City's first bowling alley torn down

The old, military barrack-style building sat behind the Boys & Girls Club of Western Nevada in Carson City for years, decaying to the point it was deemed a hazard and torn down weeks ago.

Formerly on the site of the Northern Nevada Children's Home, the long, worn out building that had turned into a hazard was the home to Carson City's first bowling alley.

Bonnie Boice Nishikawa, 64, and her sister, Ella Boice Fowlks, 65, remembered Wednesday their early teen years setting pins in the two-lane alley. The two children and their older brother, Earl Boice, moved to the home at ages 4, 5 and 7. Nishikawa and her brother lived there until they were old enough to be on their own. The addition of the bowling alley to the home was a huge event for the children who lived there in 1951. Besides the two lanes and hours of bowling fun, it boasted pool and ping pong tables.

"We called it our Playhaven, it just so happens we let the city leagues bowl there," Nishikawa said. "It was a part of our growing up. We had a lot of fun."

Children at the home set pins, earning a little extra spending money from the eight-team league with team names such as the Firehouse Five, Right of Way (from the highway department) and Ray's Shell.

Nishikawa and Fowlks said you had to be especially careful of wayward balls, which at times would come flying down the lanes before the pins were set. It wasn't necessarily easy work, but with up to $1.50 coming, it made the work worth it, they said.

"It seemed like a lot back then," Fowlks said.

Nishikawa drives by the Children's Home site on Stewart Street occasionally and noticed fresh heavy equipment tracks where the alley used to be. It sat between the Children's Home milk barn and another barn used to house 4-H animals.

Ward Patrick, chief of design for state public works, said the building "was a hazard for kids who kept getting in there.

"They could get hurt or a fire could get started in it," he said.

Cathy Blankenship, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club, said the "shell of a building" had "outlived its time."

She said occasionally, children at the club would find an open window or door and go into the building to play, and vagrants occasionally found a broken lock, making the old building a convenient place to sleep.

"The wood was so old it was falling apart," she said. "The biggest thing for us was to make sure the building stayed secured. I think from the state viewpoint they were happy to see it go. It was a liability. They kind of left it up to us to see that it was secure."

In 1995, enough of the two vintage bowling lanes in the building were salvaged to assemble one. The lane, pin setters, ball return and scoring table were sent to the National Bowling Stadium where they were to be displayed. Bob Thomas, bowling stadium operations manager, said while restoration work has been done on the pin setters, there is no place to lay the lanes and they remain in storage.