Very Vintage Vegas

Walter Zick and The Mid Mod Middle School Pods

December 16th, 2008 Categories: Mid Century Modern

Walter Zick and his achitectural partner Harris Sharp designed many schools for the Clark County School District. We’re attempting to get a school named for Walter.

One of the most unique and cost effective designs was born of the space age. The Pod Middle Schools were meant to look like alien space craft. To this day, they stand in tribute to new ways of thinking.

If you want to see one for yourself, the most central of them is the William Orr Middle School on Katie Avenue right behind the Boulevard Mall. WEOMS is right in the middle of the wonderful Mid Century Modern neighborhood of Paradise Palms.

Even the schools motto is “Launching Into The Future”

I was able to get much better ground shots at Helen Cannon Middle School on Russell Road and Eastern.

Zick and Sharp designed dozens of schools for the CCSD. They deserve recognition for their unique inspired designs, not to mention the shear number of projects that they were responsible for.

Below are Slides 52 to 56 of the Application that made and turned down in 2007.

Almost all of these were built in the 50’s and 60’s, qualify as Mid Mod, and and still stand as a testiment to Zick and Sharp.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Mid Century Modern. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Omar said at December 16th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

   they also designed the Moulin Rouge

2. zane d. said at December 17th, 2008 at 8:32 am

   I’ve seen the slideshow from the application, I assure not only does it include the Moulin Rouge, but it is simply astounding the number of local businesses that we all drive past every day that were designed by these guys, particularly Walter Zick.

   Not to mention he basically started the Las Vegas AIA chapter and was almost single-handedly responsible for creating the state board that hands out architecture licenses. He was one busy cat…

3. Shooting Video For The William (Bill) Krisel Documentary said at March 27th, 2009 at 12:32 am

   […] exist along Maryland Parkway and Ruby Thomas Elementary and Orr Middle School which was one of the POD schools, […]

4. Shooting Video For The William (Bill) Krisel, AIA Documentary said at March 27th, 2009 at 12:41 am

   […] exist along Maryland Parkway and Ruby Thomas Elementary and Orr Middle School which was one of the POD schools, […]

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