UNLV opens branch at former school

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, Sept. 15, 2000 | 11:59 a.m.

A Depression-era grammar school officially reopened its doors Thursday, taking on a new role as a resource for downtown workers looking to upgrade their briefcases.

The Fifth Street School, known as the Las Vegas Grammar School when it opened in 1936 to serve the needs of a small railroad town, will provide the latest set of classrooms for the continuing education program at UNLV.

"It allows us to reach out to a significant number of people -- those who work in and around the downtown area," UNLV President Carol Harter said.

Harter told the group of about 50 people gathered in the quadrangle of the Mission-Revival building, many of them self-professed old-timers who had attended the school in their youth, that the facility will provide another positive step toward revitalizing downtown Las Vegas.

So it was no surprise to anyone that Mayor Oscar Goodman was on hand to plug his favorite refrain as the "happiest mayor in the world."

"The downtown core is really the core of the future of Southern Nevada," Goodman said. "It's imperative to have the university here. And the Fifth Street School is an ideal area, where it all began. It's symbolic of a renaissance, a rebirth."

In the 1940s and '50s, most students walked to the school and sat at wooden desks bolted to runners. After classes, many crossed the best street in town -- Las Vegas Boulevard, paved and underlaid with brick -- to get nickel ice creams at the White Bunny Ice Cream Store.

"One thing -- they taught people how to write. Penmanship. And they taught phonics," said Patsy Murphy Farmer, from the eighth grade class of 1952. "We had the cleanest air then, all the water was from artesian wells, the cleanest, most delicious water, and the sky was clear and blue. From here to Sunrise Mountain looked about a mile away."

These days the lessons have changed and the neighborhood has been transformed from residential homesteaders to urban commercial. But the school will still serve a similar function -- to meet the needs of people living within walking distance of its double front archways.

Paul Aizley, dean of the college of extended studies at UNLV, conceded that many of the expected 600 students will drive, not walk, to classes. With only 30 designated slots, parking may even pose some problems, he said. But the classes the school offers -- in banking, legal, government and hotel management -- are the direct result of surveys the university sent to surrounding businesses.

"We listen. We think we know what's needed. But some of the classes we offer are no-brainers," Aizley said. "About 18,000 people work in the casinos around here. Many have two years (of college) under their belt and would like to complete their degree."

For Aizley, overseeing a leased building is something of a departure from usual far-flung operations. He has deployed his instructors at more than 300 locations, from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, Utah, he said.

But even with the continuity offered by a more permanent classroom, he said the principle remains the same: "We do in-house custom courses on request."

Flossie Christensen, director of human resources at nearby BankWest of Nevada, who answered the survey sent out in spring 1999, will be sending about a dozen of her employees to a class on banking principles. The bank will cover the $315 fee for each employee.

"It gives our people more knowledge and more independence," Christensen said. "And it will help us with education as far as in-house training. If people want that opportunity, we're willing to get that for them."