KVIG Informative

In 1954, Nevada’s first architect of national renown designed a subdivision so Black families shut out of segregated Las Vegas housing could buy new homes of their own. The 148-house Berkley Square district he built has stood for seven decades and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 — but Las Vegas’ own preservation planners say that federal listing leaves the neighborhood only minimally protected, the same gap now facing other historic districts as land values climb across the city.

Architect Paul Revere Williams designed Berkley Square in what is now Las Vegas’ Historic Westside, according to the Nevada Preservation Foundation. Williams, who lived from 1894 to 1980, became the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, the same source states.

The subdivision was financed primarily by Thomas L. Berkley, an Oakland, California, attorney, along with fellow financiers J.J. Byrnes and Edward A. Freeman, according to the Nevada Preservation Foundation. The project was sponsored by the Veterans Administration and built to Federal Housing Administration design standards, the same source states. Construction was officially recorded May 17, 1954, and produced 148 homes on 22 acres, according to the foundation, which credits Harry L. Wyatt with supervising construction.

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A federal listing, but not local protection

The homes used a Contemporary Ranch style that varied by roof line, veranda design and facade, according to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places database, which lists Berkley Square under reference number 09000846 with a period of significance running from 1950 to 1974 and significant construction years of 1954 and 1955. The database credits both Williams and the firm Burke and Wyatt as designers, and lists the district’s areas of significance as architecture, community planning and development, and Black heritage.

Berkley Square joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, according to the Nevada Preservation Foundation, which describes the district’s architectural character as still largely unchanged since construction.

That federal listing does not guarantee protection. The City of Las Vegas’ Historic Properties & Neighborhoods Preservation Plan Element — adopted as part of the Las Vegas 2020 Master Plan and last revised in August 2010 — states that the Berkley Square and Las Vegas High School neighborhood historic districts are both listed on the National Register only, which the plan says provides very limited protection for historic resources. Local designation, by contrast, requires the city’s Historic Preservation Commission to review any work needing a building permit inside district boundaries, according to the same plan.

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The city’s plan does not name a specific threat to Berkley Square itself, but it does warn that the Las Vegas High School Neighborhood Historic District — held to the same National Register-only status — is changing rapidly with new development and faces the threat of delisting, according to the plan. The document warns more broadly that rising land values and rapid growth threaten historic neighborhoods across Las Vegas.

Seventy years after Williams put his name on a subdivision built to give Black Las Vegans a foothold in homeownership, that foothold still rests on a federal listing that the city’s own planners say cannot stop a demolition permit. Local designation would change that. Nothing in the city’s own preservation plan says that designation is coming.