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 divided into “BL. SM. & MACHINE SHOP” and “AUTO REPAIRING,” with the wood yard and coal shed around it. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps Collection; public domain.

There is a short street in Reno called Church Lane that runs between the railroad and West Second Street, and almost nobody has heard of it.

On it stands a low masonry building with a truss roof. For years it had the word GYM painted across the front. Somebody has since painted over it. The university owns it now and uses it for storage.

That building has been, in order: a wood and coal yard office, a blacksmith shop, a brass foundry, a machine shop, an automobile repair garage for about half a century, a gymnasium, and a university storeroom.

One building. It is the whole twentieth century in Reno, stacked up on a lane you drive past without seeing.

Where Church Lane Is

It runs east and west between Bell and Ralston on one end and Stevenson Street on the other — south of West Commercial Row, north of West Second, and tucked up hard against the Southern Pacific right-of-way.

That last detail is the reason the lane exists. It is a service street behind the tracks, and the businesses on it were the kind that needed to be behind the tracks: fuel, iron, freight, repair.

★ And here is a small thing that tells you how obscure it was: Church Lane is not in the 1918 fire insurance map's street index. The lane was there, with buildings on it. The surveyors who mapped every structure in Reno for the insurance companies simply had not got around to indexing it under that name.

The addresses on it run 339, 401, 417½, 425, 427, 429, 431, 431½, 435, 437. Our building is 425.

1901: Wood and Coal

Before there was a building there was a yard.

The Lane wood and coal yard occupied this ground from 1901. That is five years before the building went up, and it is the oldest hard date we have for the site.

Think about what a wood and coal yard was in Reno in 1901. Every house in town was heated by one or the other, and every stove in every kitchen burned one or the other, and it all had to arrive by rail and be broken down and delivered by wagon. A fuel yard beside a railroad spur was not a quaint business. It was infrastructure.

The parcel eventually ran to about forty-five thousand square feet — 223 feet of frontage on Church Lane, running two hundred feet north, with 290 feet abutting the Southern Pacific right-of-way and a spur track running into it.

The coal came off the cars and into the shed without ever touching a street.

1906: Ernest Lane

Ernest Andrew Lane was born in California about 1874 and educated there, and he came to Reno around 1906.

With his brother William he established two firms that ran side by side on this ground for fifty years: the Lane Bros. Wood and Coal Company and the Lane Bros. Machine Shop.

The building at 425 Church Lane went up in 1906, the same year he arrived.

The two brothers lived together at 339 Church Lane — the same short street, a few doors from the shop. They did not commute. They lived in the yard.

Ernest Lane died on 27 November 1936, aged sixty-two, after an illness of two weeks. He was a member of Unity Lodge No. 6 of the Odd Fellows. He left a sister, Mrs. Ruth Kaesar, and his brother William.

27 February 1919: The Document

On the twenty-seventh of February, 1919, the brothers filed a certificate of co-partnership, and it is the single best document in this file — because it catches the business mid-pivot.

Here is what they declared they were doing, in their own filed words:

a general machine shop and brass foundry business, dealers in hardware and automobile supplies, and do general blacksmithing and automobile repairing, under the firm name and style of LANE BROS.

Read that list again slowly, because it is a snapshot of a trade changing hands.

General blacksmithing and automobile repairing are in the same sentence. A brass foundry — which is to say they were casting their own fittings — sits next to dealers in automobile supplies.

In 1919 in Reno, the man who shod your horse and the man who fixed your car were the same man, in the same shop, using a good deal of the same equipment. The forge that bent a wagon tire would bend a fender. The lathe that cut a buggy axle would cut a driveshaft.

Nobody announced the transition. They just added a line to the business certificate.

The filing gives the address as 425 Church Lane, and names both partners as residing at 339.

Reading the Building Off the Map

Fire insurance surveyors drew every building in American towns in extraordinary detail — construction material, roof type, floor type, and what was done inside — because an insurance company needed to know what would burn.

On the 1949 sheet for this block, the masonry building at 425 Church Lane is labelled LANE BROS and split down the middle into two uses:

• BL. SM. & MACHINE SHOP — blacksmith and machine shop. Wood truss roof. Wood and concrete floor.
• AUTO REPAIRING — truss roof, wood and concrete floor, power electric.

So in 1949, thirty years after that partnership filing, the blacksmith shop and the auto shop were still operating side by side under one roof. The horse trade did not end in Reno in 1920. It was still there at mid-century, sharing a wall with the garage.

