Carr Residence and Office
Longtime home to the Carr family and George A. Carr's dental practice
In the early 1920s, this part of South Virginia Street was starting to fill in with comfortable wood frame houses. The subdivision, known as Crampton's Addition, had been platted out in 1906, and ran from Virginia Street to Plumas Street. Virginia Street was not yet a commercial thoroughfare, although the Commercial Soap Factory was located one block to the west, and the Osen Motor Sales Company moved into a beautiful new building across the street in 1923. This bungalow was built around 1922 for the Sharpe family, who offered it for sale in 1924 through an ad reading, "Modern five room furnished full basement and garage. Good location, $6500."
The house was purchased by George A. and Grace Carr, who had been living in Reno for a few years, but were both from North Carolina. The story of how they came to Reno in the first place is deeply intertwined with the city's role as an early twentieth century divorce colony. A practicing dentist in Durham, North Carolina, George had traveled to Reno in 1916 to obtain a divorce from his second wife, a process that at that time took six months. While waiting out the residency period in Reno, he opened a dental practice downtown, then seems to have returned to Durham. In 1918, he was back in Reno for another divorce, from his third wife. At the same time, Grace Shields, also of North Carolina, was in Reno to secure her own divorce, and within a few months, she and George A. Carr were married.
The Carrs decided at some point to remain in Reno, and Dr. Carr continued to practice dentistry downtown after moving his family into this house. In 1938, he hired the local architectural firm of Frederic DeLongchamps and George O’Brien to design an addition to the front of the house to use as his dentistry office, and practiced here for the next 15 years. The house was later occupied by a series of business tenants. In 2011, it became the new home of the restaurant Süp.
The Cochran irrigation ditch, constructed in the 1860s, runs just to the north of the house, winding its way for 32 miles from the Truckee River to Virginia Lake and onward to Steamboat Creek. Eight feet wide in parts, the ditch was a source of both recreation and danger. Neighborhood children fished for crawdads in it, and sometimes fell in. The ditch finally was channeled into an underground culvert through most of the downtown area in 1948.
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