Stewart – Nye Residence

Two of Nevada's earliest power brokers lived under this roof. The native-sandstone house, built around 1860 and among the oldest in Carson City, was home first to William Stewart—the lawyer who became one of Nevada's first U.S. senators, took the lead on the 1866 national mining law, and helped write the Fifteenth Amendment. In 1862 Stewart sold the place to James Nye, the territorial governor who later joined him in the Senate. The two careers that ran through this modest house shaped Nevada's path from territory to state. It survives on North Minnesota Street.

What the plaque says

This house was built about 1860 of local sandstone for William Morris Stewart who lived here until 1862. He sold it to the Territorial Governor of Nevada, James W. Nye. The two men served as Nevada's first United States Senators after the territory achieved Statehood. Stewart, serving from 1864 to 1875 and again from 1887 to 1905. Nye served from 1864 to 1873. Both men were originally from New York. The house later became the home of Nevada Supreme Court Chief justice George F. Talbot. In 1917 he sold the house and block to the Catholic diocese and it served as the rectory for the Catholic Church. It was subsequently sold for commercial use.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson City — 0.2 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 3.3 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices
• The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake — 7.0 mi
  The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides
• Sand Harbor — 8.9 mi
  The crown of Lake Tahoe's Nevada shore—car-sized granite boulders standing in water so clear the boats above them seem to float on air, on a beach the Washoe kept for thousands of summers

More markers nearby

• Methodist Church of Carson City — steps away
• Rinckel Mansion — steps away
• Orion Clemens Home — steps away
• Carson City — 0.2 mi