Walter Zick Changed The Entire Look And Feel Of The City Of Las Vegas

We introduced you to Walter Zick last week. Walter Zick and his partner Harris Sharp started the Architectural Firm of Zick and Sharp in 1949. They had a monumental influence on the mid century years of Las Vegas. Walter’s family, and the historic preservation community are trying to get a school named after him.

The power point presentation to the Clark County School District fell on deaf ears the first time around, and we’re committed to lobby them till it finally happens. Here, in clickable thumbnails is the biography that was prepared by the family and are slides from the presentation, so when you click them, they’ll be big enough to read.

We’ve discovered from that presentation that many of our favorite buildings were designed by Zick and Sharp.

Today we present you with one of the buildings that surprised me the most. I had mentioned it only a few weeks ago as one of my favorite Commercial Buildings during the “pillars and posts and columns” series.

Back then it was a bank building. Today it houses the downtown post office and a lot of lawyers.

We asked Zane Donaldson to take some photos for us for this series. He went way above the minimum that we needed and had a great deal of fun finding every interesting angle imaginable.

The Nevada Savings and Loan Headquarters building at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Bridger in downtown has changed little from the drawing above.

After the Jump are some of the other excellent and artistic shots that Zane took for us.

I loved this building long before I ever heard of Walter Zick or Harris Sharp. It’s a great example of the types of buildings that can become endangered at the whim of a developer.

The more we learn about the designs, the architects and the history of those who built and used the historic homes and offices and hotels, the better we’ll be able to keep them around in the future.

There’s 6 other Nevada State Bank branches in Las Vegas (as well as 2 in Reno) that are mentioned in Slide 90. We’re trying to pin things down as to where they were, and figure out what’s still standing and what isn’t. NS&L disappeared years ago. 

Something as simple as a request to the school board has given us dozens of questions that need answering.

Can any of you help us figure out the other branches that are mentioned? We only have a drawing of the headquarters building in the slide presentation.

We’ll be looking at the Nevada State Bank buildings in another post. They’re most interesting as well!

Again, after the jump are some more pictures of the Nevada Savings And Loan Headquarters.