Around the building the surveyor drew the rest of the operation: a WOOD YARD, a COAL SHED, an office, and a separate AUTO building at 417½ across the lane.

That is the whole concern, on one sheet of paper, drawn by a man who walked it with a notebook.

The Lane Gets Busy, Then Gets Sold

Two things happened to Church Lane in the 1950s that tell you how downtown Reno was changing around this building.

In November 1951 the city opened its third off-street parking lot on the lane — rushed into service in time for Christmas shoppers. A fuel yard's back lot was becoming parking for a retail district.

In July 1955 the council voted to abandon Church Lane, and then backed off. The headline is almost comic: No Abandonment Of Church Lane Scheduled Soon — City Council Back Tracks on Its Action. Somebody still needed the street.

And on 30 May 1956, Reno Newspapers, Inc. bought the Lane property as a site for a new building — the whole forty-five thousand square feet, plus a thirty-five-year lease on about forty-three thousand more of Southern Pacific right-of-way, with the spur track for warehouse use.

Fifty-five years after the Lane brothers put a fuel yard on it, the ground was bought by a newspaper. Which is its own small joke about what replaced coal.

⚠️ Whether the newspaper ever actually built its plant there, I have not confirmed.

Gym

Here is where I have to be careful, because the most recent part of this story is the worst documented.

The account that circulates locally — and it comes from a preservation group discussion rather than from print — runs like this: automobile repair from 1913, lasting fifty-four years until 1967; the building then vacant from 1967 to 1985; and from 1985 in use as the Old College Gym.

I want to flag three things about that.

The 1913 start for auto repair is not confirmed in any document I have found. The earliest hard evidence for the automobile side is the 1919 partnership certificate. 1913 is entirely plausible — it may well be right — but it is not proved.

The 1985 gym date rests on the same unsourced account. A search of the digitised Nevada newspapers returns nothing at all for "Old College Gym." Not one hit.

What is certain is that the word GYM was painted on the front of that building, because people remember it, and it has since been painted over.

So the building's most recent identity — the one living Reno residents actually remember — is the one with the least documentation behind it. That is not unusual. The recent past is always the worst-recorded part of a building's life, because nobody thinks to write down what everybody already knows.

At a Glance: The Lane Building

• What: a low masonry building with a wood truss roof at 425 Church Lane, Reno, on the block between the Southern Pacific right-of-way and West Second Street. Now owned by the University of Nevada.
• ★ 1901: the Lane wood and coal yard is on the ground — five years before the building.
• ★ 1906: the building goes up. Ernest Andrew Lane (b. California c.1874) arrives in Reno the same year and founds, with his brother William, the Lane Bros. Wood and Coal Company and the Lane Bros. Machine Shop. Both brothers live at 339 Church Lane, a few doors away.
• ★★ 27 February 1919: the brothers file a certificate of co-partnership declaring LANE BROS. to be "a general machine shop and brass foundry business, dealers in hardware and automobile supplies, and do general blacksmithing and automobile repairing" at 425 Church Lane. Blacksmith and garage in one sentence.
• The parcel: about 45,000 sq ft — 223 ft of Church Lane frontage, running ~200 ft north to the city parking lot, with 290 ft abutting the Southern Pacific and a spur track running in.
• ★ 1949 fire insurance map, block 102: the masonry building is labelled LANE BROS and divided into "BL. SM. & MACHINE SHOP" and "AUTO REPAIRING" (power electric). Around it: WOOD YARD, COAL SHED, an office, and a separate AUTO building at 417½ across the lane. Blacksmith and garage still side by side at mid-century.
• 27 November 1936: Ernest Lane dies, aged 62, after a two-week illness. Member of Unity Lodge No. 6, I.O.O.F. Survived by his sister Mrs. Ruth Kaesar and brother William.
• November 1951: the city opens its third off-street parking lot on Church Lane, in time for Christmas shoppers.
• July 1955: the council votes to abandon Church Lane, then reverses — "No Abandonment Of Church Lane Scheduled Soon."
• 30 May 1956: Reno Newspapers, Inc. buys the A. Lane Company property as a site for a new building, with a 35-year lease on ~43,000 sq ft of railroad right-of-way. ⚠️ Whether the plant was built there is unconfirmed.
• ⚠️ The later chronology is unverified. The locally circulated account — auto repair from 1913 for fifty-four years to 1967, vacant to 1985, then the Old College Gym — comes from a preservation group discussion, not from print. "Old College Gym" returns no hits in the digitised Nevada papers. The earliest documented automobile work here is 1919.
• Church Lane is not in the 1918 fire insurance street index — the lane existed and had buildings, but had not been indexed under that name.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I go and see it?

