News

The Poeville Fire burning on the east face of Peavine Mountain above Reno, Nevada, 27 June 2020
Twenty-Five Dollars a Ton: Poeville on Peavine Mountain
Above: the Poeville Fire burning on the east face of Peavine Mountain above Reno, photographed on the afternoon of 27 June 2020 by Ken Lund (CC BY-SA 2.0). The fire... Read more...
Hamburger System No. 1: The Diner That Came by Rail
Hamburger System No. 1: The Diner That Came by Rail
In 1947 a building arrived in Reno on a railroad flat car. Not materials for a building. The building. It came off the Virginia & Truckee tracks behind a lot... Read more...
Overview of the Peleg Brown Ranch buildings facing northeast, 12945 Old Virginia Road, Reno, photographed by Martin Fisher for the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS NV-25
Brown Station: The Ranch Under South Virginia Street
Above: the Peleg Brown Ranch buildings, facing northeast. Photographed by Martin Fisher for the Historic American Buildings Survey, HABS NV-25, as part of the 1994 record made before an elevated... Read more...
Detail of the 1949 Sanborn fire insurance map of Reno, sheet 4, block 102, showing the LANE BROS building at 425 Church Lane divided into blacksmith and machine shop and auto repairing, with the wood yard and coal shed around it
Wood, Coal, Brass and Gasoline: The Lane Building on Church Lane
Above: the building itself, drawn from life. A detail of the 1949 Sanborn fire insurance map of Reno, sheet 4, block 102 — 425 Church Lane labelled LANE BROS and... Read more...
The Turkey Pen in Right Field: Governors Bowl and the Man Who Built It
In 1930 a man who fixed cars for a living bought four acres of river-bottom flat halfway between Reno and Sparks and built the best baseball field in Nevada on it. His name was Jack Threlkel. He owned the Reno Garage, and he had been paying for Reno ball teams out of his own pocket through the 1920s, the way a certain kind of businessman did in a certain kind of town. What he built had a wooden grandstand, and it was reportedly the only grass-covered ball field in the... Read more...
The House That Was Never Built There
There is a house in Combs Canyon, on the west side of Carson City, that should not be there. You see it from the road at the bottom of the canyon: a long, low, single-storey house with a porch running the whole width of its front, carried on turned posts. There is a round opening set high in the gable. There is a tall brick chimney with a corbelled cap. The roof is wood shingle, worn down to the grain. It is a nineteenth-century house. I will show you how... Read more...
Art Nouveau lily pad table lamp, c. 1930 to 1940, giving warm low light at eye level
How to Make a Dark or Depressing Room Feel Better: A Designer's Fixes That Do Not Require Painting It White
If you have typed "depressing room" or "depressing bedroom" into a search bar, you are standing in a room that makes you feel worse than it should, and you want... Read more...
Magnavox Astro-Sonic console stereo and record player in a walnut lowboy cabinet
Magnavox Astro-Sonic Console Stereos: Models, How to Date One, and What They Are Worth
The Magnavox Astro-Sonic is the console stereo most Americans picture when they picture one at all: a long walnut or pecan cabinet, a lid that lifts on a record changer,... Read more...
Basque sheepherder camped on the range, Dangberg Ranch, Douglas County, Nevada, photographed by Arthur Rothstein, March 1940
The Road Named for an Oven Nobody Can Find
Above: a Basque sheepherder camped on the range at the Dangberg Ranch, Douglas County, Nevada, photographed by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration in March 1940. It is not... Read more...
The House That Students Built: Alpha Tau Omega on University Terrace
In 1914 they recruited members by meeting the trains and carrying arriving students' luggage. In 1928 they had 150 men and 20 beds, so they sold $10,000 in secured six per cent bonds to their own alumni, bought five lots on a hill for $2,750, and hired one of their own to design it. It is the first fraternity-built house at the University of Nevada, it is on the National Register, and it is the only part of Reno's student quarter still standing. Read more...
The House with the Turret: 829 North Center Street and the Atchesons
A grocer from Maine paid $450 for the lot in 1895 and hired the university's own architect to build him a house with a fish-scale turret. A boy from Belfast and an orphan raised at Sweetwater bought it in 1943. Their grandson invented the opinion poll in Reno by reading the voltage. Their great-grandson was born in it and rented its rooms to students. I lived in it from 2008 to 2011. It was demolished in June 2020. Read more...
Center Street, then University Avenue, from the University of Nevada gates in 1913, the turret of 829 at right. 1913 Artemisia yearbook, University of Nevada, public domain; scan by UNR Libraries via the Internet Archive.
The Atcheson House: Four Generations on Center Street
A Belfast cattleman's widow bought it in 1943. Her grandson wired up the power company and married the dean's daughter from two doors down. Their son rented it to students... Read more...