The 12-story Mapes Hotel became the tallest building in Nevada when it burst onto the Reno scene in 1947, at its prime location on the northeast corner of the Truckee River and Virginia Street.

The descendant of a pioneering Reno family, Charles Mapes, Sr., and his wife Gladys bought the parcel and hired architect F.H. Slocombe of Oakland, California to draw up plans for a luxury hotel influenced by the Art Deco style of New York City’s Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.

On opening day, the Mapes family announced, “The hotel is informal in keeping with the western tradition which makes Reno so hospitable. Come in full dress if you want any time…or come in cowboy boots. You will feel equally at home.”
With eight floors of guest rooms plus a lobby, mezzanine, and service floor, the hotel served as a prototype for the vertical hotel casino. Its crown jewel was indisputably the 12th floor Sky Room, with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Truckee River, Virginia Street, and the Sierra Nevada mountains beyond.

At a time when few Reno hotels had their own nightclubs, the Mapes offered dining, dancing, and floor shows as well as gambling areas and cocktail lounges both on the main and top floors.

Many celebrities of that era stayed there, including Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable during the filming of The Misfits. President Harry Truman stayed there 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.

During the 1970s, brothel owner Joe Conforte paid a percentage to the Mapes Hotel bell men as they directed clients to his Mustang Ranch.
In the early days the Mapes presided over a Virginia Street that was just getting started as a vacation destination. Harolds Club was the best known of Reno casinos, but it had no hotel.

Charley Mapes presided over his new property with an iron hand that those who remember him say often held a drink. He watched the tables the way today's eyes-in-the-sky video cameras do. Old friends said Charley, a brawny ex-ranch hand, saw everything and distributed punches or pats on the back with equal vigor.
The 1960 Winter Olympics made the Mapes into an internationally known hotel. The Mapes made Reno into a destination resort.

A room behind the Sky Room became the Winter Olympics Press Club. The Olympic rings graced the wall, and closed-circuit TV - a marvel at the time - brought the events to Reno.

News-wire teletypes chattered, typewriter keys went off like small arms fire and phones jangled merrily every few minutes. The world was watching and the Mapes was its nerve center.

Walter Cronkite, Herb Caen, Pete Rozelle, Red Smith, Dave Condon and Jim Murray lined up at the bar, paid for by Charley Mapes and open 24 hours.

Debbie Reynolds cut the teletype tape to open the joint. Sammy Davis Jr. danced. Mickey Rooney joked with the newspapermen.
A national recession stung Reno in the 1980s. All good things come to an end. On Dec. 17, 1982 - exactly 35 years after it opened - the hotel closed.

Despite a vigorous campaign by preservationists to adaptively reuse the Mapes Hotel, the Reno City Council voted in September 1999 to demolish the building.

It was imploded the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, January 30, 2000.