Search Results
Louis Yoxen interview, 2003: transcript
Date
Archival Collection
Description
Yoxen begins her interview by discussing how she first arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada to work for the U.S. State Department in the 1950s. She then describes her childhood in Alabama, competing in the Miss America pageant, and her life in Miami, Florida. Yoxen also discusses living in North Africa and Berlin, Germany while working for the State Department as a clerk. She then talks about moving around with her sister and her family, and eventually coming to Las Vegas. She describes what Las Vegas was like in the 1950s. Yoxen ends her interview with a discussion on her family, her husband's work, and their recreational activities.
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Photographs of Stardust signs, Las Vegas (Nev.), 2002
Date
Archival Collection
Description
Site name: Stardust Resort and Casino
Site address: 3000 S Las Vegas Blvd
Sign owner: Boyd Gaming
Sign details: This is a large casino property that is clearly a center of attention.
Sign condition: Structure 4 Surface 4 Lighting 4
Sign form: Pylon; Fascia; Porte-cochère
Sign-specific description: Even though the facade of the Stardust has gone through many changes, streamlining itself over the years, yet retains aspects of it's original flavor. The tower faces northwest and southeast and is adorned with horizontal bars of red neon underlining each floor. The top tube only stretches approximately one-quarter of the way across the face, and with each floor, the neon gets increasingly longer. The result is the building being cut across the face at an angle, with one half being illuminated by the red neon and the other by ambiently blue lighting. Large Channel letters spelling "Stardust," are bordered by red neon and filled with incandescent bulbs. The Majority of the external signage is on the low rise structure close to the street, with the tower located to the northwest behind it. The array is comprised of two small pylon message centers, a porte cochere, the main pylon, and assorted entrance signs. On the south side of the building alongside a large parking lot, an entrance sign hangs above a two-sided corner entrance, Wrapping this small corner, polished gold raceways and trim create borders for the accordion surfaced pediment, and shoot up vertically into the sky on the far ends. Blue neon shines from behind the shining trim above the door to illuminate the whit accordion facade. The trim above that is adorned with two tubes of gold neon on the top and the bottom, hidden in recessed channels to cast a gold halo from behind. The two vertical edges are lined with incandescent bulbs. On the south wall of the small corner, channel letters stand on the top edge of the golden molding, reading "Casino." They are black on the exterior, painted white on the interior, and filled with incandescent bulbs, and bordered with red neon. On the Southeast edge of the building another entrance of a bit more design Above a set of doors, and the blue lit accordion facade and golden halo cast metallic trim, a Squared "U" shape made of polished metal raceways, holds a back lit message center housed on a black cabinet. On either side of the vertical legs of the "U" shape, another single raceway rises slightly higher in the air. All the raceways are lined with incandescent bulbs. Above the cabinet, black channel letters, spell "Stardust." They are finished white on the exterior, filled with incandescent bulbs, and outlined in red neon. Moving around to the eastern facade of the building, the facade is a three leveled pediment in the accordion pattern, and separated with the polished trim. The Yellow and blue lighting illuminate this facade also. The pattern is only interrupted by oval shaped back lit cabinets, placed every so often. Eventually you come to the porte. It is no longer finished with mirrors, but still retains the raceways lined with incandescent bulbs. The surface in between is filled with white stucco finish. What is left is a series of 5 hexagonal shapes crafted out of raceways and hung a section ceiling lower than the rest. Geometric patterns radiate from this center piece. North, past the porte cochere a section of building juts out to the east. It contains an entrance on the north and south faces, and two on the east face which are parts wrapping around from the previously mentioned entrances. Over the north and south entrances the "U" shaped polished metallic raceways and external flanking raceways, as seen before on the southeast entrance, play host to a narrow LED message center and channel text spelling stardust. The letters have the same treatment as the previous sign as well, and spell "Stardust" in channel letters. They too are filled with incandescent bulbs and bordered with red neon. Above the text, channel pans are in the shape of four pointed stars as seen on the main pylon, are slightly scattered as if to be showering over the text. They are multi colored, centered with arrays of incandescent bulbs and interior