Alright, look to your left-that’s the Riverside Hotel. These days it’s apartments and artist studios, but if you want to find the spot that put Reno on the map, you’re standing right in front of it.
Picture the scene back in 1859: a rough log building here, run by a guy named C.W. Fuller, feeding and sheltering gold-seekers-all those folks rushing *east* for a little something called the Comstock Lode. So, instead of chasing dreams in California, a wave of hopefuls was heading this way, and this spot became ground zero for Reno’s first boom.
Things only got more interesting from there. Myron Lake grabbed hold of this property in the 1860s and ran a hotel called Lake’s House until the 1880s. After he passed, his daughter and son-in-law took over and renamed it the Riverside. Later, Harry Gosse gave it a brick makeover, but unfortunately, fire had other plans. By the time George Wingfield-a local powerbroker with deep pockets and, how do I say it, a creative approach to hospitality-got involved, the stakes had gone way up.
The Riverside you see now was dreamt up in 1927 by Frederic DeLongchamps, Nevada’s most prized architect and a former mining engineer who clearly knew how to build things to last. Six stories tall-practically a skyscraper by local standards back then-the Riverside showed off flashy red bricks with cream Gothic details. For a few years, it was the tallest thing in Nevada until another hotel stole the title four years later.
Here’s where the plot thickens: Once Nevada’s divorce laws went liberal in 1931, the Riverside became *the* address for folks hoping to ditch a spouse with efficiency and a splash of style. Wingfield slapped a massive neon sign on the roof-subtlety not being his thing-blazing “Riverside” across the skyline for every divorce-seeker (and newspaper reporter) to find. The newspapers basically set up camp here. “Renovation,” they called the divorce scene. Between the celebrities, the legal eagles, and the heartbreak, this hotel was headline city. Even writer and congresswoman Clare Boothe wound up here, shivering through a blizzard in 1929, only to get a closet-sized room because her suite was double-booked. So much for VIP treatment.
Suites here were decked out for the well-heeled, with actual kitchenettes, connecting rooms for kids and staff, and, get this-refrigerators cooled by circulating brine from the basement. That was the luxury version of climate control in the roaring twenties.
The casino? That’s another chapter. Big names ran games day and night, the kind of place where fortunes-and sometimes reputations-could get lost fast. Wingfield opened a bank in the lobby, and a few enterprising casino operators figured out they could fleece more visitors in the vault than at the tables. At the Riverside, a little luck could make-or break-you overnight. The casino changed hands, expanded, survived scandals (including a dice-cheating debacle that cost them their gaming license), and even brought in the first hotel pool in town, before finally closing for good in the mid-80s.
So, this spot really is Reno in a nutshell: wild swings of luck, colorful characters, and a knack for reinvention.
Ready for Comstock Hotel & Casino? Just walk northwest for 6 minutes.
