Architectural Relics: Las Vegas, Nike Missile Silos, and Train/Subway Stations

Today’s lunchtime “News to Chew On”™ deals with relics. No, I’m not talking about the US Postal Service, which has decided to stop Saturday delivery in August. Rather, I’m talking about architectural relics:

• Las Vegas. By the time you read this, the sun will have set on Bill’s Casino and Gambling Hall, which was formerly known as the Barbary Coast…  and which was the Desert Villa [Note: link requires IE or Chrome] before that. When the property reopens next year, what had become a Strip antique will be a boutique hotel with new hotel rooms, a refurbished casino, a second-story restaurant, a rooftop pool and nightclub, … and yet another name. In other Las Vegas relic news, the International hotel, which became the Las Vegas Hilton, which became the LVH (so they didn’t have to change the monogram) has just become affiliated with the boutique Leo brand within Red Lion. This will serve them well, because everyone thinks of the Red Lion brand when they think of Las Vegas. Right? [And as a P.S. regarding Las Vegas: We're actually going to Vegas at the end of April for a week's vacation. I'll get to look for Las Vegas relics (so I do plan to visit the Neon Museum and the Mob Museum, and we're all going to see a different type of relic: Elton John in concert!]
• Nike Missile Launching Sites.  Most people don’t remember it, but Los Angeles was once ringed with a bunch of Nike ABM sites. The LA Daily News has an article on the site closest to my house: the Oat Mountain station in Chatsworth, which has been taken over by vandals and taggers.  Actually, this was quite an interesting read… and it makes me want to explore the former site in the hills above Encino that has been preserved as an interpretive park.
• Transportation Relics. The Infrastructurist had a number of articles on its RSS feed today related to transportation relics (although, for some reason, I’m not seeing the pictures). This includes an article on abandoned subway stations around the world (including the abandoned Subway tunnel in Los Angeles) and 11 destroyed train stations. Speaking of train stations, KCET had a recent article on the destroyed train stations of Los Angeles. Lastly, the Infrastructurist had an article about how tearing down a freeway can help a city. Alas, the article they link to for San Francisco includes a link to my site… or at least to where my site was back in the 1990s when it was on Pacificnet. [ETA: Looks like the Infrastructurist posts were an RSS hiccup from 2009, meaning that many of the links to images are broken. That explains why they weren't showing up--not that my work firewall was blocking them ]

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