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As downtown motels are razed, the Nevada Neon Project’s preservation efforts continue
When Will Durham was a child, he had insomnia—and he liked to collect things, a combination that foreshadowed what would even eventually become his life’s mission. “I hated to be the last one awake,” he said. He’d been downtown at night a few times, so he knew that people there were awake late, too. “I’d look to downtown Reno, and I could see the glow of the neon. It comforted me to know I wasn’t the last one awake.” “That’s how the seed got planted,” said Durham, who now heads up the Nevada Neon Project—a nonprofit with nine board members, no website, about 260 Facebook fans, almost 5,000 Instagram followers and over 100 neon signs. The signs have come from casinos, motels and other businesses in Reno, Las Vegas and other Nevada locales. Some are from such well-known, long-ago casinos as the Mapes Hotel, Harold’s Club and the Nevada Club. They’re housed, for now anyway, in storage units and semi-trailers. As some of Reno’s motels are sold and demolished to make way for new constructions, Durham is trying to acquire as many of their signs as possible for restoration and eventual display.
On a breezy spring evening, shortly before sunset, Durham stood on the sidewalk at 330 N. Arlington Ave., across from the Sands Casino. The El Ray Motel had stood at that address, and now the only things on the property were a chain link fence, a pile of concrete blocks and splintered boards, a yellow excavator that would soon remove the debris, and the motel’s neon sign. No one seems to know its exact origin date, but it has the telltale swooshes and cheerful script font that signified a national lust for both travel and super-bold graphics in the 1950s and early ’60s. Now, the sites of the El Ray and its next-door-neighbor, the Star of Reno, are vacant lots, and the City Center and Keno
PHOTO/KRIS VAGNER
Fallen icons
Motels on West Street, which were back-fence neighbors, are awaiting demolition. If things had gone Durham’s way, he would have negotiated with the motels’ purchaser, Colorado-based Jacobs Entertainment, Inc., to salvage the signs for future use. “As soon as I heard that the Jacobs group was buying these properties, I called them the next day,” he said. He hoped that his group’s track record of preservation would convince Jacobs to part with the signs, but the company opted to keep them to use in its proposed Fountain District development. Founder Jeff Jacobs declined RN&R’s request for a phone interview. His company sent a prepared statement that read, in part, “Jacobs Entertainment Inc. is committed to protecting and preserving more than half a dozen neon signs from Reno’s historic West Fourth Street corridor.” The statement acknowledged that the signs are important pieces of Reno history and continued, “The preservation of every neon sign, regardless of its condition or size, is an integral element of the Fountain District project.” No details were given regarding how the signs would be displayed. “That worries me a little bit,” said Durham. “Just because we’ve been working so hard to kind of tell a bigger story with all these signs.” Along with signs, he’s also been collecting casino ephemera—matchbooks, playing cards, menus, poker chips, swizzle sticks and the like. “I actually have some carpet from the Sands,” he said. And his group hopes to one day open a museum.
Collector Will Durham has been preserving Nevada’s neon signs for over two decades.
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