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On
Aug. 25, 2008, the second floor of the Jot Travis Building on the
University of Nevada, Reno campus will reopen as the new home for The
Davidson Academy of Nevada. The Academy, the nation’s only free,
public school for profoundly gifted young students, is beginning its
third academic year this month. As many as 200 Academy students can be
accommodated on the upper floor at Jot Travis.
“Jot”
Travis is the nickname for Ezra Johnson Travis, one of the Far
West’s first stagecoach company managers during the late 19th
century. Travis, whose forebears were said to be members of the
Jamestown settlement in Virginia and veterans of the American
Revolution, was general manager of the Gilmer and Salisbury stagecoach
line and later president of the Utah, Nevada and California Stage
Company. The Gilmer and Salisbury line was reported to be “one of
the most powerful corporations in the West by 1880,” according to
the Missoulian newspaper.
He
directed a fleet of horse-drawn stage transportation covering
8,000-plus miles daily. The lines carried passengers, U.S. mail and
post office funding as well as express freight for Wells Fargo.
Travis’ stagecoach companies fed the primary railroad lines west of
Chicago.
Jot
Travis’ son, Wesley, chairman of the board for Greyhound Bus Lines,
bequeathed a gift of $300,000 to the university for a student
facility. His will stipulated that the new building be named in honor
of his father.
About
the Jot Travis Building
Prior to 1958, the primary
student body headquarters on the University of Nevada campus was an
aging brick and stucco building abandoned by the Nevada Historical
Society. The small
structure, given to Nevada students in 1931, stood at Ninth and
Virginia streets.
In
1952, Wesley Travis’ gift to the University for an adequate student
facility was matched by a $300,000 appropriation by the Nevada
Legislature. Travis was a native of Hamilton, Nev., in White Pine
County. Several smaller
building drives contributed to funding for the facility’s
construction during most of the remainder of the decade. The one-story
building with a basement, projecting above the north side of Manzanita
Lake, opened to students May 18, 1958.
The Jot
Travis Student Union was designed by the Reno architectural firm of
Ferris & Erskine. It originally housed the campus bookstore,
student leadership offices, a snack bar, and recreation and meeting
rooms. In 1960, dining commons were added to the building’s south
end. Health services offices for students were added in 1963.
In the
1980s, the bookstore was expanded and a new Pine Student Lounge and
Associated Students of the University of Nevada Auditorium opened in
the student union. The
projects increased the size of the union about 15,000 square feet.
A
computer laboratory was added on the union’s top floor in 1995. The
building was also made accessible to the disabled and several new
meeting rooms were added. In 2001, the Wolf Perk coffeehouse was
opened on the second floor. Three
years later, Nevada students supported the building of a new student
union next to the soon-to-be-opened Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center.
The Jot Travis Building closed as a student union Nov. 2, 2007.
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