Candlelight Wedding Chapel restored!

The Candlelight Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip

From the Las Vegas Sun:

It survived a tricky journey across town, required more than $250,000 in renovation, including a new steeple, scavenged furnishings and electrical rewiring.

But when you’re a 1966 wedding chapel — old by Las Vegas standards — and you have a few stories to tell, somebody’s bound to love you.

That’s pretty much how it unfolded for the Candlelight Wedding Chapel, a quaint, free-standing churchlike structure with steep roof lines that sat four decades on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Originally Little Church of the West Algiers and then All Religions Wedding Chapel, it was the first chapel with an 800 number and limo service. It married so many couples daily that a side door was installed to usher out fresh newlyweds so they wouldn’t bump into wedding parties making their formal procession down the aisle.

When its land was sold to the Fontainebleau project, the chapel sat empty until its former operator, Gordon Gust, scooped it up and gave it to the Clark County Museum.

On Saturday the chapel officially becomes a new exhibit on the museum’s Heritage Street and opens to the public with a party, complete with live music, wedding cake and photo ops for couples who were married at the chapel.

“It’s one of those things you don’t think of as history, but it’s important here,” says Mark Hall-Patton, administrator of the Clark County Museum. “Five percent of all marriages in the United States are held in Clark County. That’s one out of 20 marriages.”

Grants from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors’ Authority and the Nevada Cultural Affairs Commission paid for the renovation, a project of the county’s 2009 Centennial celebration.

It arrived at the museum in 2007. Renovation began in May.

The Candlelight Wedding Chapel when it arrived at the Clark County Museum

The chapel is decorated to its latest incarnation (white), rather than its previous red exterior, paneled walls and red carpet. Its original pews and organ are gone and replaced with a piano and benches rescued from the county courthouse, resized and refinished.

Its large neon sign, which was added later, is across town at the Neon Museum.

Hall-Patton says museum staff had its eyes on the chapel for 10 years, identifying it as a building the museum would like to own if it ever became available. The museum is home to Heritage Street, a tree-lined gravel road hidden from Boulder Highway and flanked with rescued historic homes, a railroad depot and a print shop.

Visitors can sit on the wooden rocking chairs on the porch of the Beckley House and tour homes, each decked out to its era, each with its own nooks and crannies. They’re adorned at Christmastime and welcome trick-or-treaters on Halloween. (For Saturday’s party, the Clark County Museum Guild will serve cookies, with recipes specific to each home’s era.)

The railroad depot, taken to the site in 1976, was the first building to arrive. The oldest home is a railroad cottage (circa 1911-1914) awaiting renovation.

The chapel, inspired in design by the Little Church of the West, is its youngest structure. Celebrities married there include Bette Midler, Michael Caine, Whoopi Goldberg and Barry White.

“When we look at a building, we look at it from a standpoint that we could use it to best teach that part of our history,” he says. “In 1931 Nevada liberated both divorces and weddings. Reno got divorces. We became the wedding capital.”

Candlelight Wedding Chapel being restored

Special thanks to Joel Rosales at leavinglv.net and Allen Sandquist for letting us these images.

More Las Vegas Memories

YouTube is a treasure trove of Classic Las Vegas home movie footage.  Take a walk down memory lane with some of these great YouTube videos:

From Ray Lindstrom, 1956 Las Vegas Strip

From Elmer Gerlock, 1957 Las Vegas Strip and Fremont Street.  Love the shot of the Golden Nugget neon billboard.

From yooreds, Las Vegas Strip circa 1976

City of Las Vegas relights some favorite neon signs

The City of Las Vegas, working with the Neon Museum, has installed three neon signs from the Neon Boneyard.  Better yet, on Monday evening, the City held a relighting ceremony as the Bow and Arrow Motel, the Horseshoe "H" and the beloved Silver Slipper were turned back on.

From the Las Vegas Sun:

At first glance, drivers might wonder if there's a giant ladies' footwear sale going on near Cashman Stadium.

But no. That giant sparkling high-heeled shoe perched near the tops of the palm trees along Las Vegas Boulevard North is actually a step back into the city's neon past.

Shimmering with some 980 twinkling lights, the shoe was originally the whimsical icon of the Silver Slipper Gambling Hall that had its heyday nearly a half century ago.

But now the restored 12-by-17-foot three-dimensional shoe is a symbol of the city's commitment to step up to honor its colorful historical main drag.

The Silver Slipper, which also glitters with stories about billionaire recluse Howard Hughes and even "Mr. Las Vegas" Wayne Newton, was one of three historic neon signs turned on at dusk Monday along Las Vegas Boulevard.

With a countdown led by Mayor Oscar Goodman, the three signs were lighted during a ceremony at the Reed Whipple Cultural Center.

"It was 90 years ago, in 1929, that we had the first neon here in Las Vegas turned on," Goodman said. "... We have a unique city, with a unique art form. We preserved it and we're going to continue to preserve it."

The three signs, on loan from the Neon Museum, were lit to celebrate the designation of Las Vegas Boulevard as a National Scenic Byway from Washington Avenue to the north to Sahara Avenue to the south.

