Stefan Al - The strip: Las Vegas and the architecture of the american dream

The Strip

The Strip

Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream

Stefan Al

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Minion and Univers by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-0-262-03574-3

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

This book began on Thanksgiving of 2005, my first visit to Las Vegas, as a paper for Ananya Roys class. Thanks to her and my chair Nezar AlSayyad, as well as committee members Michael Southworth and Greig Crysler, it became a dissertation. Ultimately, with great thanks to Roger Conover and the MIT Press, including copy editor Gillian Beaumont, it turned into this publication.

In Las Vegas, I owe the ever-helpful Su Kim Chung and Delores Brownlee from UNLV Special Collections, David G. Schwartz of the Center for Gaming Research, Dennis McBride of the Nevada State Museum, and Lebene Aidam-Ohene of Clark County Planning. At the University of Pennsylvania, I am deeply indebted to Marilyn Jordan Taylor, Eugenie Birch, John Landis, Tom Daniels, Erick Guerra, Francesca Ammon, David Brownlee, and especially to William Whitaker, curator of the Architectural Archives. I would like to extend my appreciation to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania for providing a subvention to print in color. Venturi and Scott Browns Learning from Las Vegas, Alan Hesss Viva Las Vegas, and Charles Barnards The Magic Sign were an inspiration, as well as the Vegas analyses of journalists and critics such as Paul Goldberger. I thank the Las Vegas News Bureau photographers for their sensational photos, and the resorts for allowing me to use their images.

Many have sifted through the manuscript. I benefited from my academic peers including Jennifer Day, Sophie Sturup, William Riggs, and with a special mention of Pietro Calogero. My creative writing group, spearheaded by wordsmith Sue Hollister Barr, comprised Steven Tate, Katie McElhenney, Mike Reilly, Amaya Swanson, Haisi Hu, Tom Piccolo, and Diya Gangopadhyay. Cathryne Lonahata, Duane DeWitt, and Jenya Godina generously read and edited chapters.

Finally, I thank Rebecca Jin, Vera Al, and Janneke van Kuijzen, for their love and support.

Figure Credits

Figure Credits

Figure Credits

Adam Nowek, authors private collection (5.6, 6.7)

Authors private collection (3.4)

Barbara Kraft, Wynn Resorts (7.2)

Charles Barnard private collection (3.11)

Las Vegas News Bureau (1.5, 2.3, 2.4, 2.7, 2.9, 2.11, 2.14, 3.15, 3.16, 3.18, 3.21, 5.2, 5.9, 5.11, 5.12, 6.4, 6.8, 6.10, 7.6, 7.7)

MGM Resorts (7.3, 7.5)

Ned Paynter Collection/FSDA (4.7)

Neon Museum, Charles Barnard Collection (3.20, 4.6)

Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas (1.6, 1.7, 2.5, 2.6, 2.10)

Raymond Winters, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (1.1)

UNLV Special Collections (1.3, 1.4, 2.1, 2.8, 2.13, 3.6, 3.7, 3.17, 4.5, 5.1, 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.8, 6.2, 6.3, 6.8, 6.9)

UNLV Special Collections, Bill Willard Collection (4.8)

UNLV Special Collections, Homer A. Rissman Collection (4.2)

UNLV Special Collections, Manis Collection (1.2, 1.8, 2.2, 3.1)

UNLV Special Collections, Martin Stern, Jr. Collection (3.10, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, 4.9)

UNLV Special Collections, Union Pacific Railroad Photo Collection (2.12)

UNLV Special Collections, YESCO Collection (3.2, 3.3)

Venturi, Scott Brown Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania (3.8, 3.9, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14)

Introduction

Las Vegas as America

Introduction: Las Vegas as America

Las Vegas exists because it is a perfect reflection of America. It represents all the things people in every city in America like. Here they can get it in one gulp.

Steve Wynn, casino tycoon

Conventional wisdom holds that Las Vegas is deviant and the Strip a display of architectural freaks. But a closer look shows that the city is more representative of American architectural trends than we would like to admit. Since its beginning, Vegas developers have surfed waves of social, cultural and economic change to build casinos so compelling that they actually drew vacationers to the Mojave Desert. From exploiting Disneyland to the atom bomb to the sexual revolution to green building, the Strip mirrored America as a whole.

Las Vegas was a ghost town a century ago, but forty-two million people visited the desert city in 2015ten million more than Paris. Today, Vegas is more influential than ever as a model for urban development. Macau reclaimed hundreds of acres of the South China Sea, only to build a Las Vegas-style Strip. Even Singapore, a nation known for outlawing chewing gum, built its new flagship business district around a Las Vegas-style casino. In 2007, the Brand Ranking survey saw Las Vegas rise to Americas number two brand, behind only Google.

Yet architects have largely refused to take the city seriouslyeven though the time it was taken seriously, it had a major impact on the profession. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Browns seminal Learning from Las Vegas helped overthrow modernism, an architectural style that for decades reigned supreme, and invent postmodernism, which would influence architects worldwide.

This book tells the two parallel stories behind Las Vegass evolution. The first narrates how Las Vegas developers continuously worked to improve the so-called consumer Mousetrap. The protagonists include an eclectic cast of all-American characters: Bugsy Siegel, the founder of Murder Inc., whose obsession over his lavish casino cost him millions and drove him to death; American billionaire Howard Hughes, who masterminded a string of casino takeovers while holed up in the same hotel room for years; and business magnate Sheldon Adelson, who painstakingly reproduced Venice in the desert, but with monuments of gilded Styrofoam instead of stone.

The second thread positions Las Vegas at the forefront of broader societal trends: before the first astronaut headed into space, a Las Vegas casino incorporated a two-ton planet into its faade, then surrounded it with a sputnik. But the city also magnifies trends. When the Disney Corporation became the worlds largest entertainment conglomerate, Steve Wynn opened the Mirage with an erupting volcano, and his competitor Bill Bennett promptly responded with a thirty-story toy castle, complete with a fire-spitting dragon. Wynn followed with a pirate village and scorching frigates; Bennett with a hollow pyramid and a ten-story laser-eyed Sphinx. Casino mogul Kirk Kerkorian entered the game with a lion built across from the Sphinx, with Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man walking beneath its chin.

The city is so attuned to change that perfectly sound buildings have been regularly torn down to make room for new structures. The ten-story lion was demolished after only three years, and Dorothy and the Tin Man were sent down the gray asphalt road of the Strip. Not lingering in nostalgia, developers would destroy their previous creations for the next new thing, earning Las Vegas the title Implosion Capital of the World.