Scott over at Around Carson recently took some pictures of some minor downtown demolition and I hoped I might have an old picture of the place. I dug through the e-files and thought I found one until I look at the street sign on the right. Third and Fall Streets?

Courtesy of the Nevada State Library and Archives.

After a little time on Google Maps and Google Images, I finally figured out that this building doesn’t exist anymore. The White House Hotel literally stood in the center of Carson City for decades, stretching from the horse and buggy era through Model T’s (below) up until the Space Age. The above picture was probably around the very late 1960s or early 1970s, just before the area was razed so to build the Capital Plaza in downtown Carson City (could the inscription say “April 69″). The car on the left has one of the well-known “Nevada 1969″ blue license plates and the “OR” as the first characters indicates the owner registered the car in what was then Ormsby County.

Courtesy of the Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection developed by Scott Schrantz.

What happened to the White House Hotel? The building, trees, streets and other surrounding buildings were demolished in the 1970s to make room for the Capital Plaza that is book ended by the Nevada State Capital Building to the north and the Nevada State Legislature Building to the south (the new Supreme Court Building would open decades later).

I went for a bike ride today and tried to capture Third and Fall Streets today in the 21st Century. The below is near where the photographer may have stood when he/she took the first picture from the 1960s/70s. To the right center is about where the hotel stood, and if you look straight west, you can barely see where Third Street ends on Carson Street.

This is the same bit of land from the northwest looking southeast and is near the site of the old White House Hotel. The intersection of Third and Fall Streets was close to the flag pole in the back center of the picture. The Nevada Supreme Court Building in on the left and the Nevada State Legislature is on the right.

So the land that once held the Carson City White House Hotel is now surrounded by buildings representing Nevada’s three branches of state government. Funny how it worked out that way.