Before it’s too late

By Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Allen Sandquist sips his coffee in a booth at Careful Kitty’s Cafe in the El Cortez. New Year’s balloons float above slot machines and downtown prepares for the city’s annual big bash. But Sandquist is staying in. As an underground archivist and freelance photographer, he knows all the sweet spots and approaches the streets with a sense of duty, rather than debauchery. Tourists will celebrate the year to come. His focus is on the past perpetually.

On this morning, he discusses some of the year’s biggest heartbreaks. Topping the list is a 1915 one-story home on First Street, which until a few months ago was Sandquist thinks the oldest standing house in Las Vegas. Investors had demolished it along with everything else on the block. There was no warning. Sandquist had been photographing it since coming across it in 2005.

“I always thought that if they preserved any house, it would be that one,” he says with astonishment in his eyes.

But such is the grievance of any history buff who snakes his way through the city’s nooks and crannies, suburbs and roadsides knowing that what he photographs today might be gone tomorrow.

Documenting life in late 20th- and early 21st-century Las Vegas is his life’s work. Get him walking through the city and he’ll rattle off tidbits and stories of people and places that he’s filed neatly in his mind.

“He’s doing everybody an incredible service,” says Lynn Zook of Classic Las Vegas, a local history group. “There is not a lot of warning that something is coming down. You just drive by and it’s gone unless it’s the Strip, and then they throw a party.

“Las Vegas has grown so much and so fast. The majority of people who have moved here have done so in the last 20 years. It’s hard to get them excited about the history. But ultimately his collection will be incredibly valuable.”

Sandquist, who is in his 30s, is known as “roadsidepictures” on the photo Web site Flickr. His images are used on mondo-vegas.com, classiclasvegas.com and roadsidepeek.com. He also contributed to the Atomic Age Alliance’s midcentury modern architectural tour and is a member of Friends of Classic Las Vegas. But photographically documenting the Las Vegas Valley is not a paid gig. Nor does Sandquist run a history group. This is just something he’s been doing since childhood. He never leaves home without a camera.

Like other locals, he has seen growth and progress erase the world around him and has gone to extremes to document what was there. In high school he created a list of downtown houses, recording in a green binder the year each was built and its architectural style. If the house was destroyed, he wrote down the day it happened.

“By that time I had taken pictures of the old ice house,” Sandquist says. “After that I realized how valuable the information is.”

The Hill-Top House Supper Club closed last year. Sandquist was the last person seated. A 1930s building that housed the city’s second Harley-Davidson dealership was demolished. The Ambassador East Motel is gone, as is the Cimarron Motel, which had used bungalows transported from the old El Rancho hotel.

What exists of the establishments now are old postcards and memorabilia in UNLV’s Special Collections and, of course, in Sandquist’s photographs. He rents two storage lockers that are filled with postcards, memorabilia, negatives and photos.

But who cares? Newcomers don’t have a stake in the past and Zook and others say the city and county do little to preserve the history. She says restoration of the downtown post office and Fifth Street School is not enough when there aren’t historic districts for cultural tourists to walk through, other than the John S. Park neighborhood and the Las Vegas High School neighborhood. The latter is on the National Register of Historic Places, but developers are tearing down the homes to build offices.

“Our biggest struggle as local oral historians is the importance of educating those people involved in government that aren’t from here and don’t understand Las Vegas,” says Brian “Paco” Alvarez, a Las Vegas native who has worked for the city on history programs and recently recruited Sandquist for a project. “But they’re going to care when more and more people come to Vegas and want to see Old Vegas, but it won’t be there anymore.”

This is why Sandquist clings to the bits and pieces of the past.

Walking out of the El Cortez into the glaring sun and heading west on Fremont Street, he excitedly points out the terrazzo storefront of a building that used to be Eatons Dress Shop. The city created a new sidewalk when renovating Fremont East, but saved a small portion of the terrazzo so the word “Eatons” is still visible. “I was really worried they would cover all of it,” Sandquist says mournfully. Looking down the street he points to where the old JCPenney’s and Sears once were.

At Binion’s he climbs the stairs from the casino as if it’s his home and walks around the corner into a section of the hotel that used to be the Apache Hotel. He opens a window and looks out onto the bricks of the 1932 building. It’s one of his favorite places.

Walking over to First and Fremont streets, where the old Silver Palace used to be, Sandquist is eager to point out the remnants of pink and blue diamond-shaped tiles that used to cover the entire sidewalk.

“Oh no!” he says as he puts his hands to his head. The tiles have been covered.

And so it goes another sweet spot is gone.