It still stands at 425 Church Lane, just west of the old college building on West Second Street. It is university property and in use, so look from the lane. The truss roof and the masonry walls are original; the GYM lettering has been painted out.

What is a brass foundry doing in a blacksmith shop?

Casting its own parts. Before a national supply chain for fittings existed, a machine shop that needed a bushing, a bearing or a valve body in a hurry made one. A small cupola furnace and a sand floor were ordinary equipment in a good shop, and it is one of the clearest markers of a business that expected to solve problems rather than order solutions.

Were blacksmiths really still working next to car mechanics in 1949?

In this building, yes, and the fire insurance map proves it. People assume the automobile killed the blacksmith around 1920. It did not. Farm equipment, wagons, mining gear, ironwork and repairs to things nobody made parts for any more kept forges lit for decades, and the same shop simply ran both trades.

Why is the street called Church Lane?

I do not know, and I would rather say so. The lane is a service street behind the railroad, which is not where you would expect to find a church. It may be a surname. It is worth somebody's time at the county recorder.

What is the building used for now?

The University of Nevada owns it and uses it for storage. Before that, by local account, it was a gymnasium; before that it stood empty; before that it was a garage for about half a century.

Why is the recent history so much vaguer than 1919?

Because a partnership certificate from 1919 had to be filed with the county and printed in the newspaper, and a gym opening in 1985 did not. The older something is, the more likely its existence passed through a system that kept records. Recent decades are frequently the thinnest part of a building's file.

Conclusion

What I like about this building is that it never once got to be important.

It is not on the National Register. No architect is attached to it. Nobody famous worked in it. It is a masonry box with a truss roof on a back lane, and if it were demolished tomorrow the notice would run four lines.

And yet put its uses in order and you have written the history of this town without mentioning a single casino.

Fuel arriving by rail because every house burned wood and coal. A forge, because iron broke and somebody had to fix it. A brass foundry, because you could not order a part. Then the automobile arrives, and rather than a new building and a new trade, the same two brothers simply add a line to their business certificate and start repairing cars in the room next to the forge — and keep doing both for another thirty years. Then a parking lot behind it for Christmas shoppers. Then a newspaper buys the yard. Then it is empty. Then it is a gym. Then it is a university storeroom with the word GYM painted out on the front.

Nobody planned that sequence. Each step was just somebody doing the obvious next thing with a building they already had.

That is how almost all of a city actually gets built. Not by vision — by a shed that was already there and a man who found another use for it.

Ernest Lane came from California in 1906, lived four doors from his shop, cast his own brass, and died at sixty-two of a two-week illness. The building he put up is still standing, still being used, and still has no plaque.

We are always drawn to the places where Nevada's history is still out there to be touched. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

Nearly everything above comes from primary documents. The partnership certificate was filed and printed in the Nevada State Journal on 26 and 27 February 1919; Ernest Lane's obituary ran in the Reno Evening Gazette on 27 November 1936; the sale of the yard was reported in the Nevada State Journal on 30 May 1956; the parking lot and the street-abandonment reversal are from the Reno Evening Gazette of 6 November 1951 and the Nevada State Journal of 28 July 1955. The building's interior arrangement is read directly off the 1949 Sanborn fire insurance map of Reno, sheet 4, block 102, which is a federal public-domain document. The later chronology — the 1913 start, the 1967 closure, the 1985 gym — comes from a Historic Reno Preservation Society community discussion and is flagged throughout as unverified.

• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Library of Congress — explicitly public domain and free to use. If you want to know what was inside a building in your town in 1949, this is where it is written down, room by room. The best research tool in this article.
• Historic Reno Preservation Society — its FootPrints back issues are a genuinely serious body of local scholarship, free online.
• UNR Special Collections and University Archives — for the university's acquisition of the building, and the Reno Gazette-Journal photograph negatives.
• Washoe County Recorder — where the Lane chain of title, and the origin of the name Church Lane, are waiting.
• Reno's Prohibition Tunnels — the same railroad corridor, a few blocks east, and what else was going on underneath it.
• Frederic DeLongchamps: The Mining Engineer Who Built Nevada — the architect-designed Reno that this building is the exact opposite of.