A hip homage to history

By Brian Eckhouse

Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Flora D’Alessio sits on the hearth of the enormous rock fireplace, astonished.

Gone is the 12-foot couch that once anchored the living room of the midcentury house she designed and lived in for 44 years.

Gracing the space now is Danish modern furniture, whose straight lines and sharp angles match the house itself. The pieces are smaller and less provincial, creating a spacious look the 86-year-old D’Alessio never conceived for the sprawling ranch-style house she and her late husband inhabited for half their lives.

Now, on her first visit since moving to an assisted living center, D’Alessio surveys the new interior with its mix of hip midcentury furniture and young neighbors. In a voice that trickles nostalgia and reassurance, she says, “I’ve found someone who appreciates the home.”

As if on cue, new owner Meghan Stoddard enters the room laughing with a few of her new friends. At her housewarming tonight, the 29-year-old is decked in harvest gold with slight pink accents — the colors of midcentury appliances and something out of “Mad Men.”

The crowd numbers about 100. Some visitors admire the pendant-shaped lamps in the kitchen. Others, including a district court judge, gawk at the shower in the master bedroom, which has downward steps to the base, allowing a pool of water to collect. D’Alessio’s grandkids once viewed it as a mini-swimming pool.

The former owner beams at the sight. She sees in Stoddard, a part-time artist who also works in time-share sales management, the reasons the valley’s original Las Vegas suburbs are being reborn. House by house over a decade, the community has gained new life at the hands of artists, hipsters, young professionals and, especially, retro aficionados. On this night, in this living room, the history of those suburbs is evident to all.

The home is in the John S. Park neighborhood, within walking distance of White Cross Drug Store at Las Vegas and Oakey boulevards and the other old shops just north of the Strip. This suburb encompasses the valley’s original subdivisions, which span Sahara Avenue and Charleston Boulevard east of Las Vegas Boulevard — neighborhoods now collectively branded “downtown.”

D’Alessio used to stroll to White Cross before she began observing homeless people lurking about her community’s streets in the 1980s. She, like other locals, became wary of these streets. She was burglarized. Friends and family — including her two sons — fled to gated, stucco confines five to 10 miles away.

No longer was the neighborhood a fusion of casino owners, performers and blue-collar workers who attended Bishop Gorman, St. Anne’s and Temple Beth Shalom. Many homes downtown fell into disrepair. Realtors say eight out of 10 homes needed landscaping work, a paint job or both. Some foreclosures still dot Oakey. Crack houses along Casino Center Boulevard replaced what had been two-level strip motels.

Downtown seemed anachronistic: Who needed Formica when you can have granite and homes on hills? Gas was mostly cheap.

But as traffic began to snarl about a decade ago, gays began noticing how affordable the midcentury homes were downtown, near their jobs and nightlife on Fremont Street and the Strip. Artists followed a few years later, observers say, with designs on an arts district along Casino Center.

Couples with young children, seeking a community with identity, soon took note. Galleries and vintage clothing stores began popping up in the emerging arts district.

Stoddard had fallen for midcentury modernism when a friend introduced her to ’50s- and ’60s-era architecture and design. She outfitted her condo with period furniture bought at estate sales and on eBay, but she longed for a home to serve as a palette.

Familiar with downtown because her mother lived there as a child, Stoddard chose a real estate agent, Jack LeVine, who had long championed the area. She made an offer on D’Alessio’s house less than seven hours after it went on the market: $320,000 for 2,800 square feet and a spacious yard.

Stoddard’s costume-themed housewarming attracts a lively crowd, including LeVine, wearing a checkered sports coat, dark patterned tie and top hat. He points to the living room, which oozes into a sweeping outdoor foyer that’s packed with partiers. “This is what you can’t do in new homes,” he says. “You just don’t have the lot sizes.”

The kitchen countertop is the original, a pinkish Formica that 20 years ago would have seemed dated but now is hip, cherished by some Gen X-ers raised in tracts.

The refrigerator is also original, with a pink shell and turquoise interior. The range is pink.

Outside, under the sweeping overhang, Rex Burnett chats with Dallas Augustine, daughter of the late state controller. Burnett moved to this valley four years ago, settling in Henderson “because that’s where everyone said to go.”

He sounds wistful. Of these homes downtown, he says, “There’s a flow, a graciousness, a conviviality you don’t find anymore.”

These homes remind him of his youth in Los Angeles, but he clarified: “It’s not L.A. It’s not Palm Springs. It’s distinctly Vegas. You can see the Rat Pack, Elvis, Liberace. It’s very drippy. But drippy in a good way.”

Inside, D’Alessio explains that she and her husband, Dino, had the house built to their design in 1963. The nearby home where they raised their two children was small. They sought a house where they could entertain. (Dean Martin, a distant relative of Dino, was an occasional guest.)

She wanted a kitchen with double ovens and abundant countertops. Dino, a glass maker, wanted a space full of glass.

No place better married those desires than the living room. One wall is faced in mirrors. The long space is neatly divided into a den and lounge by an authentic rock-faced, three-sided fireplace.

Stoddard pats it often and adoringly.