THE GLASS POOL INN, FORMERLY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Oh how we wish we had visited this place.

It was a two-story motel at the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip with an above-ground swimming pool featuring seven portholes. The portholes were designed to “tempt weary travelers arriving after their long, dusty drive.” They also made for some great photo opportunities.

It just kills me that I visited Las Vegas dozens of  times while it was still around and never even noticed it or if I did, I’ve long since forgotten. I love the way this article makes me sentimental for something I never even experienced. It reads like a novel. Someone should turn this entire story—the husband and wife owners, the landmark Vegas building, the use of the hotel in several TV and film shoots (including COPS), the sting operation, into a movie.

The writer of the piece sums it up nicely: “[The Glass Pool Inn] lives on in my daydreams, and I’m glad for it. I think of the long, hot  summer of 1999, when local bands played at poolside. They’d play their sets and then, after the instruments were packed away, the musicians would leap in the pool and peer out the windows. Even at the very end of its operational life, the Glass Pool was doing the job it was designed to do.”

And then to add insult to injury, someone stole the old sign before the Museum of Neon could get to it! It’s not like it was hottest pool in Vegas, but it had its place.

Click here to check out some Las Vegas pools that do still exist.