Aqua Hotel, Las Vegas, Ladies Cotton Tee

Description

The property at 1401 South Las Vegas Boulevard (Las Vegas NV 89104) has a layered history, tracing its roots back to the pre-war era and evolving through several incarnations. Originally the site of the Home Motel in the late 1930s (a small auto-court lodging), it suffered a large fire in October 1941 and was rebuilt and rebranded soon after. By the early 1950s the property had reshaped itself into the Aqua Hotel, adopting a modern motor-court aesthetic geared to the booming post-war Las Vegas tourism wave. The Aqua name appears in use by 1953. Its signage—including multiple iterations of neon designs—became visible landmarks along the Strip’s lower end, near the fresher casino-hotel development zones. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Aqua Hotel offered the typical motor-inn amenities of the era: driveway-front parking, hotel-style rooms, a cocktail lounge, restaurant, a small coffee shop, and proximity to the new resort corridor. In the 1980s, reflecting the Strip’s shift toward higher density, high-rise lodging, and the decline of smaller motor courts, the Aqua Hotel was renamed the Shalimar Hotel, and a two-story wing was added in front of the structure. As the Shalimar, the property continued to operate as a modest hotel (not a major resort), retaining its address and offering standard lodging with free parking, a small café or bar, and a pool. Its website lists itself as “Shalimar Hotel of Las Vegas, 1401 Las Vegas Blvd S.” The property’s story is emblematic of a broader Las Vegas narrative—how the motels of the 1940s–60s gave way to larger resort development, yet some still survive in quirky, reduced-scale form. The Aqua/ Shalimar site demonstrates continuity—same parcel, same address—through generations of change, representing both the Strip’s drive-in motel era and its later transition into economy lodging amid towering resorts. Today, the property continues to operate as the Shalimar Hotel.