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| Mapes site in February 2000 |
When I arrived in Reno in the early 1980s, one of the most impressive structures in the city was the art-deco-styled Mapes Hotel on South Virginia Street, adjacent to the Truckee River.
With its logo sign depicting two cowboys (who formed an M) and two-tone white concrete and red-brick exterior topped with neat spires, the 12-story hotel had a certain “coolness” factor.
The hotel was still open when I came to town. I recall friends telling me it was where the movie stars stayed while filming “The Misfits” in 1961 and it had once been the tallest building in the state.
I remember riding the elevator to the Sky Room, just to see the view, and just wandering through the place soaking in the smoky ambience.
Then, about a year after I moved to Reno, it abruptly closed. At the time, I was a reporter at the Reno newspapers and wrote a few stories about the efforts to sell it. I remember even getting a tour of the shuttered hotel on the one-year anniversary of its closing with a bank official and writing a piece about the property’s uncertain future.
In my story, I compared the old hotel to Blanche DuBois, a character in Tennessee Williams’ classic play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” who famously had proclaimed, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The same was true for the hotel.
Interestingly, while the hotel had looked a bit old-fashioned with its Art Deco design—at least to the 20-something me—it really wasn’t all that old when it closed. The Mapes had been built in 1947—only about 35 years before it went out of business.
History books, such as Patty Cafferata’s excellent "The Mapes Hotel and Casino: The History of Reno’s Landmark Hotel," note that the property was the brainchild of wealthy rancher Charles Mapes Sr., who, in 1937, purchased the east corner lot on North Virginia and First streets.
It was his intention to build a fine hotel on the property to honor his father, George, who, he believed, had once operated a grain store on the site. Unfortunately, Mapes died before he had a chance to build the hotel and the other family members delayed construction with the outbreak of World War II.
Immediately after the war ended, Charles Mapes Jr., along with his mother, Gladys, and sister, Gloria, moved ahead with the project. The old federal building and post office sitting on the site was demolished and, in January 1946, work began on the brick and concrete structure that would combine an elegant Art Deco design with modern building techniques.
In planning the hotel, Charles Mapes Jr. specifically decided it would be a dozen stories because that would make it the tallest building in the state—and definitely taller than anything in Las Vegas at the time.
According to Cafferata, the younger Mapes also reasoned that he could keep that distinction for awhile because no casino would ever build a 13-story tower (13 being an unlucky number) and erecting a 14-story building would be considerably more expensive.
The Mapes Hotel officially opened on December 17, 1947 with much fanfare. In addition to a full house of locals, the hotel’s guests that night include actor Johnny Weissmuller (star of the "Tarzan" movies) and San Francisco columnist Herb Caen.
Over the decades, the Mapes served as the host hotel for the cast of "The Misfits," including Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift. It also presented performances by various prominent entertainers of the era, ranging from Mae West to Sammy Davis Jr.
Additionally, over the years many celebrity guests stayed at the Mapes, including John Wayne, Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra. As Reno's toniest joint, it played host to a number of high profile promotions, film premieres and other special events.
The party, however, came to an sudden and unexpected end on December 17, 1982. Charles Mapes Jr. had invested heavily in another downtown Reno casino, the Mapes Money Tree, which had failed, and he had been forced into bankruptcy.
The hotel’s fate remained uncertain for another 18 years as many proposals came and went. Finally, the city of Reno bought the property for $4 million with plans to convert it to a timeshare project.
When that failed to materialize, the Reno City Council voted in 1999 to demolish the hotel—despite the fact that there were other proposals on the table and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In spite of considerable local opposition, the council moved quickly to implode the building—even though it had no immediate plan for what to do with the site (it has since been used as an urban park and, at times, as a seasonal ice skating rink).
The structure was destroyed on January 30, 2000. It was the first building on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s List of Eleven Most Endangered Sites to ever be demolished.
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