Structural Condition Assessment Report of the Storey County Courthouse, Virginia City, Nevada

Melvyn Green and Associates; Tobey-Wade Consultants

From executive summary: "The Storey County Courthouse was constructed in 1876 after the great fire of 1875 that destroyed most of Virginia City. Today the Courthouse stands as a center of county government, a well preserved and maintained symbol of Virginia City’s mining tradition and an important tourist attraction. Built in 1876, the Storey County Courthouse is High Victorian Italianate in style. It is a two story brick building, extremely plain on all sides except for its highly ornamented front facade. The building is rectangular in plan, approximately 75 feet wide and 117 feet long. The front facade rises above the roof in a bracketed parapet. The building is an unreinforced masonry bearing wall structure with wood frame floors and roof. Through out the building's life, cracks have been observed in the walls of the south and north stairways in the Courthouse. These cracks appear to have become very active in the past several years. In order to determine whether these cracks are due to a structural problem, site movement or other cause, the Storey County directed that a struc tural inspection and investigation of the County Courthouse be undertaken. The County also directed that the seismic safety of the building be evaluated again based on current building code provisions." Project funding was provided in part by a 2014 Historic Preservation Fund grant to Storey County (project number NV-14-017) administered by the Nevada State Historic Preservation Office (grant number P14AF00036) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Storey County, Nevada is a Certified Local Government.

Structural Condition Assessment Report of the Storey County Courthouse, Virginia City, Nevada

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