New York-New York towers above the rest as new Strip standard-bearer

Best of the Rest

By John L. Smith
Review-Journal

"Passing through Las Vegas is Route 91, the archetype of the commercial strip, the phenomenon at its purist and most intense."
- From "Learning From Las Vegas," by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, 1972

     To truly learn from Las Vegas, you must begin to see the Strip for what it is. Not merely the greatest, gaudiest gambling center on Earth. Not just the highest concentration of hotel rooms anywhere. Not even the place where Elvis still lives.
     The Strip is an evolving museum of American pop architecture the likes of which the world has not seen since the construction of Venice. As if conjured by some supernatural big idea man, it rises from the desert sand and mixes fantasy and a sense of humor on a grand scale.
     "Without the Strip, Las Vegas is Phoenix or any other Southwestern city," Richard Beckman of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Architecture says. "The Strip is an entire phenomenon, extraordinarily successful and extraordinarily important. It is urban theater, that's what's going on there."
     Beckman marks the construction of Steve Wynn's The Mirage as a major historical jumping-off point and was wowed by Treasure Island's pirate battle. What followed was a multibillion-dollar game of Can You Top This?
     In the late 1990s, the awesomely overstated architecture of New York-New York is the standard by which all heavily themed resorts will be judged. It is by far the most outrageous statement on the most outrageous street in America.
     "I love New York-New York from the outside," UNLV architecture professor Dave Hickey says. "The inside doesn't work, but the outside is great. And not because it is a scale model of New York. It isn't. Because in a design sense, it is a great big version of a little teeny model of New York. It is one of the most interesting things architecturally I've ever seen. It's also witty.
     "The thing that I like about the Strip is, it's a live design environment. It's undergoing solutions to design problems at such an accelerated rate. It's a wonderful petri dish for looking at the way design works."
     On the Strip, architectural design is more than an individual artistic statement. It has a purpose: establishing an identity from the street. When it works it attracts throngs of tourists through intrigue or entertainment. It must be pedestrian friendly, for in a sense the Strip is a gargantuan mall. Then there is the sense of scale: Making a 3,000-room resort that is not an intimidating monolith is a matter of design, not chance.
     While the Strip is in its way the ultimate American road, it is not the only road in Las Vegas.
     "I guess I should say I'm rather less interested in individual buildings than in larger environments," UNLV assistant professor of architecture Keith Eggener says. "I'm more interested in studying and promoting and learning how to make larger environments work better."
     On a smaller scale, however, Eggener is intrigued by the environments created at the Enigma Cafe, The Beach, the Hard Rock Hotel, the Blue Diamond community and the interior of the Golden Steer restaurant.
     Then there are the historical images. For Keith Kemner, a designer with Tate and Snyder Architects, the aging motels of the Strip and downtown are underappreciated and show a marvelous imagination at work.
     "Everyone likes the Glass Pool Inn," he says. "To me, there's a kind of enthusiasm about architecture there."
     Add to that the huge fries-and-shake image at local McDonald's and the sensory overload of the WOW Store, and you have begun to see the rest of Las Vegas in a different way.
     For all the criticism Southern Nevada's new public libraries have received, most - but not all - the experts call the buildings themselves real achievements and successful additions to a Las Vegas that increasingly is showing a new Southwestern design sensibility.
     If there is a secret consensus of the most underappreciated piece of architecture on the Strip, it is the La Concha building. Made of thin-shell concrete construction, it is reminiscent of a '60s vision of Felix Candela, Eggener says.
     In the end, there is the Strip with all its overwhelming statements, all its roaring themes. One look at the architecture and 30 million visitors a year don't stand a chance.
     "Here you have architecture that's genuinely funny," Hickey says. "We're all in on the joke. It's not like nobody gets it. There is a joyful excess to it all. Nothing quite goes together, but that's Vegas."