Roberts House featured on Carson City home tour

The Roberts House, the oldest built house in Carson City, was one of nine sites featured on the Victorian home and garden tour on Sunday.

About the Roberts House:

• It was originally built in Washoe City in 1865 and moved to the present location at 1207 N. Carson Street in 1872. Paula Cannon, of the Carson City Historical Society, said no one is sure how the house was moved, but she suggested two ideas. One, it could have been rolled to the city by being pushed over logs. Two, it could have been disassembled, moved by the Virginia & Truckee Railroad Co. and reassembled in its present location.

• The house has separate parlors for men and women and they each have their own entrance doors.

• The house presently has an 1859 baby grand piano in it that Cannon said was built by the same company that made Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano. "This is a beautiful piano," Cannon said. "We want to get someone to give a donation for it (and then) we can give them a big fat tax break." The historical society manages the house and wants to get it out because, not being original to the house, it is too large and elegant for it, Cannon said.

• The upstairs of the house features historical pictures of the city. Cannon said the women in the 19th-century pictures had to boil their "voluminous" dresses to get them clean.