Official Name: Golden Nugget Gambling Hall / Golden Nugget Casino
Original Business: Golden Nugget Casino
Years Active: August 30, 1946 – Present (still operating, 79 years)
Original Address: 129 Fremont Street (corner of Fremont & Second Street), Downtown Las Vegas
Designer Evolution:

• 1946: Dick Porter (YESCO) – Original Western-vernacular design

• 1950: Hermon Boernge (YESCO) – "Gilded age gingerbread" with golden nugget on top, 48' x 48' open frame

• 1956: Kermit Wayne (YESCO) – Iconic wrap-around "bull-nose shield" design (golden yellow, red, blue)

• 1958: YESCO "neon spectacular" version

Museum Acquisition: The Neon Museum collection includes Golden Nugget signage. The first "N" in the museum's entrance sign is styled after the Golden Nugget's iconic typography.
Physical Specs: 1956 version wrapped upper floors in neon + incandescent bulbs. Touted as "largest and brightest sign in the world" in 1949.

YESCO (Young Electric Sign Company)

Founded 1920 by Thomas Young (English immigrant, Ogden, Utah). Established Las Vegas operations 1932, opened branch 1945. Created the "Golden Age of Neon" on Fremont Street ("Glitter Gulch").

Key Designers:

Hermon Boernge (1905-1990s)

• YESCO's first art director in Las Vegas (1946)

• Born January 17, 1905, Corralitos, CA

• Relocated to Las Vegas 1946, hired full-time by Jack Young

• 1950 Golden Nugget design: Incandescent "gilded age gingerbread" with golden nugget topper, 48' wide and tall – set standard for "bigger & brighter" on Fremont

• Also designed: Mint, Binion's Horseshoe, Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Pioneer Club's Vegas Vic

• Close collaborator with Kermit Wayne

• Stepped down as art director 1964/1965 (heart issues) but continued as artist

Kermit Wayne

• Innovative designer, YESCO

• 1956 Golden Nugget "spectacular": Wrap-around "chasing, scintillating, bull-nose shield design" of ornate golden yellow, red, and blue

• Ten years after opening, wrapped upper floors in neon + incandescent bulbs

• This version celebrated in Learning from Las Vegas as exemplar of "decorated shed"

Dick Porter

• YESCO designer

• 1946 original Golden Nugget: Western-vernacular style echoing San Francisco Gold Rush days

Design Philosophy:

Victorian carved wood + Italian marble interior (fixtures 50+ years old), replicating original Golden Nugget bar on San Francisco's Barbary Coast during Comstock silver rush (mid-1800s).

Guy McAfee: The Dirty Cop Who Built a Dream

August 30, 1946: Guy McAfee (age 58) opened the Golden Nugget with $1 million investment – largest gambling house in Las Vegas at the time. It debuted 4 months BEFORE Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo (December 26, 1946).

Background:

• Former LAPD Vice Squad Captain (1920s-1930s)

• Corrupt cop: Simultaneously ran illegal gambling houses, saloons, brothels in Los Angeles while heading vice squad

• Owned Clover Club on Sunset Boulevard (Hollywood hotspot)

• Member of LA crime syndicate

• 1938: Fled LA after reform mayor Fletcher Bowron elected to crack down on corruption

• Married movie actress June Brewster (divorced 1941)

• Coined "The Strip": Named Highway 91 after LA's Sunset Strip (bought Pair-O-Dice casino 1939)

Golden Nugget as Power Play:

• Touted as "world's largest casino" at opening

• No-limit poker games until 1950 (first casino to introduce center dealer)

• Victorian opulence meets Western mythology

• Mob associations: Moe Sedway (Meyer Lansky associate) photographed at Golden Nugget

Post-McAfee Era:

• 1950: Converted to public corporation, McAfee as president

• 1960: McAfee retired and died same year

• 1972: Steve Wynn (age 30, youngest casino owner in Vegas) bought controlling stake

• 1977: First hotel tower opened, received first 4-diamond rating for downtown property

• 1982: Wynn convinced Frank Sinatra to perform downtown (major coup for Fremont Street)

• 1984: Sinatra + Willie Nelson at Theater Ballroom

• Still operating today under Landry's Inc.

