LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Enterprise tycoon, aviator, moviemaker, and philanthropist Howard Hughes left an enduring mark on Las Vegas, from shopping for resorts on the Las Vegas Strip, airports and acres of land now often known as Summerlin to investing in native information.
Throughout his time in Sin Metropolis, he purchased a home situated proper behind Channel 8. A home that has many myths and legends surrounding it, very like its famed former proprietor.
Hughes was a frequent customer to Las Vegas within the Nineteen Forties and Nineteen Fifties and is claimed to have lived in a small ranch-style dwelling within the tv station’s car parking zone, informally often known as “The Hughes House,” for a brief stretch between the spring of 1953 and early 1954. On the time, it was adjoining to the Desert Inn Lodge and stood on the grounds of what was referred to as the Solar Villa Motel, and later the Blair Home Motel.
The Howard Hughes home is situated proper behind 8 Information Now’s studio. (KLAS)
Whereas some say Hughes did the truth is dwell in the home, Geoff Schumacher, writer of “Howard Hughes: The Power, Paranoia and Place Intrigue,” advised 8 Information Now in an interview in Oct. 2024, “We don’t believe that Howard Hughes actually slept in the house, we don’t believe he had people over where whether that be women or others.”
Howard Hughes: The person behind the magic at KLAS
Hughes leased the home in 1953 and would maintain conferences there, and later purchased the house and KLAS from the tv station’s founder, Hank Greenspun. The story goes that Hughes liked motion pictures and wished them to play all night time and into the morning. Nevertheless, he would usually go to sleep in his lodge suite whereas watching the movies airing on KLAS.
He would then place late-night calls to the station’s proprietor, Greenspun, to pester him into restarting the film, only for him. Greenspun, a longtime buddy of Hughes, was exasperated after some time and instructed that Hughes merely purchase the station. Hughes did simply that, for $3.6 million.
A blowup of a photograph of Howard Hughes behind him H.M. “Hank” Greenspun, writer of the Las Vegas Solar, talks as he’s interviewed for the ABC-TV information particular In Search of Howard Hughes- An unauthorized Biography”, which was televised nationally February 5, with the phase that includes Greenspun deleted.
When he grew to become the proprietor, he ordered the station to restart motion pictures so he might watch the components he had missed. Hughes invested tons of of 1000’s of {dollars} into KLAS and turned it right into a state-of-the-art broadcast facility. At one level, he reportedly wished to construct the studio on wheels so the station may very well be moveable.
At this time in historical past: Howard Hughes, who modified the face of Las Vegas, dies
In 1974, the TV station expanded, they usually saved the home within the again car parking zone. The home even made it to the large display screen within the basic Las Vegas mobster flick “Casino.”
FILE – Howard Hughes smiles as he sits within the witness chair earlier than studying an announcement on the Senate Battle Investigation Subcommittee listening to in Washington, Nov. 15, 1947. Hughes performed a supporting position within the CIA’s effort to retrieve a part of a sunken Soviet submarine in 1974 with a specialised ship that was constructed to retrieve the sub and was referred to as the Hughes Glomar Explorer. (AP Picture/File)
Hughes had the home hermetically sealed when he left city in 1954, and it wasn’t reopened till the frantic seek for his will after he died in 1976.
$1.5M accepted to maneuver Howard Hughes’ Las Vegas dwelling
In October 2024, Clark County Commissioners accepted $1.5 million {dollars} to assist transfer the house to the Clark County Museum in Henderson.
