Part of it is they were built to catch your eye from the highway to get you to pull in and stay. What was so innovative the designs of those hotels? He designed the hotel with its original dog legs and the 35-foot sign. McAllister was from Southern California and he came back in the 50s and was hired to design the Sands. He was the original architect of the Desert Inn but they wanted to go in a different direction and so they hired Hugh Taylor. Wayne McAllister designed the El Rancho Vegas. Then in 1940, Tommy Hall decided to build the El Rancho Vegas and that was the beginning of the Strip.Īs far as architecture, you say the style of the Strip was really down to two big influential architects during this time: The Pair a Dice Club and the Red Rooster and that was about it.
Not a lot was out along Highway 91, two nightclubs with restaurants. It was the main, then as now, way to get from Southern California to Las Vegas. How did Las Vegas change from when your book starts in 1930 to where it ends in 1955?īasically, in 1930, Highway 91, which is now Las Vegas Boulevard was a two-lane blacktop highway. She describes an era that, she says, “mainly exists in our collective memory.” In her new book, 'Gambling on a Dream: The Classic Las Vegas Strip, 1930-1955,' Lynn Zook writes about the allure of early Las Vegas.
