Common name: Nevada Attorney General's office
Historic name: Heroes Memorial Building
General Location: Northwest corner of Carson and Second Streets, Downtown Carson City, Nevada
Address: 198 South Carson Street
Old Address: 108 West Second Street
Assessor's PN: 003-218-02
Current use: Government building
Original use: Government building
Year of construction: 1920
Architect: Frederick J. DeLongchamps
The large two-and-a-half story Classical Revival structure is constructed of dressed stone laid in regular courses. A two-story pedimented porch, supported by four Doric columns, projects from the center of the symmetrical eastern facade. Rectangular regularly placed windows are recessed with flush flat arches. Window grilles of a Greek motive flank the double-doored building entrance. A grand stairway (11 steps) provides access to the building and there is a basement partly below grade. The roof incorporates gabled and shallow hip forms. A heavy projecting cornice above a plain frieze encircles the building.
The rear wing faces south on West Second Street. Modern in style, the structure appears to have been built in the 1930s or 1940s. Two stories in height, the structure is constructed of textured brick above with a lower floor of concrete, horizontal straightened. The building contains glass block panels, a horizontal emphasis in design and window treatment, and an entrance with a curved stricted concrete canopy.
The basement windows of the Heroes building have been altered with unusual insets, the rear wing was added, and the on the west side a clapboard-surfaced, gable-roofed entrance to the basement is present.
Exceptional in scale and height, grand in massing, the structure is similar to nearby government buildings.
The building is monumentally scaled, and with its twin structure to the north, provides an impressive state government adjunct to the Capitol building. The building is formal, symmetrical, and imposing. It is an excellent representative of its style and fine design, well-suited to its era of impressive Classical government buildings and its use.
The Moderne building added to the site is a very competent example of its style as well, and one that is perhaps a somewhat more different and more creative governmental building solution.
Source: Carson City Historic Tour; Plaque on building.
Listed in the National Historic Register: 1978 October 02.
City Landmark: Kit Carson Trail, Plaque No. 10.
Year of construction: 1920 (factual), on the original site.
Subdivision: Sears Thompson and Sears (original Carson City Townsite), 1860.
Architect: Frederick J. DeLongchamps.
Text: Carson City Historic Resources Inventory, 1980.