While visiting my grandmother in Sparks, Nevada over Christmas, I dragged her, along with my parents, out to stalk the Reno Main US Post Office, which masqueraded as the Reno Police Station in the 1992 movie Sister Act. I first found out about this location from fave book Shot on This Site: A Traveler’s Guide to the Places and Locations Used to Film Famous Movies and TV Shows (which was gifted to me by fellow stalker Lavonna ) while doing research on the area in preparation for my July trip out to the Silver State. For some reason, though, while I had managed to stalk the Washoe County Courthouse from The Misfits during my visit, I had somehow forgotten all about the post office – which is a pretty incredible feat being that the two buildings are located directly across the street from each other! As I have said countless times before on this blog, I am such a blonde! So during this recent visit, I made it a point to trek the family out to Downtown Reno once again so that I could finally do some Sister Act stalking.
The Reno Main US Post Office was originally constructed in 1932 by Frederic DeLongchamps, the prolific Nevada-area architect who also designed the Washoe Country Courthouse, the Riverside Hotel, and countless other noteworthy buildings across the Silver State. The structure was built on the site of what was formerly Reno’s very first public library. When the library was moved to a new location in 1931, DeLongchamps set to work on building the post office, which did not officially open for business until 1934. The Reno Main US Post Office, which also houses several Federal agency offices, is considered to be one of the finest examples of Zigzag Moderne architecture – a highly decorative style of Art Deco design that employs sunken vertical panel windows, flat roofs, geometric ornamentation, repetitive angular patterns, and astrological imagery – in all of Nevada. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 28th, 1990.
The interior of the Reno Main US Post Office is nothing short of breathtaking and not at all what I had been expecting when I first walked in. I mean, the Pasadena Post Office is quite beautiful as well, but nothing like this!
The detail in the design of the interior was absolutely astounding! There are ornate cast aluminum fixtures, like the one pictured above, fastened to the corner of every single marble tile which covers the lobby walls.
And each bank of mailboxes is adorned with an elaborately-carved border. Every time I turned around, I found myself discovering some new miniscule detail that I had not previously noticed. Simply amazing!
The original blue prints for the Reno Main US Post Office were even on display in the lobby, which I thought was so incredibly cool!
The Reno Main US Post Office shows up twice in Sister Act. It first appears very briefly in the beginning of the movie, in the scene in which Deloris Van Cartier (aka Whoopi Goldberg) reports to the police that her boyfriend, Vince LaRocca (aka Harvey Keitel), has just killed his limo driver. According to the IMBD Sister Act trivia page, producers decided to film at the post office because they did not think that the actual Downtown Reno police station looked like a police station. LOL Ah, Hollywood!
The post office next shows up in the scene in which Vince leaves the police station with his lawyers after having been interrogated for six hours.
And while I had originally assumed that the interior of the Reno Main US Post Office had been used as the interior of the police station in Sister Act, as you can see above, that does not appear to have been the case. The interior does not look to have been a set, though, either, so I guess I am going to have to do a bit of digging to track down where filming actually took place.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Reno Main US Post Office, aka the police station from Sister Act, is located at 50 South Virginia Street in Reno, Nevada. The Washoe County Courthouse, from The Misfits, is located across the street at 117 South Virginia Street.