PHOTO/DENNIS MYERS
Brian Krolicki and Stephanie Tyler posed at the 2013 Nevada Legislature. Twenty-three years earlier, as young political aides, the two were among five people in a small plane that crashed on a campaign trip in Churchill County, killing one and injuring the others. Tyler later served as a Republican senator from Washoe County.
Neutra unbound New York Times/April 21 2002: “In a move that has stunned, outraged and saddened admirers of modern architecture, the city of Rancho Mirage, Calif., recently approved the demolition of an important 13-room house designed by Richard Neutra in 1963. Neutra, who died in 1970, helped introduce the International style to America, redefining architecture in the 20th century with a series of remarkable residential pavilions. His houses are now cherished in the same way as Frank Lloyd Wright’s—as testaments to a uniquely original vision and a particularly pivotal moment in design history.” Reno has done it differently. Two rare Neutra buildings (most of his structures are in California) are disappearing from Reno not through demolition but CHURCH FINE ARTS BULDING by being smothered. The recent addition of glass boxes to the west side of the Church Fine Arts Building at the University of Nevada, Reno, has further minimized Neutra’s original design for that building. And farther south, his design for the Centennial Coliseum—now the Reno Sparks Convention Center—seems to have disappeared as completely as its name. Additions to the building appear to have swallowed it up, obliterating its exterior from view. Born in Vienna in 1892, Neutra was trained there, and also in Switzerland and Wisconsin. He arrived in the U.S. and took citizenship in the 1920s. In 2011, Architectural Digest said, “Neutra (1892–1970) was a prophet of clean, crisp modernism, and his houses, most of which were built in California, have inspired countless architects and emboldened preservationists in an area of the country notoriously quick to raze landmarks. And why not? As Time eloquently observed, ‘Their beauty, like that of any sea RENO SPARKS CONVENTION CENTER shell, is more than skin-deep—practical, not pretentious.’” One of Neutra’s structures became familiar to movie fans when his Lovell Health House played the role of the home of “Pierce Patchett” in the movie L.A. Confidential. Not all liked Neutra’s modernist designs, but their importance was recognized and his two Reno designs were once a point of local pride. He was so influential that Reno structures he did not design were sometimes cited by the National Register of Historic Places as Neutra-influenced. For instance, of the nowdemolished Union Federal Savings and Loan building at Court and Sierra streets, built in 1959, the National Register reports, “The UFS&L has been compared by architectural historians to the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander in 1958. The USF&L’s most distinctive details were brises-soleil, first employed in modern architecture in 1933 by Le Corbusier on the Maison Locative Ponsik in Algiers. Brises-soleil are exterior vertical panels that move with the sun and provide heat or shade to the interior of a building.” The USF&L was torn down to make way for a courthouse expansion. The Rancho Mirage and the Gettysburg Cyclorama in Pennsylvania, both demolished, are listed as “lost” Neutra structures. It’s not clear whether obscured but still existing structures fall into that category.
—Dennis Myers
8 | RN&R |
JANUARY 29, 2015
Second place Krolicki calls for governor/lieutenant governor ticket Brian Krolicki, who stepped down as Nevada’s lieutenant governor last month, is calling for a fundamental change by in the way the office is elected. He Dennis Myers believes the governor and lieutenant governor should be elected on a ticket together instead of each being elected independently. Krolicki had legislation drafted to accomplish the change, and it will be up to his successor, Mark Hutchison, whether to pursue it with the office’s endorsement. “I just think it’s prudent and as I look around the country I find it to be a good management practice,” Krolicki said.
“It is terribly important for the lieutenant governor to have the complete trust of the governor.” Brian Krolicki Former lieutenant governor Half the states elect their governors and lieutenant governors jointly. In another 18, each is elected independently. In the remaining states, succession to the governorship is through other officials, such as secretary of state. Krolicki believes if the two officials were elected together, it would lead to better working relationships and would prepare lieutenant
governors better for a governor’s death or resignation. He relates the idea to how businesses operate. “If you’re a Fortune 500 company, shareholders expect to have clear lines, which our situation does, but also of grooming and familiarity,” he said. “It is terribly important for the lieutenant governor to have the complete trust of the governor.” “If there is a disjointed relationship or a transition with an individual who is not apprised of the state policies, I think that person misses a step in the state transition,” Krolicki said. “I think the public should have an expectation that that person [the lieutenant] is regularly in the room and has the confidence of the CEO, and that’s the governor.” He also said the public should be able to expect “awareness and training and capability immediately if the governor has a bad day.” Whether two candidates on the same ticket would foster trust is far from clear, however. A lot would depend on how they—particularly the lieutenant governor candidate— got onto the ticket. In the federal model, the presidential candidate chooses his or her running mate in a convention setting, and the convention delegates usually ratify that choice. Thus, the vice president is dependent politically on the president.
But at the state level, nominating conventions are a thing of the past in Nevada—they were last held in 1908. In other states, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor often run independently in their party primaries and then go onto the ticket together. Thus, the lieutenant governor candidate is not dependent on the candidate for governor, and they are often uncomfortable running mates. In one case in Nevada, in 1982, the Democratic candidates were running independently, Richard Bryan for governor and Robert Cashell for lieutenant governor. Shortly before the election, fullpage newspaper advertisements mysteriously appeared around the state urging votes for Cashell and for Bryan’s Republican opponent, Robert List. As it happened, the two Democrats—Bryan and Cashell— were elected, but the newspaper ads generated suspicion between them. They had a very tense working relationship after taking office. Krolicki’s proposal would prevent such machinations, since the option of splitting tickets in the way the ads proposed would be eliminated. But he acknowledges that how to comfortably match up two candidates on a ticket in a state with primary elections has yet to be worked out. “I think that is something that—should this bill have any legs—that is a point that needs to be discussed,” he said this week.
Tobacco initiative His long years in office—Krolicki served as deputy state treasurer for eight years, treasurer for eight years, lieutenant governor for eight years—gave him an exposure to state government workings that were valuable to any officeholder. Now, thanks to term limits, he is carrying that head of institutional knowledge away with him, of no further use to state government. Krolicki first came to public notice on Sept. 3, 1990. He and his employer—GOP state treasurer candidate Bob Seale—plus lieutenant governor candidate Sue Wagner and her aide Stephanie Tyler, and Seale’s wife, Judy—took off from the Fallon airport in a twin-engine Cessna 411 piloted by Seale. The plane went down a few minutes later, killing Judy Seale and
