Our Preservation Spotlight today turns to Jack LeVine, who has been documenting and trying to preserve the central urban core and downtown neighborhoods for many years.
Jack is also the force behind the website, VeryVintageVegas.com where he has been documenting those neighborhoods and homes for the last few years. He is a proud sponsor for the "Movies in the Park" events at Circle Park in the Huntridge neighborhood and has been a vocal proponent of historic preservation for many years.
We wanted to include Jack in this series because he was, like us, one of the early bloggers on history and preservation in the bright light city!
CLV Blog: How did you become interested in preserving Southern Nevada history?
LeVine: My interest in historic preservation began long before I lived in Las Vegas, and long before I became a Realtor. The first home I rebuilt – where I cut my teeth learning to do plumbing and electric and drywall and painting - was an 1886 former farmhouse in the middle of a 1910’s neighborhood about a mile from downtown Columbus Ohio.
Read MoreToday's Preservation Spotlight shines on Courtney Mooney, the Preservation Officer for the City of Las Vegas. May is Preservation Month and this year we are talking to some of the preservationists, archivists and historians whose work towards saving our history isn't always acknowledged.
We've worked with Courtney on a number of projects related to our Classic Las Vegas preservation project, so we were very happy when she agreed to be interviewed.
CLVBlog: How did you become interested in preserving Southern Nevada history?
Mooney: As a native Nevadan, our state’s history holds a special place in my heart. That being said, I’m addicted to all history, including archaeology and natural history, because it explains everything about who we are as individuals and as a community, why we are here at this very moment, and how we can create our own legacies.
Read MoreThe whimsical neon fish that has long advertised Davy's Locker bar on Desert Inn near Maryland Parkway is endanger of going dark forever and possibly being replaced by generic strip mall sign.
Erin Ryan writes in Las Vegas Weekly that the concern is more than just preservationists and lovers of neon fish being hyperbolic. Ryan writes of the concerted effort by Cindy Slight and others to keep the whimsical neon fish going.
“It’s so sad. It’s sad for me as a native; I mean my grandfather went to that bar. And it’s sad for me as the bar owner, because we don’t even look open at night,” says Cindy Slight, who started managing Davy’s in 2006 and worked her way into partnership and finally ownership. But she doesn’t own the property or the sign, a relic she says draws all kinds of people to stop and snap photos. At night, though, when bars make most of their money, the almost entirely burned-out banner has the opposite effect. “The sign kind of went the way of the economy at the time,” Slight says, “and so it’s just been an uphill battle ever since.”
There was a victory in that uphill battle, albeit brief. “Davy” has gone dark before, and in 2011 the neon was restored with the help of a generous bar patron. But when the lights started flickering again about five months later, Slight discovered that the $3,100 they’d paid didn’t cover any kind of maintenance. Davy’s Locker is ’60s-era, complete with Rat Pack lore, but Slight says the property owners aren’t local and favor replacing the classic sign with something generic. “So much of old Vegas is gone. You have to really look hard to find the little pieces that aren’t. That’s one of the things I love about Davy, and to see that go …”
Read MoreWith May being Preservation Month, we wanted to spotlight some of the people working hard to preserve Las Vegas, Southern Nevada and Nevada History. Some are in the news and many work behind the scenes but they all share a common goal- preserving our history for future generations.
That history takes many forms these days from historic objects and images to costumes to architecture to neon to neighborhoods and historic places. Preserving history in Las Vegas is not an easy task. The town is constantly reinventing not only itself but its skyline and neighborhoods as well. It's easy to forget that it's only been 109 years since the land auction that made the Las Vegas of today even possible. That's hardly a drop in the bucket time-wise compared to other city's around the country and around the world who measure their history in hundreds of years.
So, it's easy to forget that our history is valuable because it doesn't feel old and it's not necessarily historic in the way we tend to think of historical documents, images or places. But, they are our history and though they may not have a pedigree of being the Old North Church or a glass slide of a Civil War Vet, our history tell us about the men and women who pioneered this city when it was a dusty railroad town and helped it grow into the Entertainment Capital of the World. Without them, there would be no Las Vegas and their history is every bit as valuable as any other city's.
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