The Neon Benders: Endangered Artisans

Oscar Gonzalez – "The Lightbearer"

• Mexican neon bender, started age 14 in Guadalajara shop

• 30+ years at YESCO Las Vegas

• Trained by father and grandfather (multi-generational craft)

• One of only 3 neon benders left at YESCO (down from 8 in 1990s)

• Featured in Neon Museum Oral History Project

• Hand-bent glass tubes using open flame: 8 hours to make first simple sign ("vino")

• Dangerous, painstaking work: "The more burns you got, the better you're getting"

Craft in Crisis:

• By 2011: YESCO had 3 benders left (from 8 full-time + overtime in 1990s)

• Casino Lighting & Sign: 2 benders left (from 5 in 1998)

• No new apprentices – endangered species

• Replaced by LED technology (cheaper, more flexible, but soulless)

Eric Elizondo (YESCO):

• 35 years experience, 3rd-generation bender

• Father Sergio made neon for original "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign

• Son laid off – 4th generation lost

Learning from Las Vegas: Cultural Legitimacy

1968: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour study Las Vegas Strip with Yale students
1972: Publish Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form

Golden Nugget as "Decorated Shed":

• Kermit Wayne's 1956 wrap-around design exemplifies "decorated shed" concept

• "Decorated Shed": Building where ornament is applied independently of structure and program

• Opposed to "Duck": Building where form and volume express meaning

• Commercial vernacular architecture as legitimate cultural artifact

• Symbolism over form – Vegas as apotheosis of American commercial vernacular

Academic Positioning:
Mayor Oscar Goodman: "Neon is to Las Vegas what jazz is to New Orleans."

Neon Bending Techniques:

• Hand-bent glass tubing rotated over open flame until pliable

• Artisan blows into hose connected to tubing to prevent collapse

• Glass "dances under heat" – requires constant movement to keep level

• Bent into desired shape when ready

• Labor-intensive: 16-hour days in peak era (1998)

• Multi-year apprenticeship required

Golden Nugget Sign Evolution:

• 1946: Original sign by Dick Porter

• 1948 (September): Rooftop sign constructed by YESCO

• 1949: New neon sign with "shining neon nugget" topper

• 1950: Hermon Boernge's 48' x 48' "gilded age" version

• 1956: Kermit Wayne's wrap-around spectacular

• 1984 (December): Rooftop sign removed during facade remodel

Current Status:

Golden Nugget signs (multiple versions) preserved at Neon Museum Boneyard. Original typographic style used as first "N" in museum entrance sign – testament to iconic design.

Primary Sources:

Library of Congress:

• Carol M. Highsmith Collection: Golden Nugget historic casino sign (Between 1980-2006)

• 4x5 color transparency, high-resolution digital scan available

UNLV Special Collections & Archives:

• Arthur G. Grant Photograph Collection

• Multiple views 1940s-1960s Fremont Street with Golden Nugget

Vintage Photos:

• 1946: Burton Frasher Sr. – Opening day Golden Nugget

• 1948: Golden Nugget with new rooftop sign

• 1950s: "Glitter Gulch" era with Hermon Boernge design

• 1960s: Kermit Wayne wrap-around spectacular in full glory

• 1966: Vintage negative film scans showing iconic yellow/red typography

Contemporary Sources:

• Neon Museum collection photos

• YESCO archives (100+ years of sign history)

• Fremont Street Experience documentation

Movies:

• Vegas Vacation (1997) – YESCO Boneyard featured

• Generic "old Vegas" establishing shots (Fremont Street)

Academic:

• Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven (1972). Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. MIT Press. [Golden Nugget 1956 version exemplifies "decorated shed" concept]

• Hess, Alan. Viva Las Vegas: After-Hours Architecture

• Tom Wolfe (1965). "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't hear you! Too noisy) Las Vegas!!!!" – defining New Journalism essay

Exhibitions:

• 2009-2010: "What We Learned: The Yale Las Vegas Studio" – Yale School of Architecture (traveled to Museum im Bellpark, Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt)

• 2022: "Lighting Up Las Vegas: YESCO Marks a Glittering Century" – Clark County Museum + Neon Museum (May-August)

Commercial Vernacular as Cultural Artifact

Venturi & Scott Brown Thesis (1972):
"The decorated shed is the conventional shelter that applies symbols… The duck is the sculptural symbol. Las Vegas shows the decorated shed to be the norm and the duck to be the exception."

