El Cortez Hotel & Casino

Casino entrepreneurs John Grayson and Marion Hicks arrived to Las Vegas as part of a large wave of casino professionals who were ousted from Southern California in the late 1930s after extensive anti-gambling crackdowns in that region. To stimulate the local economy following the legalization of wide-open gambling in 1931, the Las Vegas City Commission promptly granted Grayson and Hicks liquor and gambling licenses under the agreement that the duo would develop a new property in the downtown area. Together, they opened the El Cortez Hotel & Casino in 1941 on Fremont Street, which is still operational today. In 2013, the El Cortez became the only active Las Vegas casino to be included on the National Register of Historic Places.

When looking for motifs and design typologies to better define their vision for the El Cortez, Grayson and Hicks looked for inspiration at the Hotel Playa Ensenada in Baja California, Mexico. To bring their ideas to life, the duo hired Spanish-Peruvian architect Ramon Delfin Abos to design the El Cortez. Abos was active in Los Angeles and made a living as a freelance draftsman, and was hired for his willingness to work far below the price of his competitors. Abos approached the project’s design with a Spanish Colonial Revival style, similar to the Hotel Playa Ensenada. This style shares some elements derived from the architecture of the California Missions, defined by their low-pitched, clay-tiled roofs, stucco exteriors, and wide-open terraces. Other characteristics include the use of terra cotta ornamentation or cast concrete, decorative iron trims, and arcades supported by columns, as seen on the west façade of the El Cortez building. Spanish Colonial Revival borrows elements from many sources, including California missions, New Mexico pueblos, and Mexican Churrigueresque.

This architectural style is rooted in Spanish imperialism, with many of its motifs and materials deriving from the locales and cultures that were actively being conquered and, as a result, exploited. Perhaps most notably, Spanish Colonial Revival is associated with the nationalist movement in Mexico of the 1920s and 1930s, in which the post-Revolution government closely tied the design style with a redefinition of Mexico’s national identity.