What to See in Reno - Top Sights and Attractions

Arena in Reno, Nevada. The Reno Events Center is a 7,000-seat multi-purpose arena, located in downtown Reno, Nevada, that was constructed in January 2005.

It was the home to the Reno Bighorns of the NBA G League from 2008 to 2018 and to the Reno Barons of the Western Indoor Football Association during their short lived 2011 season.

Along with being a basketball and indoor football venue, it hosts boxing matches and concerts by a wide range of artists.

In 2012 and 2013, the Events Center hosted the NBA D-League Showcase, featuring all of the NBA Development League's teams over a four-day period in early January.

It has also hosted tour stops on the PBR's Built Ford Tough Series.

From 2016 to 2019, the arena hosted the Big Sky men's and women's basketball tournament.

In 2019, the arena was the home of the Reno Express of the new American West Football Conference.^[2]

Hotel in Reno, Nevada. Circus Circus Reno is a hotel and casino located in Downtown Reno, Nevada. It anchors a network of connected hotel-casinos in the downtown Reno core that includes Silver Legacy Reno and Eldorado Reno and are owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment. It includes a 1,620 room hotel and a 66,515 sq ft casino which features free circus acts on a regular basis throughout the day over the midway which also offers 33 carnival games.

It is the second-largest hotel in downtown Reno (and third-largest in the Reno area overall) by number of rooms.

Previous owners of Circus Circus Reno were Mandalay Resort Group, formerly known as Circus Circus Enterprises (1978–2005) and MGM Resorts International, formerly known as MGM Mirage (2005–2015).^[3]

Land-grant university in Reno, Nevada. The University of Nevada, Reno is a public land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada. It is the state's flagship public university and primary land grant institution. It was founded on October 12, 1874, in Elko, Nevada.

Founded as Nevada's land-grant university, the University of Nevada, Reno is built on the belief that access to education and knowledge is essential to human progress. Part of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the university has more than 21,000 students and is home to the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, Cooperative Extension and NCAA Division I Wolf Pack Athletics. Through its commitment to student success, world improving research, and outreach benefiting the communities and businesses of Nevada, the university delivers on its land-grant mission across the state and around the world.

The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. According to the National Science Foundation, the university spent $144 million on research and development in 2018, ranking it 139th in the nation.

The campus is home to the large-scale structures laboratory in the College of Engineering, which has put Nevada researchers at the forefront nationally in a wide range of civil engineering, earthquake and large-scale structures testing and modeling.

The state's first medical school, the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, is on the campus in Nevada's major urban center in Reno and a health network that extends to much of rural Nevada. The medical school includes 16 clinical departments and five nationally recognized basic science departments. The university is also home to the Donald W. Reynolds School of Journalism, which has produced six Pulitzer Prize winners.^[16]

Church in Reno, Nevada. The First United Methodist Church is a Methodist church that was founded in 1868 in Reno, Nevada. In 1868 the first meetings were held in the local schoolhouse on the corner of what is now First and Sierra Streets. In 1871 The first church was erected and dedicated on Sierra Street between First and Second Streets. In the early 1900s the wood-framed church was moved to the back of the lot and a new brick building was added to it. And finally in 1925 plans for a new building were made. Designed by Wythe, Blaken, and Olson of Oakland, the church is one of the first poured concrete buildings in Reno and utilizes Gothic Revival architectural themes. The corner stone for the current historical building was placed in 1926, with the building being dedicated in December of that same year. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983; the listing included two contributing buildings. The second building is a parish house designed by local architect Donald Parsons and built in c.1840. In 1965 another addition was done to add on what is currently the fellowship hall, and Sunday school class rooms.

The church's congregation was established in 1868, and its establishment was organized by Thomas McGrath, a Methodist Reverend. At the time it was the first organized church in Reno. The congregation currently has almost 400 members^[17]

Theater in Reno, Nevada. The Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts is a theater located in Reno, Nevada. It was designed by the Oklahoma City architectural firm of Bozalis, Dickinson and Roloff as a concrete structure with a distinctive gold geodesic dome roof. The facility was completed in 1967 with 987 seats on the main level and 513 seats in a balcony, totaling to 1,500. The co-founder of Temcor, the project's contractor, was Don Richter, a student of Buckminster Fuller, developer of the geodesic dome concept. Temcor had built several gold-anodized aluminum domes before the Pioneer, and was responsible for more than 5000 dome projects.

Originally to be called the Apollo Theater, the Pioneer took its name from a 1939 statue of a pioneer family by Byron S. Johnson, salvaged from the Old State Building, which was demolished to make way for the new facility. Unofficially, the dome was called the "Golden Turtle." It consists of a 500-panel aluminum shell on an inner steel frame, which is in turn supported by reinforced concrete arches. The orchestra level of the theater is depressed below ground level, allowing the roof to nearly touch the ground at the corners.

