Posted on 10/18/2025 5:34:32 PM PDT by vespa300
There is, however, one more thing that exists today as it did in 1950.
It is a house — a house now concealed behind a television station, apartment buildings, and the six-lane Desert Inn expressway near Channel 8 Drive. It sits painted as it was in its heyday: a minty seafoam hue, seemingly selected straight from a postwar paint catalogue.
One of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world used this desert house. His time at the house was short, but his influence is still at work more than 50 years after his death.
We call it the Howard Hughes Green House.
The History of the Green House Hughes didn’t build the house, so who did? And when? And why? To say we don’t really know how long this house has been there or why might sound far-fetched, but enigmatic Las Vegas history is funny that way. Many have heard the story of how gangster Bugsy Siegel founded the Flamingo Hotel and “invented” Las Vegas (even though that story is pure fiction) — and yet, when it comes to a real house, we don’t have clear records we can see and touch.
After U.S. Route 91 was built in the 1920s, and before the road became “the Strip” in the late 1940s, there were a few desert homes built along this barren landscape. Silent film actor turned Las Vegas lawyer Paul Ralli owned a home directly off the highway in the 40s. Wilbur Clark, founder of the Desert Inn, bought Ralli’s property, turned it into radio station KRAM, and incorporated it into his hotel.
(Excerpt) Read more at clarkcountymuseumguild.org ...
Cool....thanks for posting. Howard Hughes house in Vegas in the 50s. Talk about monkey business....forget about it.
Houses were a lot more practical and better built back then.
SO WERE REFRIGERATORS!!!!!
I HAVE A REFRIGERATOR IN MY GARAGE-—STILL RUNS GREAT -—ABOUT IT NOV 1965.
I’ll see you your modern 1965 refrigerator, and raise you a 1955 Frigidaire running in the garage. I did replace the door gasket in the mid 1980s. I have no idea how old the light bulb is - it’s the same one that was in it in the mid-1980s when it was passed down to me.
they sure were. And single story. Much better.
Wow...what brand? !
Interesting. The president of TWA owned by Hughes had a desert home near Sedona which I believe is also sealed. It was called Apache fire or something similar.
I was with my birth-parents, pro magician and assistant who kept me during summers, when they parked their VW bus at the end of Las Vegas’ famous strip; 1968 or so. “Stay in here, keep the doors locked and the windows up. We’re checking on a gig and will be right back.”
No problem, as I had the giant waving cowboy, a hundred flashing signs and all kinds of people to ogle at.
Bang Bang Bang! Some crazy-looking old man beating on the sliding door. “Little boy, let me in. I have to get out of here!” No way in hell was that happening. He carried on until a giant brown guy arrived and talked to him gently, then led him away down the sidewalk.
Only then I saw the long haired old man was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. When the folks got back I excitedly related events only to be told to stop making up wild stories. They didn’t get the job so off we went to California.
Much later I learned about Hughes later years, his dementia, his Samoan minders and how they kept having to bring him back to his penthouse after running off.
Pretty sure that was my personal Forrest Gump moment in life.
Are you thinking the old man you encountered was Howard Hughes?
Wow......really?
From an Occam’s Razor viewpoint - right time right place - most likely. Scary old dude popped up in nightmares for years.
Lock your car doors.
Man they didn’t screw around when they got to formulating green paint back there in the fifties…
Yes houses now with open floor plans is what once was called barns.
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