the impeccable white walls of cast stone surrounding the more than 80,000-square-foot building. It was dedicated by former LDS church president Gordon B. Hinckley after a 23-day open house. The grounds, complete with a small pond in the courtyard, are open to the public during daytime. Designs, including renderings of the desert lily, are incorporated into the exterior and the tall arched doors. Narrow and stylized cut-glass windows allow light to stream inside. A statue of the Angel Moroni, believed by followers of the faith to have visited Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, faces east. Members raised $11 million for its construction.

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Guardian Angel Cathedral.

Guardian Angel Cathedral

336 Cathedral Way

Completed in 1963

Mass has just ended and tourists flow out of Guardian Angel Cathedral. Dressed in shorts and T-shirts and headed back to the Strip, they turn to photograph the façade of the dramatic A-frame church along Desert Inn Road just off Las Vegas Boulevard, focusing on the enormous Isabel Piczek mosaic covering its front.

Dwarfed by the nearby Wynn hotel, but as stunning as it was in its early years, the church has outlasted many of the swank casinos that stood next to it over the decades. That list includes the Desert Inn, whose owner, mob associate Moe Dalitz, donated the land for a Strip cathedral back in 1961 when graveyard workers were celebrating late-night Mass at the Stardust showroom. Los Angeles architect Paul Revere Williams was hired to design the one-story church, which seats over 1,000 people. An architect to the stars, and the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects, Williams had already designed the famous Googie-style La Concha hotel lobby that now serves as the entrance for the Neon Museum on Las Vegas Boulevard, as well as Berkley Square neighborhood in west Las Vegas. “The cathedral is an excellent example of his Modern design,” says architectural critic and historian Alan Hess, whose book “Viva Las Vegas: After-Hours Architecture” chronicles the evolving Las Vegas Strip. “Its simple, powerful form is appropriate for a church, pointing upward to heaven and including modern art in both the ceramic tile mural on its front, and the stained glass windows inside.”

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Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.

Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

880 W. Bonneville Ave.

Completed in 2010

When a town hall meeting for Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was broadcast from inside the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in February, it gave viewers a glimpse of the cascading walls and illuminated windows of the Frank Gehry-designed building.

The sloping, bending, metallic mammoth swoops and juts, ultimately relaxing into itself and into its environment, its windows flowing with it.

Owned by Keep Memory Alive — an organization co-founded by Larry Ruvo in memory of his father, Lou, who died of Alzheimer’s disease — the center for research and treatment of brain diseases looks like no other structure in town. The exterior’s 18,000 stainless steel shingles bend, point, curve and slope with 199 windows, each unique in shape and size, allowing for natural light. Its controversial aesthetic (a confusing structure for a facility that treats patients with Alzheimer’s disease, some argue) is a result of Gehry’s trademark style, and reflects the architect’s and Ruvo’s aim for a striking facility that would be distinctive and memorable enough to draw attention to the cause it serves.

The silver exterior of the 9,200-square-foot event center is an iconic, if not trademark, Gehry design. Its interior cascading white walls meet with red carpeting in a room showered in natural light in the daytime and glowing with LED programing in the evening, casting off red, magenta and lavender hues. The curving hallways of the clinic and other architectural elements were designed to create a sense of harmony with nature, replacing the traditional institutional feel. Critics have attacked it. Others have revered its spiritual quality.

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Victory Motel.

The Victory Hotel

307 S. Main St.

Completed about 1910

Reminiscent of ghost towns and old Western movie facades, the Victory Hotel is one of the oldest remaining buildings in Las Vegas and pops right out of the history books.

A Mission Revival-style structure, it was designed to accommodate travelers arriving from the train depot on Main and Fremont streets and, according to Courtney Mooney, historic preservation officer for the City of Las Vegas, was known for its rowdy clientele. Possibly, it was a brothel at one time.

The two-story concrete, stucco and wood structure was designed to allow for a cross breeze in a time before air-conditioning and features a balcony that provides ample shade to the sidewalk below.

After more than 100 years, it’s largely forgotten, crumbling near the old rail yard that’s now Symphony Park. Its chance to be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places was shot down due to lack of interest by its owners. Sitting unused since 2008, it’s become a building to merely pass by when en route somewhere else. A banner hanging out front announces container storefronts “Coming Soon,” but the city says nothing is scheduled

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Las Vegas Academy.

Las Vegas Academy of the Arts

315 S. Seventh St.

Completed in 1932

Anchoring Las Vegas’ oldest residential neighborhood is the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, an ornamental art deco behemoth in the heart of the city, orange-ish and brown, and trimmed with bands of flora and fauna reliefs.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Las Vegas High School Academic Building and Gymnasium, the two-story, concrete buildings were designed by Reno firm George A. Ferris and Son, and built in 1930 and 1931 during a population boom stemming from the construction of the Hoover Dam. The elder Ferris had designed the Nevada Governor’s Mansion in Carson City.

The high school sits within the Las Vegas High School Historic District, an area consisting of homes built between the late 1920s and early 1940s — a mix of Tudor revivals, and Spanish-style and Mission-style residential structures. Now a magnet school for the visual and performing arts, the school is celebrated for its august splendor and three-bay entrance pavilion, along with Aztec-inspired design motifs. Former superintendent Maude Frazier, known for developing the school district in what was then a small town, pushed for the high school. At the time, it was two blocks from the center of town.

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The Flora Dungan Humanities building at UNLV.

Flora Dungan Humanities Building

4505 S. Maryland Parkway

Completed in 1972

Some have called this the ugliest building in town, others the most prized. Blocky and lifted by pillars — as if on stilts — this gold-and-white concrete structure is the tallest at seven stories on UNLV’s campus. It’s revered by midcentury modern enthusiasts for, among other things, its interior concrete arches, curved columns, open floor plan and clerestory windows.

Designed by modernist architectural firm Walter Zick & Harris Sharp, its exterior concrete pillars flow into the building’s atrium, carrying the theme throughout the open space lined with balconies.

The exterior walls extend far beyond the concrete pillars at its base, adding to its visual heft, and its gridlike pattern is bookended on each side with white convex concrete corners.

The building has been featured on architectural bus tours, panels and websites, but criticized for its overbearing presence, crowded offices and classrooms and well as narrow hallways and out-of-date elevators. In addition to classrooms, it’s home to administrative offices, including those of the president and provost, lecture halls and auditoriums.

Zick & Sharp is celebrated for its imprint on Las Vegas in one of the city’s most notable architectural eras, and is responsible for banks, schools and civic buildings around Las Vegas. The firm also designed the Mint Hotel, the Union Plaza and the beloved Bank of America at Charleston and Decatur boulevards.

Calling the Flora Dungan Humanities Building a “beautiful mix of late midcentury modern style whipped up with late International and Brutalist influences,” Mary-Margaret Stratton, preservation advocate for midcentury modern architecture and former executive director for Atomic Age Alliance, says it’s “the jewel in the crown work” of Zick & Sharp.

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Past meets present: Yesterday's buildings altered for today

Building Structures in Las Vegas

Speedee Cash, 1500 E Charleston Blvd, Las Vegas, NV 89104. Launch slideshow »

An abundance of the futuristic-looking Googie architecture still stands in older corridors around the valley, heralding mid century styles. Much like former chain restaurant buildings (designed to brand the original businesses), they’ve taken on the personas of the current businesses inside while unavoidably staying true to their original form. Sloping roof lines, folded-plate roof lines, space age architecture and hipped-roofs — all with overhanging eaves and some time of aesthetic drama — showcase styles that lived before the uniform stucco-style strip mall dominated the look of the look of the landscape.

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