Dr. Eugene Hattori, Curator of Anthropology, will discuss Dr. Simeon L. Lee’s anthropology collections at the Nevada State Museum. This program, part of the museum’s monthly Frances Humphrey lecture series, will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 26 at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City.
Dr. Lee was a distinguished Civil War veteran and prominent citizen and physician who settled in Carson City in 1870. Following Victorian custom, Dr. Lee collected and displayed objects of historical and anthropological interest. He differed from the usual cabinet of curiosities by filling his house with an overabundance of wondrous things, including local Washoe and Northern Paiute basketry, shell leis from the South Pacific, Eskimo ivory scrimshaw, Plains Indian war clubs, Dahl sheep horn Potlatch spoons, and a mummified hawk from an Egyptian tomb.
For more information call 775-687-4810 or visit www.NevadaCulture.org
Too bad I’ll have to miss this one. My office is in the house Dr. Lee built in 1906, at 340 N. Minnesota Street. Legend has it that basket weaver Dat-So-La-Lee was his housekeeper here for a time, and that her name derives from the good doctor’s initials.
The same house was later home to Judge Clark Guild, who founded the State Museum.
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I was looking for some photos of the Lee-Guild house here, as I just walked by and say that it seems to be stripped back to the the studs inside and out. But giving you were are maybe even still working for RCI, I’m guessing you know that and may well be documenting the reconstruction already,
There is a brief item about this from the Historic Resources Commission’s January 12, 2023 meeting, when it was stated that the intention was to rebuild the exterior to match the original, but they didn’t know at that time whether that meant going back to the foundation, or something else.
In any case, the building looks pretty interesting now stripped to its bones, but I can’t tell if that was just work to salvage and reuse exterior materials. I also don’t know whether the further intent is to indeed remove everything else, or if they are taking the restoration forward now from the remaining frame. I haven’t seen any other HRC action on this.