The Washoe County Fair and Recreation Board, which was responsible for the project, was particularly taken with Casa Mañana in Fort Worth, Texas, resulting in the selection of the domed concept. The Pioneer Center was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.^[18]

Main library. The Downtown Reno Library is the main library of the Washoe County Library System, at 301 S. Center St. in Reno, Nevada. It occupies a historic Modern-style building listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Washoe County Library. It is known also as the Downtown Library. It was designed by Hewitt Campau Wells in Modern style and was built in 1965.

The building received the national Industrial Landscape Award in 1968 for its interior use of plants, shrubs, and trees as an integral part of its design. The award, presented by Lady Bird Johnson in Washington, D.C. was given specifically to architect Hewitt Wells, to landscape architect Mitchell Serven, and to Purdy and Fitzpatrick Nursery. Although the building was less than 50 years old, the usual requirement, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

It has a fallout shelter which in 2015 was one of the few remaining ones in Reno.

In 2014 Cengage Learning gave the library the award "coolest internal space", giving the library $500.^[25]

The McKinley Park School, at Riverside Drive and Keystone Avenue in Reno, Nevada, USA, is a historic school building that was built in 1909. It includes Mission/Spanish Revival architecture and was designed by George Ferris. Also known as the City of Reno, Recreation Center, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

It is a U-shaped 150-by-160-foot (46 m × 49 m) building with a south-facing courtyard. It is close in design to that of the NRHP-listed Mt. Rose Elementary School; with two more schools that no longer exist these make up a "so-called 'Spanish Quartet'" of four Reno schools built with the same Mission Revival style during 1909–12, when Reno was rapidly growing.

In 1985, the building was used by the City of Reno for offices for its recreation program.^[26]

Principal church in Reno, Nevada. Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, located in Reno, Nevada, United States, is the seat of the Diocese of Nevada. The congregation was established in 1870, and they held their first services in a schoolhouse. By 1873 they were able to buy the lot on which the school stood, and in December 1875 they completed a new church. The parish bought the property the present church building is located on in the 1920s. Local architect Frederic DeLongchamps designed a new church building, and the congregation was able to complete the lower level of the church in 1929. This served all the parish's needs until the present church was completed in 1949.

The upper church was designed by John N. Tilton, then a professor at Cornell University. It was built on top of DeLongchamps' lower church. The Parish House was designed by another local architect, Edward Parsons, and it was completed in 1958. The 32-bell carillon was placed in the tower in 1972. The 37-rank Casavant Frères pipe organ, Opus 3778, was dedicated in 1999. It features 2,177 individual pipes, and it is one of the largest instruments in Nevada.

Trinity Church became the cathedral for the Diocese of Nevada in 2016. In 2020 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.^[29]

Church in Reno, Nevada. The former First Church of Christ, Scientist, built in 1939, is an historic Classical revival style Christian Science church edifice located at 501 Riverside Drive, overlooking the Truckee River in Reno, Nevada. Anna Frandsen Loomis, a wealthy local Christian Scientist, underwrote the $120,000 cost of the building, including land acquisition and architect's fees. She was responsible for hiring noted Los Angeles architect Paul Revere Williams, the first African-American member of the AIA. In 1998 the congregation sold the building and used the funds from the sale to construct a new church at 795 West Peckham Lane. Church member and local theater patron Moya Lear donated $1.1 million to the Reno-Sparks Theater Community Coalition, which used the funding to purchase the First Church of Christ, Scientist and renamed it the Lear Theater.

On December 28, 1982, the building was added to the Nevada State Register of Historic Places. and on August 20, 1999, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.^[30]

Methodist church in Sparks, Nevada. Bethel AME Church is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church at 220 Bell Street in Reno, Nevada. It has served as a hub for Reno's African American community since it was built in 1910 for early black settlers. In addition to its role as a religious and community center, it functioned as a resource center for black divorce seekers who faced difficulties in a segregated city during the middle decades of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, during the American civil rights movement, the church provided a meeting place for the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights activists.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

In 1993, under the pastoral leadership of Reverend Carey G. Anderson, the congregation moved to 2655 N Rock Boulevard in Sparks, Nevada. The church continues to thrive in the community and has provided countless programs through the years.^[32]

Historical landmark in Reno, Nevada. The Lake Mansion in Reno, Nevada, is a historic house that originally stood at the corner of Virginia and California Streets and is now located at 250 Court Street. It was built in 1877 by W.J. Marsh. It includes Late Victorian and Italianate architecture and was a home associated with Myron Lake, one of Reno's founders, who bought it in 1879.

In 1971 the house was moved to the grounds of the Convention Center, on the corner of Kietzke Lane and Virginia Street, and in 2004 it was moved again, to its current location. The house is 36 by 36 feet (11 m × 11 m) and has a hipped roof with a widow's walk. It was wrapped on three sides by a veranda, which was lost in the move, but which was intended to be replaced. Despite its having been moved, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.^[33]