Ghosts of Douglas: Nishikida Laundry

Ghosts of Carson is a series that looks at the empty and unused buildings of Carson City (and the surrounding areas).

This column usually looks at the empty and unused buildings of Carson City. But Carson isn’t the only place that has ghosts. The surrounding towns all have their own neglected places. This time we are going south to Gardnerville, so we’ll call it Ghosts of Douglas. We’re looking at a building that has been in the news lately. This is the Nishikida Laundry at 1403 Hwy 395 in Gardnerville. It’s a nondescript building on the edge of downtown, easy to pass by and ignore. But it turns out there’s a lot of history here.

This building started its life as a school house, and it wasn’t located here in downtown Gardnerville. Built in 1876, it was known as the East Fork School. It was located on the Matley Ranch south of Gardnerville, close to where Riverview Drive crosses the Carson River.

*In between a house and another closed building.*

The school was closed in 1915, and in 1916 it was moved here at the south end of downtown. It’s right before the “S” curve on Hwy 395. The school building was joined with a livery stable to create the structure that we see today. It first opened as a shop operated by H.C. Elges, but in 1918 Elges died. It was then converted to a laundry business operated by George Oka. In 1940, the laundry came under the ownership of the Nishikida family.

The Nishikida family were of Japanese descent, and after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 and America’s entry into World War II, there was intense discrimination against Japanese Americans. The Nishikidas were not rounded up and taken to an internment camp, like so many other Japanese Americans of the time, so they were able to keep their laundry business. And reportedly they were able to keep at least one other family member out of the camps by bringing them here to work. They operated the laundry from 1940 until 1989.

The building has remained empty ever since 1989. It is still owned by the current generation of the Nishikida family, but the costs to renovate it have been too high so it has sat unused. On March 27, 2019, an out of control driver left the street and crashed into the side of the building. This weakened the structure even more.

*The spot where the car crashed into is boarded up.*

The structural damage from the crash was too much, and that started an effort by the Nishikida brothers to dispose of the building. In 2021 they said that they either wanted to sell or demolish the building. But there is a complication; 70 years of laundry operations on the site have left chemicals in the ground that would require cleanup. So the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection have gotten involved. The family is trying to get grants to fund the cleanup. The Nevada State Preservation Office has also gotten involved, because of the historic nature of the building. And the Town of Gardnerville has been involved in the process. Getting all of these agencies involved has turned it into a long process. 6 years after the crash, studies and agreements are still being drafted without any work being done to demolish it. But there was another town meeting this week that moved the process along one step further.

All of these developments have brought new attention to the building. A few months ago, the Nishikida Laundry was added to Preserve Nevada’s 2024 List of Most Endangered Historic Places. But I think the momentum behind demolition is too strong now. So much energy has been put into trying to get the building cleaned up and demolished, so I don’t think that effort will be derailed. This is a historic building, but it has been neglected and ignored for so long that it looks to be past the point of saving it. But all the attention did make me go down and take a close look at the building before demolition happens.

Below are some photos of the inside, followed by some pictures that I took of the building in 2006 before I knew its history. It’s in rough shape and only getting worse with time. One day the building will be gone, and most people probably won’t even notice. I’ve driven by hundreds of times and mostly ignored it, like we all do with most abandoned buildings. The Town of Gardnerville has agreed to put up a historic plaque on the site after the demolition, which is more than it’s had before. Even when historic markers were added to a bunch of other buildings in town 20 years ago, the Nishikida Laundry was overlooked. It didn’t get any recognition until the end of its life, but at least it’s still here for a little while longer.