As we noted a few weeks back in our Historic Site of the Week, the La Concha is being pieced back together so that it can serve as the lobby and gift shop for the Neon Museum.
Kristen Peterson, in today's Las Vegas Sun brings us up to date on the progress.:
"But after all these years of bulldozing our history, neglecting the unique architecture, something had to give. That something was this conch-inspired structure that served as the entrance to La Concha Motel, built when 5,000-room hotels weren’t even part of the discussion.
Neon was our visual commodity then. We were the first midcentury modern city. A city with no past. No 19th-century concert halls or skyscrapers to define us. No vast inventory of historic sites.
But now La Concha is our past."
Click here to read the rest of the article.
This is an important preservation project on many different levels. Thanks to the efforts of the Neon Museum and its donors, the La Concha did not go quietly into the night and the pages of history. It was saved from the wrecking ball and moved across town to find new life as the gateway to the Neon Museum.
In a town that will (hopefully) discover cultural tourism one of these days and have enough historic buildings left to make it viable, the La Concha stands as the outpost for what cultural tourism can do for Fremont Street and Downtown Las Vegas.
This is an important step in the right direction for a city that too often only thinks of the next big thing. The Friends of Classic Las Vegas encourages everyone to support the Neon Museum in this important endeavor.
Thanks to LasVegasTodayandTomorrow for letting us this photo.