neon contours. The accordion facade and lighting are below the composition. Below the accordion pediment, a polished gold bullnose creates a pediment above the door and wraps around to the east face of the structure. A pointed end polished metallic cabinet is placed in the section of the bullnose over the door, spelling "Casino Entrance" in channel letters and filled with red neon. The surface of the bullnose is laden with incandescent bulbs. The facade wraps around the front with another pointed end cabinet reading entrance in the same fashion as the previously mentioned text. A small section of foliage and shrubbery line the west face of this extension of the casino before the same arrangements of sign are seen repeated on the north face. Passing the entrance the property opens up into a courtyard with an arrangement of low rising concrete cylindrical fountains created a multi-leveled garden of spurting water and plants. Just past the courtyard another entrance is found created out of the northeast corner of the building. Like the other entrances, elements such as the blue lit accordion face, double rows of vertical metallic raceways, properly treated channel letters, are present. The gold raceways wrap the corner with backlit cabinets on the east and north faces. The channel letters read "Stardust" on the east face and "Casino" on the northern face. The ceiling that the overhang creates is finished in polished metallic material and laden with incandescent bulbs. Just outside the last entrance the first of two low rise message pylons. The one located on the north end of the property is larger and more spectacular. The large triangular cabinet's faces are backlit, slightly concave message boards. The tops of each o these cabinets in adorned with a smaller, purple steel cabinet, approximately eighteen inches tall, and running the length of the cabinet. "Stardust is spelled across the length of the cabinet in channel letters, and filed with rose neon. The cabinet is laden with incandescent bulbs, creating a canvass for the letters to reside. The three edges, which is the gap where the three signs meet and the bottom of the cabinet are covered in incandescent bulbs. The surfaces are treated with polished metal. The pole which the cabinet sits is a white, two sided, support with two peaks growing out horizontally about two-thirds up the height. The shape, along with a Stardust style star channel pan in its center, is a representation of the repeated image associated with the logo of the property. The edge of the post is treated with a border of purple paint and lined with purple incandescent bulbs. Just inside the border stripe a channel recesses forming another border for a tube of purple neon. The star pan channel in the center is bordered in teal neon and filled with incandescent bulbs. A top the entire cabinet is an array of stardust stars of various colors, bordered in neon, and or filled incandescent bulbs. The array is assorted again to appear as if they are being showered, tapering to one single star at the top. The entire cabinet rotates slowly from right to left. The cousin to this sign is at the extreme south end of the property, set before an entrance give a larger double backed cabinet sits off center on a square post. The white plastic face is housed in a white steel cabinet with rounded edges. The top or the sign is comprised of the same purple cabinet and channel letters seen in tops of the concave message boards of the rotating relative at the north end. The width of the cabinet is strewn with incandescent bulbs, continuing underneath as well. The post is painted two tones.
Sign - type of display: Neon; Incandescent; Backlit
Sign - media: Steel
Sign - non-neon treatments: Graphics; Paint
Sign animation: Chasing, flashing, oscillating
Notes: The incandescent bulbs inside the text reading "Paris" on the balloon oscillate rapidly.
Sign environment: To the south of the Stardust is the Westward Ho, and to the North is Circus Circus. It stands with these two as well as the Frontier as vestiges of an older era of Las Vegas resorts. The Riviera also resides across the street. Vast shoots of concrete, spread out in front of the hotel, creating a continual plaza which runs from north to south. It contains lush flowers and fountains that toss water to each other is shooting arcs. In the daytime, the white of the remodeled facade is almost blinding against the concrete.
Sign manufacturer: Ad-Art (pylon); Sign Systems, Inc (porte cochere)
Sign designer: Paul Miller (pylon) Brian K. Leming ( porte cochere and facade)
Sign - date of installation: 1968
Sign - date of redesign/move: The original Electra-Jag style letters were replaced in 1991 by a sleeker Helvetica type face, as well as the letters for Enter the Night being changed to read "The Wayne Newton Theatre" in 1999. Also in this year, the facade was changed to a reserved white finish. The accordion shape is still present but no longer tri colored. The move was presumably made in an attempt to compete and fit in with its bigger corporate competitors.
