Pick any street in Las Vegas (North Las Vegas and Henderson included) and drive in either direction. I promise you’ll eventually lock eyes with the infamous cinderblock walls.
What we call cinderblocks or concrete blocks, engineers call concrete masonry units (CMUs).
Ken Nicholson, a civil engineer from VTN— a Las Vegas-based civil engineering firm, explains that other options, like wood fencing seen in other states, just warp in Las Vegas and don’t last long at all. Most of the older neighborhoods that had wood fences eventually made the switch to cinderblock. Nicholson says another reason we see concrete blocks used so much in developments in Las Vegas is because they are manufactured here; lumber isn’t.
Floridians build their homes with concrete blocks to protect them from hurricane damage. You’ll see them around Southern California every so often, but in older neighborhoods, they are hard to notice because they are engulfed in foliage. Palm Springs, California, uses breeze blocks— cinderblocks with geometric cutouts that add a mid-century modern artsy touch to the typical cinderblock walls, making them more palatable.
In Las Vegas, cinderblock walls, inclosing a neighborhood, are part of the tract home special, but their presence expands far beyond our backyards. They are also used to build schools, gas stations, DMVs, hospitals, and toward the center of the valley, some unsightly shopping centers.
Cinderblock Used Thoughtfully
But not all cinderblock shopping centers are offensive. On the southwest corner of Rainbow Boulevard and Warm Springs Road, the shopping center that houses the Sprouts thoughtfully offsets the split-face construction blocks with other veneers so that our eyes don’t become overwhelmed by them. Red brick pillars frame Sprouts’ automatic doors, and to the left and the right of them, there are only a few feet of exposed split face block before gray and cream bricks decorate the rest of the exterior.
In the same shopping center, there are four stand-alone structures that have attached stores. The two that run parallel have the best use of cinderblocks. A portion of the Wendy’s is stuccoed and covered in their classic red, and around the entrance of Daisho Sushi Lounge is gray stucco. Across is a Tide Cleaners and a Supercuts with horizontal wood planks, then a sharp transition to gray cinderblock where the storefronts of The Lash Lounge, Joint Chiropractor, and Alleyway Hotpot are, and on the east edge of the building Rubio’s Coastal Grill picks the wood veneer back up.
The deeper gray used in these two business buildings is less soul-crushing than the standard light gray alternative, and the horizontal metal awnings above every entry point give the façade a facelift. But what really bolsters this plaza up is the use of wood veneer accents. It evokes a sense of desert modernism, which is the only place cinderblock looks intentional.
Eric Strain, architect and owner of Assemblage Studios— an architecture firm in Las Vegas, thoughtfully incorporates cinderblock into his modern building designs. Strain uses the square gray cinder block in his design of the Acero Dental Office as an example of how cinderblock can enhance a building. It doesn’t always take away from it. The Acero Dental Office features a breeze block wall, which was created by rotating some of the blocks in different directions. An elevator tower toward the back of the building is covered in the same square block, and another block wall curves the building. Black metal is used on the top portion of the building and protrudes on one side, making it almost pyramid-like. The mix of materials and the strategic placement of the cinderblocks elevates the blocks themselves and highlights their potential.
Strain says when tract housing became more common in the “90s-2000s, the block wall became much more prevalent.” The overuse of it in repetitive block walls “cheapens the image” of it. His firm uses concrete blocks in commercial projects and custom homes because “aesthetically, it has a nice look.” But most people are just “putting up the walls doing what they’ve always done.” He believes there is no desire to create something worthwhile to look at. Constructing large walls using cinderblock makes the projects “so repetitive, they don’t have to think.” The cinderblock walls are easy and quick to construct, so trying to incorporate a design into them would, in some way, dilute one of the main reasons builders are using them.
Nicholson and Strain both mentioned that another reason cinderblock is a popular choice for developers is that it is affordable and extremely durable. Once block walls go up, even a car crashing into them won’t cause the whole wall to come down. The same obviously cannot be said for wood fencing. Driving around Las Vegas, you are bound to see a corner lot with crumbled cinderblock spanning the width of a front bumper, and some crashes leave behind a car-sized hole. But, Strain says, the hardest part of repairing a cinderblock wall after a car rams into it is finding the same color block to match because the block color varies between productions.
When cars stay in their lane, the concrete blocks last for up to 100 years since the blocks are made from water, sand, and aggregate— crushed stone, gravel, or even recycled cement.
While most of the buildings in Las Vegas aren’t old enough to give the city’s cinderblock a hundred-year checkup, Nicholson says areas like the neighborhoods by Antelope Way and Charleston Boulevard were developed in the 50s when the transition to cinderblock development began. Where other cities were already decently built out by then, the 50s is when Las Vegas began to grow rapidly. This is also when homes started being built with their front yards internal to the subdivisions because it gave homeowners more privacy. That is why when we drive down our main roads, all we see are cinderblock property lines instead of homes, as we would see in places like Long Beach, California. In the 50s, there weren’t development guidelines preventing tract home builders from adding miniature sidewalks next to towering block walls.
Neighborhoods like Spring Valley on the northwest side of Rainbow Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue have recessed outlets in their cinderblock walls for trees, which Nicholson says is one of the first attempts a developer made to add landscaping to a subdivision. But, the trees grew too much, and a majority of them died. As I’ve noticed over the years, those planters sit empty and are occasionally filled with overflowing shopping carts.
