Martin Stern Jr.

Martin Stern Jr. (April 9, 1917 – July 28, 2001) was an American architect who was most widely known for his large scale designs and structures in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is credited with originating the concept of the structurally integrated casino resort complex in Las Vegas.

Martin Stern Jr. was born in New York in 1917. He moved to Los Angeles in the 1930's to work in the movie industry as a studio sketch artist. He graduated from the University of Southern California before briefly working for Paul R. Williams. In 1945, he opened his own practice in 8912 Burton Way, Beverly Hills. His early work in Los Angeles included custom homes and garden apartments like Manchester Gardens, Wilshire-La Cienega Gardens, and Belford Gardens. He also designed apartment and office buildings. He then had a brief hiatus from architecture when he served in the U.S. Armed Forces around 1950.

After his military service, he returned to work. He collaborated with William Cody on the Tamarisk Country Club in Palm Springs, as well as multiple shopping centers, housing tracts, homes and coffee shops. Stern was probably best known in Los Angeles for three Ships coffee shops opened in 1956 and 1957 by Emmet Shipman. One was in Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue in Westwood, another in 1016 La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, and the third in 10705 Washington Boulevard in Culver City.

In August 1947 at the Pueblo Oratorio in the Chapman Park Hotel, Stern married Doris Sonia Nathanson (1919–2008). Doris was the daughter of Abraham Nathanson of Philadelphia. Martin and Doris had two sons. After they divorced, in 1967 Stern remarried to Chantal Maspey, with whom he had a son and a daughter.

Martin Stern Jr. designed the International Hotel, which later became the Las Vegas Hilton, and the first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, two pivotal Martin Stern Jr. projects with entrepreneur Kirk Kerkorian in 1969 and 1973, which set the pace for the transformation of Las Vegas from a low-rise sprawl of motels, clubs and parking lots into an extravagant high-rise metropolis.

The Daily Telegraph (London) wrote of the first Stern and Kerkorian project in its September 2001 eulogy to Stern: "The International, whose tri-form 30-floor tower contained 1,519 rooms and became the most imitated building on the Las Vegas Strip, provided the model for the Bellagio, Treasure Island, Mirage and Mandalay Bay, among other hotels." When it was completed, the International was the largest hotel in the world.

The first MGM Grand, with more square footage than the Empire State Building and in its turn the largest hotel in the world, burned in 1980 in what is considered the worst disaster in Nevada state history. As the Telegraph observed, this loss only seven years after the hotel was completed was devastating to Stern. The MGM Grand was nonetheless rebuilt within eight months and reopened. It was sold in 1985 and rebranded as Bally's and is now Horseshoe Las Vegas.

Construction magnate Del Webb was another major client with whom Stern worked on many projects, including twenty years of elaborate stages of expansion of the Sahara Hotel and Casino between 1963 and 1983.