Mapes Hotel
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The Mapes Hotel was a hotel/casino located in Reno, Nevada, next to the Truckee River on Virginia Street. It was built in 1947, and opened on December 17 of that year. It was the first skyscraper built in the Western United States since the start of World War II. Built in a distinctive Art Deco style, the hotel was a unique high-rise built to combine a hotel and casino, providing the prototype for modern hotel/casinos.
Owned by the Mapes family, the hotel quickly became, for most of the 1950s and 1960s, the premier hotel in Reno. Many celebrities of that era stayed there, including Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable during the filming of The Misfits; Senator Joseph McCarthy, who over a drink in the Lamplighter bar at the bottom floor of the hotel, admitted to a reporter that he did not have a list of communists in America; President Harry Truman and many others. The Sky Room at the top of the Mapes was a famous nightclub and stage where many of the biggest singers and entertainers of the time such as Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle performed; at one point, Sammy Davis, Jr. performed there but was prohibited from staying in the hotel due to segregation. During location shooting for the television series, Bonanza. Many guest stars would reside at the Mapes. It was memorably showcased in a 1961 episode of Route 66, guest starring Walter Matthau. In 1959, Jack Carson appeared on Bonanza, while doing shows in the Sky Room.
The Mapes thrived throughout the 1960s and 1970s but began to face problems competing with more modern casino/hotels in Reno in the 1980s. The Casino closed on December 17, 1982 because of financial difficulties the Mapes family faced after the recession of 1981, and the failure of their other casino in Reno, the Money Tree. The building was allowed to decay as many different owners took possession of the building with plans to revive the casino/hotel, all of which failed. Finally, the Reno Redevelopment Agency took possession of the building in 1996. Despite being listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in the face of much local protest, the city of Reno condemned the building and demolished it on January 30, 2000.
Nothing was done with the lot until the winter of 2001, when an ice rink was put in at the site. The ice rink was set up at the site each winter until 2004, when a park was temporarily put on the lot. Currently, the former Mapes site has been made into a permanent outdoor skating rink. In December 2005, the city was forced to close the rink and thaw the ice before painting over the City of Reno's logo on the rink's base; the dark-colored logo had been absorbing heat from sunlight and thus causing the ice to melt during the day.
