NEVADA VERNACULAR: PART 1, SIGNS
Nevada’s vernacular architecture is a study in the competing claims various communities have made upon a part of the USA few of them especially wanted but felt obliged to defend. Native Americans – Shoshone, Paiute, Washoe and others – Latinos, Basque sheepherders who arrived in the 19th century along with Germans, Chinese and Irish and the Mafia, without whose particular concept of glamour Nevada’s facades would be somewhat more functional. To that we can add the W.P.A, which in the 1930s built the state’s modern infrastructure and for that needed more roadhouses, gas stations and motels along the highways, and Hollywood, because it was inhabited by people who knew a desert could be turned into an artificial paradise. What we call vernacular isn’t indigenous but imported then redesigned to fit. Neon signs properly belonged in the big cities of the north, where they were a way to compete for attention on crowded streets, but they work in cities like Reno because they are out of place. The low rise design of motels on the other hand works because unlike grand hotels it encourages transience ... (to part 2, buildings)
Nevada’s vernacular architecture is a study in the competing claims various communities have made upon a part of the USA few of them especially wanted but felt obliged to defend. Native Americans – Shoshone, Paiute, Washoe and others – Latinos, Basque sheepherders who arrived in the 19th century along with Germans, Chinese and Irish and the Mafia, without whose particular concept of glamour Nevada’s facades would be somewhat more functional. To that we can add the W.P.A, which in the 1930s built the state’s modern infrastructure and for that needed more roadhouses, gas stations and motels along the highways, and Hollywood, because it was inhabited by people who knew a desert could be turned into an artificial paradise. What we call vernacular isn’t indigenous but imported then redesigned to fit. Neon signs properly belonged in the big cities of the north, where they were a way to compete for attention on crowded streets, but they work in cities like Reno because they are out of place. The low rise design of motels on the other hand works because unlike grand hotels it encourages transience ... (to part 2, buildings)