Golden Nugget (1956) as Decorated Shed:

• Basic building structure (generic casino/hotel)

• Wrap-around neon signage as applied ornament (Kermit Wayne's "bull-nose shield")

• Symbolism independent of building form

• Typography + color (yellow/red/blue) convey meaning

• Bigger = better on automobile-scale Strip

Why This Matters for Museums:

• Legitimizes commercial signage as high art

• Continuation of postmodernist architectural discourse

• Walker Evans precedent: Documentary photography of "everyday America" (Depression-era vernacular)

• Challenges modernist hierarchy (heroic monuments vs. "ugly and ordinary")

• Pop Art parallel: Warhol's Campbell's Soup = Venturi's Golden Nugget sign

This photograph positions within several curatorial frameworks:

Decorated Shed Theory The Golden Nugget exemplifies Denise Scott Brown's architectural analysis from Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Kermit Wayne's 1956 wrap-around neon spectacular transformed a generic building into pure signage—the building became "all sign with hardly any building." This is the decorated shed in its purest form.

California-Nevada Mob Migration Guy McAfee, founder (1946), was a corrupt LAPD vice squad captain who fled California and coined the term "The Strip" after LA's Sunset Strip. The Golden Nugget documents the corrupt law enforcement pipeline that built early Las Vegas—California cops, politicians, and gangsters who transformed criminal knowledge into "legitimate" casino operations.

YESCO Craftsmanship Legacy Designed by Hermon Boernge (1950) and Kermit Wayne (1956), both legendary YESCO designers who created the visual language of mid-century Vegas. Their generation—including Betty Willis—were artisans whose work required years of apprenticeship.

Downtown vs. Strip Still operating after 79 years, the Golden Nugget represents Downtown Fremont Street's defiant authenticity against Strip spectacle. This is urban identity documentation.

Relevant for collections focusing on:

• Architectural studies (decorated shed theory)

• American organized crime history

• Commercial vernacular as cultural artifact

• Urban development and identity

• YESCO artisan documentation

Institutional Alignment:

• SFMOMA: Learning from Las Vegas decorated shed exemplar

• Getty Museum: California-Nevada cultural exchange, mob migration history

• Centre Pompidou: American commercial vernacular as cultural critique

• Architecture museums: Venturi/Scott Brown theory in practice

Primary Sources:

1. The Mob Museum : Gangster-built Golden Nugget turns 70 (Nov 8, 2016)

2. Neon Museum Collections : Historic Las Vegas Project - Golden Nugget

3. YESCO History : Our History

4. Library of Congress : Carol M. Highsmith - Golden Nugget sign

5. PBS American Experience: Guy McAfee profile

Academic Sources:

6. Venturi, Robert; Scott Brown, Denise; Izenour, Steven (1972).Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. MIT Press.
7. Neon Museum Las Vegas : Oscar Gonzalez | Neon Bender Oral History
8. Golden Nugget Playing Card History : Hermon Boernge & Kermit Wayne designers

Craftsmanship Sources:

9. Las Vegas Weekly : The Lightbearer – Oscar Gonzalez
10. Las Vegas Sun : Nostalgia for neon remains, but light's nearly out
11. Classic Las Vegas : A Fading Art: Neon Signs

Historical Photos:

12. UNLV Digital Collections: Arthur G. Grant Photograph Collection
13. Vintage Las Vegas: Freemont Street https://vintagelasvegas.com/post/794276804477288449/1952