Virginia Street in the late 1930s was a canyon of competing casinos: the Bank Club, Harold's Club, Pick Hobson's Frontier Club. Harrah worked with almost no capital, acquiring his neighbors piece by piece as they faltered. The Frontier Club fell to him in 1956. By the time he was done, an entire block that once housed a dozen different gambling halls belonged to one man. In 1968, Harrah acquired the Reno Golden Hotel and hired casino architect Martin Stern Jr. to build a 24-story luxury tower atop the bones of the old Grand Hotel. The tower opened on October 10, 1969. Holiday Inn added 100 more rooms in 1981. Each expansion erased another fragment of Virginia Street's chaotic early days.

Harrah's appears briefly in The Misfits, the 1961 film that would be the final picture for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. The casino became a destination for performers as much as gamblers. Sammy Davis Jr. performed regularly and became the opening night headliner at the Headliner Room. The venue was later renamed Sammy's Showroom in his honor, hosting Vic Damone, Tony Bennett, Phyllis Diller, Rich Little, and Norm Crosby over the years. The Plaza, built in 2000 on the graves of the imploded Nevada Club and Harold's Club, brought outdoor concerts to downtown Reno. Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, and KC and the Sunshine Band played there while the music echoed down Virginia Street.

The 1997 Nevada floods forced both the Harrah's main tower and the adjacent Hampton Inn to close for water damage repairs. Ownership had already grown complex: Harrah's Entertainment spun off from Promus Hotel Company in 1995, while Promus itself sold to Hilton in 1999. The Hampton Inn, briefly the world's largest of its brand, was absorbed into Harrah's proper, adding 400 rooms. Harrah's Steak House, opened by the founder himself on May 26, 1967, remained virtually untouched through decades of renovations. The final major remodel came in 2018, when the East Tower was refreshed with an adult arcade featuring pool tables, air hockey, and video games, a bid for younger guests that came just two years before the end.

Governor Steve Sisolak ordered Nevada casinos closed on March 17, 2020. When Caesars Entertainment announced in June that Harrah's Reno would not reopen, it marked the end of 83 years of continuous operation. The sale to CAI Investments closed in September for $41.5 million, a fraction of what the property had represented at its peak. CAI planned to rename it Reno City Center and convert the towers into 540 apartments. Construction began in 2023 with over 30 building permits. Then came delays: Clear Capital withdrew $20 million, disputes arose over slot machines at a planned tavern, and in January 2024, a $104.4 million default notice was filed.

Gryphon Private Wealth Management filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2024. A year later, a bankruptcy judge dismissed the case, and Gryphon met its deadline to pay lenders $37.5 million. The property now belongs to Madison Capital Group of Charlotte, North Carolina, which has rebranded the project as Revival. The towers still stand on Virginia Street, their purple Harrah's glow extinguished. The bingo parlor that became an empire, the showroom that hosted legends, the casino floor where chips once clattered around the clock, all wait in silence. Whatever opens next will inherit nearly a century of Reno history, written in neon and concrete on the block where William Harrah refused to quit after his first failure.