The Updated Development Standards
Now, with newer development, Clark County has enacted stricter regulations that require landscaping, so no other areas of town will look like Spring Valley.
In 2024, Clark County updated Title 30, which contains the development codes and guidelines developers must follow when building a neighborhood. Chapter 30.04 of the developmental standards states that for detached sidewalks (sidewalks that have landscape between the walkway and the curb), “a minimum 15-foot-wide area, measured from the back of curb, consisting of 2 landscape strips, 5 feet wide on each side of 5-foot-wide sidewalk shall be provided.” Attached sidewalks, which are sidewalks that are directly against a curb, need 6 feet of landscaping.
Cinderblock Can Work
The Summerlin South Village, The Cliffs, is a newer community that features elaborate landscaping with an almost brick-colored shot blast (cinderblock that is hit with metal so that the little gravel inside shines through) cinderblock walls that are stacked along a curve to flow with the elevation. Passing Grand Canyon Road and Maule Avenue, a mix of artificial turf, rock-covered mounds, and plants shield pedestrians from cars passing by. There are modern legless concrete chairs and bridges as you continue down the hilly sidewalks. If you walk down far enough to Hualapai Way and Sunset Road, you’ll see a cinderblock watch tower with a metal roof. When weather permits, the sidewalks are lively, with dog walkers, bikers, and people who just want to get some fresh air.
The elaborate design creates a sense of place and comfort. It invites you to walk around, and the way the landscaping intentionally protects pedestrians from vehicles makes walking even more doable. By the time you hit Hualapai Way and Russel Road, the landscaping shrinks, and the farther north you travel, the more the roads begin to look more and more like Las Vegas, and pedestrians become rare to see. The west side of Hualapai Way has far more landscaping than the east side, but after a while, it feels like plants were just thrown in their holes because they had to be. No one tried to create a curated walking environment.
When you reach Twain Avenue and Hualapai Way, communities on the west of Hualapai hide their cinderblock walls with stucco and planters full of trees and shrubs. On the east side of Hualapai Way and Desert Inn Road white cinderblock walls face the detached sidewalk with trees and ornamental grass across the street. Even if the cinderblock walls around town were all covered with decorative veneers, it would still feel lifeless without the landscaping.
I passed by a tan stuccoed permitter wall on the north side of Charleston Boulevard. It has electric blue decorative tile with white grout accenting the top portion of the wall, and the base of the wall meets “desert sunset” red decorative rock. It looks just as off-putting as the beige-painted slump block on Tropicana Avenue and Buffalo Drive. The more towards The Strip you go, the more scattered and almost obsolete the plants become. That is when the stock model light gray cinderblock walls with water-stained bases and sporadically placed noncolor-matched paint that was used to cover up graffiti begin to overrun the streets.
Cinderblock Walls in Backyards
Damon Lang, backyard designer and owner of Green Planet Landscaping and Pools, says that before, builders only used the light gray block, which looked “really bad.” But, over the last ten years, they have switched to different colors and more decorative blocks. That is why older developments in the center of town make the newer communities look like architectural masterpieces. Lang says the key is being creative with the walls.
When building a luxury community, developers are able to “trick out” the block and make really cool designs, but they won’t do it for normal neighborhoods. The issue isn’t the cinderblock walls at all. Cinderblock isn’t the enemy. Loveless cold designs are. But, even when the outside of a community is carefully constructed, houses inside the community still have no frill backyard walls.
Luke Knight, a Las Vegas tourist and Los Angeles resident, says he can live with seeing cinderblock walls when he drives around town, but in people’s backyards, they are an eyesore. “Huntington Beach has a lot of tract homes with high cinderblock walls, and all of the backyards in those neighborhoods just kind of had a prison-type feel.” He thinks cinderblock walls have “no flavor.” They are “bland” and “depressing.” He knows cinderblock walls are solid quality construction materials and are essentially “bomber proof.” But the raw block just looks like a “vanilla prison.”
When Lang is working with people to design their backyards, 85% of them say they hate the look of the block wall right off the bat, but this is when their yards are just dirt and cinderblock. Once you add landscaping and a pool, “you’re going to have a lot more eye candy” back there, which softens the look of the cinderblock. Only 20% of people Lang works with cover their block walls with a stucco veneer.
When designing your backyard, stucco veneers add $6,000-$10,000 to the final bill, and other veneers like stone and wood are even more expensive. So, Lang usually gravitates towards using plants to hide the walls. Vines like Star Jasmine can be wired into the walls, and if you “give it a couple of years” to grow, you’re really not going to see the block. You just have to be patient. But, there are so many different approaches to making an area look interesting, he explains, like a gabion wall— the walls of rocks enclosed in metal or outdoor art and sculptures.
The same design improvements that can enhance backyards also add an aesthetic appeal to city streets. Strain says, “If you did landscaping right,” it could really enhance what we see when we are driving around town. He also believes that public art makes a big difference in the aesthetic of the city.
Strain says the city is taking “very small baby steps” towards making Las Vegas a more beautiful city, but it is a slow process. Landscaping and public art are finally being incorporated into areas that are being revitalized, but we still have a long way to go, especially in the older parts of town.
“When you think about the most beautiful places in the world, there is usually a running theme,” Knight says. Santori has blue roofs and white walls, and Santa Barbara has old Spanish buildings downtown. In Las Vegas, our running theme off the Strip is still cinderblock.
