The Riverside Hotel, Reno

The hotel begins with a river crossing

Charles Fuller established a bridge at a Truckee River ford in late 1859 and added rough lodging for travelers and miners. Myron Lake acquired the operation in 1861 and developed the Lake House. When the inn burned in 1868, rebuilding maintained the crossing’s importance as a place to stop, trade, and stay.

William Thompson, Lake’s son-in-law, adopted the Riverside name in 1888. Harry Gosse later replaced the older wooden structure with a brick hotel offering such modern amenities as an elevator and long-distance telephone service. A 1922 fire created another break in the site’s architectural history.

George Wingfield purchased the vacant property and commissioned architect Frederic DeLongchamps to design a new hotel. The building completed in 1927 is the historic structure that survives. Its continuity is with the site and hotel name, not with the walls of the earliest inn.

A luxury hotel in Reno’s divorce economy

The six-story 1927 Riverside stood beside the courthouse and river bridge. Its position was particularly useful to people establishing Nevada residence in order to seek a divorce. Staying in Reno meant more than appearing for a single court appointment; temporary residents needed accommodation, meals, and a social life.

The Riverside brought those needs together in a prestigious downtown hotel. Its proximity to legal offices and the courthouse connected private life with the city’s hospitality business. The hotel was a destination before it became a fully developed casino and showroom operation.

This context explains why gambling fit into an existing identity when Nevada legalized it in 1931. The Riverside already served people spending time and money in Reno. Gaming added another activity to a hotel whose reputation rested on residence, dining, and social connections.

The Riverside Buffet and the growth of gambling

Roulette and twenty-one appear among the Riverside’s early documented games after legalization. Wingfield initially held the license. From the end of 1933, Nick Abelman, Steve Pavlovich, and Bert Riddick leased the gaming area and operated the Riverside Buffet and casino, linking food and bar service with gambling.

The Buffet name should not be mistaken for a description of a later self-service meal format. Here it identified a historical operating phase within the hotel. Ownership of the building and the group running the gaming space were separate relationships.

Mert Wertheimer’s postwar operation increased the casino’s scale. A specialist licensing reconstruction lists ten slots and one each of blackjack, craps, and roulette in May 1949. By August 1951 it lists 105 slots, four craps games, two roulette games, and ten blackjack games. These are dated licensing descriptions, not a single inventory applicable to the entire Riverside history.

Fine dining and national entertainers

The 1950 addition brought a theater-restaurant and swimming pool into the property’s expanded resort offering. Ted Lewis opened the new entertainment venue, and Frank Sinatra headlined in August 1951. The Riverside competed with Reno’s Mapes and Golden for nationally recognized acts, making the city part of a wider entertainment circuit.

A contemporary August 9, 1951 newspaper report places Sinatra at the Riverside for a two-week engagement before a planned Desert Inn date in Las Vegas. The same account discusses his intention to seek a Nevada divorce so he could marry Ava Gardner. In one episode, the Riverside’s showroom business and Reno’s divorce celebrity culture intersected.

Dining had a history of its own. The Historic Reno Preservation Society reproduces menus demonstrating formal meals across different eras. Its account of a September 1955 Theatre Restaurant dinner includes a champagne cocktail, cold vichyssoise, roast rack of lamb for two, vegetables, dessert, and wine, at a reported total of $25 before the tip. This is one dated meal description, not a price or menu for every period.

The house musicians mattered alongside visiting stars. Eugene Isaeff’s obituary records his work as a trombonist in the Riverside’s Bill Clifford Orchestra from 1957 until his move to Harolds Club in 1962. That provides a glimpse of the continuing musical labor behind the headline program.

A glamorous operation under financial pressure

The hotel passed through ownership and leasing arrangements that separated real estate, gaming, and entertainment. By the early 1960s, heavy debt payments were consuming operating income. The federal decision in Spector v. Mermelstein describes approximately $37,500 in monthly mortgage payments and emergency financing efforts during 1962.

A proposed Teamsters Pension Fund refinancing was intended to buy existing mortgages at a discount and reduce monthly payments. It was therefore a response to financial distress, not simply money for an ambitious new expansion. The casino entered bankruptcy late in 1962 amid rapid changes in control.

Entertainment could also bring liabilities. A Nevada Supreme Court case describes a new owner’s rejection of existing performance contracts for the Vagabonds and the Novelities following a 1964 sale. The musicians’ union assessed damages and placed the hotel on its National Defaulters List. The dispute shows how a showroom depended on contracts and labor relationships as well as the ability to attract an audience.

The 1967 shutdown and Jessie Beck’s return

In September 1967, gaming agents seized crooked dice from a Riverside craps table. The gambling operation shut down, and the Gaming Commission revoked corporate and individual licenses in December. The event was a serious regulatory failure, but the surviving account does not establish that every employee or owner participated in wrongdoing.

An auction followed in 1968. Jessie Beck’s 1971 purchase and renovation produced the most significant later revival, and her name became attached to the casino’s public identity. The distinction between a catalog’s date range for Jessie Beck material and the date of the renewed public operation is important when interpreting chips and other objects.

The property changed hands again through the 1978 Harrah’s/Overland transaction. A labor record places the incoming operation’s possession at approximately 5 p.m. on April 21, after Gaming Commission approval the previous day. Staffing and management changed substantially. What can look like a simple name change in a timeline was a real transition for the people working in the hotel.

Chips record the changes of identity

The Riverside’s objects are most useful when kept in their operating phases. Earlier Hotel Riverside material, Jessie Beck’s issues, and Pick Hobson-era pieces should not be treated as one undifferentiated collection. Order cards, chips, tokens, matchbooks, and postcards can help connect the visible name to a period of use.

The Jessie Beck material includes Small Crown chips and documented varieties with mismatched or duplicated designs. Later Pick Hobson records include their own chip issues, tokens, and advertising objects. Catalog entries count known varieties rather than total lifetime production, and a surviving home-use group does not establish the number that circulated on a casino floor.

The UNR Charles and Christine Beck Papers preserve photographs and ephemera associated with Jessie’s Riverside. Such collections help place the objects back into a human and business history instead of treating them only as denomination-and-color lists.

A casino closes; an artists’ community begins

The casino ended its final operating phase in 1986 after bankruptcy under Pick Hobson. The hotel and restaurant continued until November 1987. These are different endings, and neither should be confused with the later preservation and conversion of the building.

Reno took possession in 1997 after years of negotiations. The newer addition was removed, while the historic 1927 building was retained. Redevelopment created thirty-five affordable artists’ lofts and ground-floor commercial and arts spaces, reopening the building in 2000.

The Riverside therefore offers a different ending from many demolished casinos. Its survival preserves the form of a hotel built for Reno’s divorce economy, even though the casino and showroom business is gone. The site’s long history joins transportation, temporary residence, entertainment, financial failure, and adaptive reuse in one place beside the Truckee River.