1959 Morelli house will be moved from DI golf course to downtown

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, Sept. 8, 2000 | 11:40 a.m.

One month after a Las Vegas landmark slated for preservation was destroyed in a fire, a local women's group appears to have saved another unique local home from the developer's wrecking ball.

The 1959 "space-age" ranch house, located at 52 Country Club Lane on the Desert Inn golf course, comes complete with a front-yard swimming pool, seven "lucky" palms and electronic curtains.

The "futuristic" home is a true one-of-a-kind Las Vegas home, according to Louise Helton, president-elect of the Junior League of Las Vegas. The 3,300-square-foot home was designed and built by Antonio Morelli, the innovative music director at the Sands hotel-casino during its heyday in the 1950s and '60s.

The Junior League plans to move the home to a new site at Ninth Street and Bridger Avenue to serve as history museum and gallery space as well as the first home offices for the organization.

Such a move would skirt the bulldozers clearing the way for Steve Wynn's latest venture: twin 3,000-room towers and a 30-acre lake on the site of the Strip's last remaining 18-hole golf course. Many of the 38 houses bordering the links will be biting the dust, too.

The tentative deal comes just weeks after Helton watched the historic Whitehead Mansion go up in flames. The Junior League lost three years of restoration work and $1.3 million in state, federal and private funding in the July fire.

At the time, the group was three months and $50,000 away from moving into the 1929 Mission-Revival home, Helton said. The group had just completed a $325,000 purchase of a half-acre parcel and planned to vacate a temporary storage site at 10th Street and Carson Avenue, where the home had stood on blocks for about a year.

That was at about the same time Kay Glenn sold the Morelli home lot to Wynn and started looking for ways to save the unique structure.

Through a meeting brokered by Wynn's development company, Glenn and Helton met and worked out a deal to preserve the home -- which still boasts the original golden wool carpet and cut glass bulbs in the front room chandelier.

"Behind every cabinet there are fascinating examples of the time period," Helton said. "The Morellis' lifestyle, the unique architectural style of the house, everything you could think of. When God closes the door, he opens up a window. And what a window this is."

Morelli built the home over a period of two years with help from custom woodworker Richard Small. It contains dozens of unusual domestic amenities and extensive custom work in exotic woods, but its signature is a meticulous attention to detail and use of available space.

From the oblong steel doorknobs to the hideaway office tucked off the kitchen, each inch of space and light has been accounted for ahead of time and customized with high-quality and custom-made materials. Even the tile sink in the master bathroom was built to the specifications of the music director's tall frame.

The bathroom contains a control panel and speaker so that if guests arrived while the Morellis were in the whirlpool/shower, they could let them in without drying off.

Michael Small, who spent more than a year helping his father craft the wooden interiors and cabinetry, remembers Morelli instructing him on how to sink roofing nails at a perfect 90-degree angle to the roof sheathing.

"Tony didn't give into the Southwestern vernacular influence, the tile roof, the Mediterranean look," said Small, who is researching a report on the architectural significance of the house with a professor of architecture at UNLV.

"He looked to the modern post-World War II designers. The house is very important to the valley."

Morelli is also a significant character in the history of the Las Vegas Valley. He brought classical music to Las Vegas, organizing the first pops concerts in the early 1960s, Small said.

"Morelli was the music director of the Sands when it was the mecca. It ruled the Strip," Helton said. "They talk about the Rat Pack. Where did they perform? That was the Sands. The musicians were so important to this town. You couldn't do a show without the musicians."

Glenn, who bought the home in 1978, in part because he convinced Helen Morelli he could move in the next day without changing a thing, also played a noteworthy role in the annals of Las Vegas.

Glenn, who claims he could take shorthand at the astounding clip of 250 words a minute during his younger days, served as press secretary for Howard Hughes from 1951 until the eccentric billionaire's death in 1976. He spent much of his career as the unobtrusive man at Hughes' side, often carrying $350,000 in a manila envelope for a typical night out on the town.

True to his word to the proud housewife, Glenn changed only the color of the paint in two places during his 22 years overlooking the second fairway of the Desert Inn's golf course. Even the seat covers of the patio furniture are original, he says.

"It's not the biggest house or the grandest house (of the Desert Inn Estates), but it wins you over," Helton said.

And this time, with the lot at Bridger Avenue and 10th Street already purchased, there appears to be no danger of the house being unoccupied at a temporary location for any length of time.

"We don't want to leave it long enough even to take a breath," Helton said.