"Specifically, in an economy where things are going down, ladies and gentlemen, we continue to bring lights up in the entertainment capital of the world," said Ward 5 Councilman Ricki Barlow.

The designation, granted in October, will help the city to get federal funds to restore as many as 20 historic neon signs in the median in that corridor, Goodman said.

"The city council has made a decision that we're not going to implode our history. We're going to preserve our history," Goodman said.

"That's why we have the Neon Museum across the street, the Neon Boneyard. And now we're beginning to exhibit these things that make us really distinct from any other city. It's a lot of fun, number one. And number two, it has great significance because this is what we're all about. This is where we came from."

He said the city will use Las Vegas Boulevard's new scenic byway as a canvas for painting the city's history with its local art form, neon signs.

"This is our history," he said. "We're unique here in Las Vegas. ... No other place has the kind of art form that we have. I think it's very important when people go up and down this particular road that they're able to share our history with us and enjoy these very iconic locations."

Among dignitaries attending the ceremony was U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who remembered one of the first things she saw upon coming to Las Vegas as a child were the glittering signs.

"I remember through 12-year-old eyes, driving down the Strip for the first time and seeing this extraordinary street with this magnificent neon," she said. "I remember thinking when I was 12 years old this is the most remarkable street I have ever seen. Forty-seven years later I drive down the same street, I have the same reaction and it takes my breath away."

A cultural corridor

City Manager Betsy Fretwell said the highest concentration of cultural institutions in Las Vegas was in the vicinity of the signs, including Cashman Center, the Las Vegas Library, the Natural History Museum, the Lied Discovery Children's Museum, the Neon Museum, the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort, the State Historic Park and the Reed Whipple Cultural Center.

The first three vintage signed were refurbished and installed in new landscaped median islands for $1.1 million.

About a block to the south of the glittering slipper is the original sign for the Bow & Arrow Motel. At 35-feet tall and six-feet wide, it lights up the median near Bonanza Street with bright red lettering and an animated arrow being strung onto a bow.

The sign was the beacon for the motel that originally located in the downtown on Las Vegas Boulevard at Wyoming Avenue during the late 1950s or early 60s.

To the north, in the median that splits the street into a byway, is another sign that once glittered at Binion's Horseshoe Casino on Fremont Street. The sign was built by Young Electric Sign Company and installed in the 1960s.

The 13-by-12-foot rotating sign features a large golden neon horseshoe trimmed in blue neon lights, with an "H" at the bottom in gold flashing neon and red "CASINO" in the center.

"That's as important as any sign in the community," Goodman said. "When Benny Binion opened the Horseshoe, we established our reputation as being able to take a bet on anything and no limit. And that's what Las Vegas is all about.

Tales of the Silver Slipper

Before the ceremony, William Marion, who chairs the Neon Museum Board, told a story about Howard Hughes' and Wayne Newton's involvement with the Silver Slipper sign.

Hughes, who had moved to the Desert Inn in late 1968 and eventually bought it, had a penthouse directly across the street from the Silver Slipper sign, which was brightly lit and rotated. Hughes made a request that it be turned off.

"They wouldn't shut it off, so he told his aides to buy the property," Marion said. "That's how he got to own the Silver Slipper."

There were other rumors, too, about why Hughes bought the Silver Slipper, including he thought someone had put a camera in its toe that was pointed at his penthouse and spying on him.

Wayne Newton's involvement with the Silver Slipper sign came after Hughes had the sign taken down.

Newton had come to the sign's resting place, in the city's Neon Boneyard, to do promotional shoot years later. And when the 6-foot-3, barrel-chested singer stepped up on its toe, his foot went through it, Marion said.

Colorful characters

Goodman said he used to spend a lot of time over at the Silver Slipper, which he called "one of the original joints, so to speak."

"It had a lot of colorful people who used to hang out there at that part of the Strip," he said.

Goodman, known for his love of martinis, chuckled at the thought of how much of his favorite gin that particular Silver Slipper sign might hold. No, the mayor said. He hadn't done the math.

"Now that you mention it, it takes on a very special significance," he said, chuckling.

 

Thanks also to Jack LeVine at VeryVintageVegas.com for allowing us to use some of these images

Untold Stories - Howard Hughes - Thursday Evening!

On Thursday, November 5th, "Untold Stories" will take a look at Howard Hughes.

The enigmatic millionaire is best known for his buying spree of Las Vegas hotels in the mid-1960s.  We will take a look at Hughes not only in that era but an earlier era, when he used to visit Las Vegas, hang out with locals and drop by the showrooms and casinos of the day.

Panelists include:

Geoff Schumacher, author of "Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia and Palace Intrigue"

Paul Winn, who worked for Hughes and later Summa Corp.

Robert McCaffrey, who knew Hughes in his aviation days:  http://theaviatorhh.com/

Thursday, November 5th

Las Vegas Springs Preserve

Desert Learning Center

6:30 pm

Admission $9 (new, lower price) (Discounts available if you buy a three series pass)

We hope to see you there!