Sign - thematic influences: The Stardust's theme revolves around an outer space/science-fiction theme, which was exceptionally popular during the era which it was created. When the original design, no longer present, was created in 1958, the Russian space project of Sputnik was just realized.
Sign - artistic significance: This is one of the most widely-admired and imitated signs on all the Strip.
Surveyor: Joshua Cannaday
Survey - date completed: 2002
Sign keywords: Chasing; Flashing; Oscillating; Pylon; Fascia; Porte-cochère; Neon; Incandescent; Backlit; Steel; Paint; Graphics
Mixed Content
"Blacks and the Boulder Dam Project": manuscript by Roosevelt Fitzgerald
Date
Archival Collection
Description
From the Roosevelt Fitzgerald Professional Papers (MS-01082) -- Unpublished manuscripts file. Published manuscript, Nevada Historical Society.
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Transcript of interview with Priscilla Scalley by Claytee White, July 24, 2014
Date
Archival Collection
Description
Priscilla and Joe Scalley arrived in Las Vegas in 1972 with their two young daughters. Joe had just completed his residency in radiology and came to Las Vegas to practice at Sunrise Hospital, where he eventually became Southern Nevada’s first neuroradiologist. The couple took out two mortgages to buy their house at 2900 Justice Lane, in the Rancho Nevada Estates section of Ward 1. They were the second owners of the house, which had been built in 1967. In 1993, after their daughters had graduated from high school, the Scalleys sold the house and moved to Summerlin. Joe Scalley died in October 1994. After Joe died Priscilla became reacquainted with and married the father of one of her daughters’ childhood friends, Joel Jobst, who was also widowed. Joel was a nuclear physicist retired from the Nevada Test Site. Priscilla and Joel bought a vacation home in Montana, where they spent every summer. They celebrated 13 years of marriage before Joel passed in 2013. As a young mother Priscilla joined the West Charleston Elementary School Parent Teacher Association and eventually became president. She helped found the Friends of the Libraries when the Clark County Library District had only two libraries—Flamingo Library and West Charleston Library—and served as that group’s president. She also was active in Junior League of Las Vegas and was president 1983?84. In her early forties Priscilla became a travel agent, a career that kindled a passion for travel that still burns brightly. She also is interested in genealogy. Although she has traveled the world she yearns to take her daughters, sons in law, and grandchildren to Ireland, the land of her ancestors.
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Ellen Barre Spiegel interview, December 4, 2017: transcript
Date
Archival Collection
Description
Ellen Barre Spiegel grew up in Jericho NY, a predominantly Jewish town in Long Island. Her ancestors had migrated to the United Sates prior to the outbreak of World War II. And for much of life her exposure to cultural diversity was limited. Ellen was born in 1962. She attended Cornell University, located in upstate New York, and graduated in 1984. Though the student population was 30% Jewish, the university expanded her knowledge of the world: her Protestant roommate explained that she had never met a Jew and Ellen replied, I have never met a WASP. Her college studies centered on consumer economics and she was a public policy major. Ellen was an early adopter of technology and her career path included positions at American Express, Prodigy (a joint venture of IBM and Sears), the Weather Channel, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust. Each company used her increasing experience with using technologies to improve connections with consumers. Ellen describes her Jewish identity as conservative and is a member of Midbar Kodesh Temple in Henderson. She talks about her bat mitzvah and her move back to New York to recite the mourner’s Kaddish for the year following the passing of her father. Later, she moved to Santa Monica, where she met Bill, her husband, using a new dating site called Luvitt AOL. After marriage, the couple saw financial advantages to living in Las Vegas and relocated their business and home to the valley in 2001. Soon Ellen noted that there was no active Democratic Club in Henderson and it became her mission to reignite the club. This launched a long list of political and civic accomplishments for Ellen. She has been an assemblyperson in the Nevada legislature (2008, 2013-2017). Her list of accomplishments and affiliations are on pages 46-47.
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