LAS VEGAS -- Even surrounded by wreckage and
sitting alongside an eyesore of a strip mall, the clamshell-shaped
lobby of the old La Concha Motel turns heads.
Its distinctive, swooping style, similar to the famed terminal
at Los Angeles International Airport that also was designed
by pioneering architect Paul Revere Williams, evokes the mid-20th
Century glamor of the Las Vegas Strip when Frank, Dino and Sammy
roamed and crooned. This was, after all, where the owner's 3-year-old
son was taught to spar back in the 1960s by none other than
Muhammad Ali.
What's even more unusual for this young and ephemeral city,
known for making flashy spectacles out of imploding old, iconic
structures to make way for new ones, is that there's a serious
effort under way to save the 45-year-old lobby from the wrecking
ball.
The motel at the Strip's northern end, which has decayed in
recent decades with the advent of megaresorts a few miles down
the block, was demolished in 2003. The owners of the 5.5-acre
parcel plan to put a 60-story hotel-condo complex called the
Majestic Resort and Residences there by late next year or early
2007.
Before that happens, though, there's hope about $500,000 can
be raised to slice the building in seven pieces, drive it 2
miles north, and patch it back together as a 1,200-square-foot
visitors center for a collection of old Strip signs called the
Neon Museum. The museum already has hundreds of signs but they
are in junk-yard-style pens and are open only for tours by appointment.
Fundraising began in earnest this month with a $4,000 grant
from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to hire structural
engineer Melvin Green to study moving the lobby.
"This would be a perfect adaptive reuse of the building because
it fits the museum's era and purpose," said Andy Kirk, a history
professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and director
of Preserve Nevada, a non-profit group that works to save old
structures statewide.
"This really is a decisive moment for Las Vegas in preservation
because there just isn't that much left," he said. "The La Concha
is really it on the Strip. This is the moment when the community
needs to decide if there's any aspect of its heritage worth
saving."
The Doumani family, owners of the property since 1959 and
longtime Vegas hoteliers who also built the Tropicana Hotel
and Casino, is so eager to see the lobby saved that the family
has slowed the construction schedule of its high-rise to give
the Neon Museum time to move the lobby. The Doumanis even tried
to fit the structure into their new plans, but the kitschy look
didn't fit well amid the $1 million-per-condo-complex to rise
there, they said.
Still, even if the money is raised, Green warned the move
is so technically complex that it's unclear it would succeed.
The 30-foot-tall building must be cut up so its pieces can be
laid on their sides to fit under freeway overpasses along the
route to the Neon Museum's site.
Green said he wishes he could ask Williams for advice. But
Williams, who died in 1980, left behind no blueprints that could
help.
So, Green must rely on high-tech radar gadgets and guesswork
to predict what will happen when the dissection occurs.
"I would hazard to say this is a unique project in the United
States," said Green. "If there are examples of moving a structure
like this, there can't be many."
Fred Doumani Jr. said the family will do what it can to help
and hasn't put a deadline on when the lobby must be moved. Kirk,
the professor, said the Doumanis' cooperative posture is unusual
compared with prior efforts to save pieces of defunct Vegas
hotels.
Doumani's grandfather, uncle and father built La Concha--
Spanish for "the shell"--and went on to be major figures in
Las Vegas. The motel appeared in numerous Hollywood films including
"Mars Attacks!" and "Casino."
Neon Museum President Barbara Molasky is hopeful as she starts
the fundraising effort. She noted that 100-year-old Las Vegas
has only recently begun to appreciate the importance of its
history.
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Paul Revere Williams
Architect Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles in
1894. The only black pupil in his elementary school, he went
on to study art and design and, eventually, enrolled as an architectural
engineering student at the University of Southern California.
Licensed as an architect in 1921, he joined the Southern California
chapter of the American Institute of Architects two years later
as its first African-American member. Williams designed more
than 2,000 homes, many of them for celebrities such as Frank
Sinatra, Lon Chaney Sr. and Lucille Ball. He also designed or
contributed to noted public buildings.
He won an AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building
in Beverly Hills in 1939. In all, he designed about 3,000 projects
before retiring in 1973. He died in 1980.
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