Nevada State Hospital

The Nevada State Insane Asylum opened on July 1, 1882, three miles east of Reno and was later known as the Nevada State Hospital. The state built the asylum and acquired a one-sixth interest in the nearby Sullivan Ditch. Its first building was a four-story Second Empire-style structure designed by Andrew F. Mackay and Gotth Haist of Virginia City, with room for 200 patients. The asylum was largely self-sufficient, operating as a working farm where staff and patients cultivated alfalfa fields, orchards, and gardens using water from the Sullivan Ditch, along with poultry yards and a dairy. Support buildings included barns, a boiler plant, laundry facilities, an ice house, machine shops, a morgue, and a cemetery, and a river-powered generator supplied electricity. As the patient population grew, the state added new buildings and remodeled existing ones, many designed by prominent local architects including Frederic Delongchamps, Edward Parsons, Ray Hellman, Albert Alegre, and Weldon Harrison. The original building was condemned in the 1950s and demolished in 1960.

Sparks, Nevada · United States