Exactly three hundred years after the nation’s first governor’s mansion was built in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a small, quiet man with intense brown eyes and a bushy mustache stood looking across a tree-studded field in Carson City, Nevada.
George A. Ferris, a Reno architect, had been hired to design and oversee the building of the first official state of Nevada Governor’s Mansion, and he wanted to imprint the topography of the land in his head so he could design a building that would fit comfortably in its environment while serving its stately purpose. The location had been well chosen; it sat at the top of the hill at 606 North Mountain Street, just a few blocks west of the town’s main thoroughfare, Carson Street. The site overlooked the capital city, Ferris noted, an appropriate location. As he stood atop the hill, Ferris could see the thirty-seven year old State Capitol Building, crowned by its distinctive silver-colored cupola, less than a half-mile in the distance.