The Neon Museum: Where the Signs Go to Die
The Neon Museum: Where the Signs Go to Die
770 Las Vegas Boulevard North. Two acres of retired casino signs — the Stardust, Moulin Rouge, Silver Slipper, Riviera — arranged in the desert like headstones in the world's most glamorous graveyard. The museum calls it the Boneyard.
Book the evening tour. The docent tells stories behind the signs — who designed them, what the casinos looked like, why they closed. The Moulin Rouge sign is the most historically loaded — the casino was Vegas's first integrated hotel, 1955, and its neon letters carry weight their playful cursive doesn't suggest. Up close you see the individual tubes bent by hand, the painted panels, the mechanical elements. These weren't designed by computers. They were built by sign makers with welding torches and showmanship.
The La Concha Motel lobby at the entrance — designed by Paul Revere Williams, the first Black AIA member, in 1961 — is Googie architecture that looks like it could fly. Most people walk under the swooping concrete canopy without looking up. Don't.
