A 1950s midcentury modern bungalow tucked behind Channel 8 KLAS’ news station might not be there in the future. No, it’s not getting imploded or bulldozed, as we are so accustomed to here. The mint green home, once leased by Howard Hughes in 1953, is at the center of an effort for relocation to the Clark County Museum to become an exhibit.
The nonprofit Clark County Museum Guild (clarkcounty
museumguild.org) is looking to raise $4.3 million for the project, dubbed Heritage in Motion. In 2024, Clark County allocated $1.5 million for early planning phases. Guild members Gary and Gayle Clinard generously donated $1 million.
Originally from Long Beach, Gayle Clinard, 84, recalls watching Hughes’ H-4 Hercules aircraft, nicknamed the “Spruce Goose,” fly 70 feet above the harbor before landing on the water. That was just six years before 1953, when he would lease a house on Fulcher Road in Las Vegas. One year later, he had the home sealed, instructing aids to tape the windows and close off the fireplace. It remained sealed until after Hughes’ death in 1976.
The Nevada Preservation Foundation’s 11th annual Home + History series (April 16-19, nevadapreservation.org) will give tours of the Green House on April 17. Clinard sat down with the Weekly to discuss the importance of preservation, education and history.
Las Vegas sure has a reputation for imploding and paving over its history.
We’re blowing up casinos. It seems so much easier to eliminate it than preserve it. But we want to make sure those things are preserved.
A look inside the historic Green House
How did you find the Clark County Museum Guild and get involved?
I moved to Henderson in 1992. I purchased a trophy shop and [former guild president] Jeanne Brady would come in every month to get a plaque engraved. She ran the guild for all these years and recently retired. I went to work for the chamber of commerce in Henderson, and I was there for 10 years. During that time I met Mark Hall-Patton, and he inspired me to get involved with the museum.
My husband, Gary, is a history buff and a rocket scientist who went to Cal Tech and with both his graduate and undergraduate studies, started his own business in his garage and sold it in 1998 for a lot of money. He’s a very generous individual. He was involved in the [Museum of the Northern Great Plains] in Fort Benton, Montana. We have donated $3 million to that museum.
And when we did that, we decided to support the Clark County Museum and the Guild’s [Heritage in Motion] project. That money is to make sure that the house is created as an exhibit. We want to have a place where children can come and learn the history of not only Howard Hughes, but the city of Las Vegas.
I certainly can see children benefiting from an immersive exhibit like the ones you already have at Clark County Museum’s Heritage Street. Why do you think it’s important to give them these kinds of enriching opportunities?
I’m concerned about some of the youth and even my own grandchildren and great grandchildren. They can sit in a room and be on their phones or their tablets typing away, and never say a word to one another. Not only will this give them the opportunity to discuss history and discuss knowledge in school, it can also get them away from that electronic world, where they can actually learn and see and do what was in the past.
What’s on your historic preservation wishlist?
What do we not have at the museum? We don’t have a barbershop. We don’t have a casino or a bar. We don’t have a soda fountain or a drug store. I think it’s important we have something from Boulder City, something from Searchlight [to represent] all of Clark County. We could pull from any area to bring other buildings or history to the museum.
I’m a child of the late ’40s and ’50s, and soda fountains were a very popular thing at the time. Gambling is historic for Las Vegas, so I think we need to represent something from a casino. Maybe a school. There’s lots of things we don’t have yet that we could really use at the museum.
A look inside the historic Green House
What’s involved in moving an entire house?
This is a real project, because it’s … out of slab rather than a foundation. And because it’s brick, cinderblock and flagstone, it’s going to be a very difficult move. Would it be easier to take it apart brick by brick and build it back up?
What they have to do is, every three feet, they have to put up a steel girder underneath the house, and then they have to support it from the inside and the outside so that the walls don’t break. And we’re probably going to have to cut it in half, because it’s got to go down to the museum on Boulder Highway.
Howard Hughes invested in casinos, movies, aviation, real estate. He was really a mogul of anything he wanted, he had so much money. Why should regular, everyday people care about the history he left behind?
If you don’t know what’s going on before you were here, then you can’t understand what’s going to happen in the future. You really need to learn from history. … I think history does repeat itself. I know I have clothes that I wore many years ago that have come back in style. So I think history does the same thing. It’s recurring. This is just a piece of what we want to preserve.
HOME + HISTORY: GREEN HOUSE TOURS April 17, times vary, $20, nevadapreservationfoundation.org.
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
