“House with A History” is an award-winning, eight-part series which airs locally on Nevada’s KNPB every Thursday night at eight. The series is dedicated to displaying the state’s rich cultural past by way of old houses.

With the weekly presentation of a historically and aesthetically distinctive house found in Nevada, “House with a History” a “unique cultural guidebook through which we can learn, enjoy, and preserve”, exemplifies the spirit of Nevada’s past and offers insight into present day communities.

Award-winning writer and host, Marla Carr, works with a team of producers and KNPB to create “House with a History”, which won a Telly Award in the Cultural History category for the 26th Annual Telly Awards Competition held in June of this year.

Each of the featured houses reflect the collaboration of owners, designers and architects and thus each house embodies an individual historical spirit, the Newlands Mansion, owned by Senator Francis G. Newlands, is no exception. Newlands, a man who dedicated himself to promoting Western expansion and who yearned for a life in politics, built the vast house facing the then “developing town” of Reno and the Truckee River.

Newlands recognized the necessity of irrigation to foster agriculture and keep the West growing, and he saw the Truckee River as the key to this irrigation, thus his mansion is positioned on a bluff overlooking the river below. The home, built in 1889, is 7000 square feet of Shingle Style Mansion and is detailed in Queen Anne fashion (Queen Anne was an architectural fashion in the 1880’s-1890’s, found specifically in North America because the Industrial Revolution encouraged the new technologies of factory-created, pre-cut architectural pieces and allowed new methods to transport these parts across the nation with the recently developed railroad system; the result was Queen Anne, an innovative, often overly-ornate style of architecture.) The mansion is comprised of 12 principal rooms, a covered porch, a kitchen, a maid’s quarters, and a butler’s pantry. The mansion, situated on a 2.2 acre lot, is complete with a steep, gable roof, a system of oil-fired steam radiators, and 87 expansive windows, which draw light into the home and provide a gorgeous view of the river below.

Currently, the Newlands Mansion is one of the six National Historic Landmark homes in Nevada.

KNPB’s “House with a History” captures the past and the beauty of the Newlands Mansion and other similarly distinctive Nevada homes, every Thursday evening at 8PM and every Saturday at noon. Due to such a positive local response, all viewers may look forward to the national distribution of “House with a History” starting October 1st, of this year.

Funding for this cultural masterpiece is provided by the Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs, State Office of Historic Preservation (through the Department of the Interior) and private institutions.