Part 5

The bricks works are almost sixty years old. It is an interesting fact that as late as 20 years ago there were nearly 50 brick plants in Nebraska. Gradually they disappeared, for one reason or another, one of which was that the right kind of clay can’t be found just anywhere one might throw up a factory. There are now four in the state—at Yankee Hill, Nebraska City, Hastings and Endicott. Yankee Hill, adjoining Pioneers park on the southeast, makes all kinds of brick, many of which are used in Lincoln and many shipped to other places. Plant capacity is 80,000 bricks a day.

No. 56—Whitehall, 5903 Walker

Whitehall has romantic appeal, for a number of reasons. It was once the home of Mrs. C. C. White, pioneer Lincoln resident and Methodist, and, in its calico and cornbread days, one of Lincoln’s first young ladies. When in later years one of the White daughters became the wife of an Italian count there was a general pleased feeling of something or other—as that east and west do sometimes meet, or that it’s just one step from pioneer to peeress.

Mrs. White, who had presented Wesleyan university with a college building named for Mr. White, long deceased, later gave Whitehall to the state as a home for children. There is sometimes romance in Whitehall even yet. We once wrote a story about the children, picturing the one red headed child, a good and wistful little boy. The parents of red haired twin girls, seeing the picture, arranged to adopt him.

It is of course dangerous to expose yourself to childish charm at Whitehall—you might come away a parent. Forty years ago a train of New York waifs was sent out thru Nebraska. A woman, feeling idle curiosity, went down to see the train come into her small town. As she stood on the platform she noticed a small boy—he is now a Lincoln man—walking forward and looking up most earnestly at all the people around him. When he saw this woman he took her hand and said, modestly but confidently, that he would like her to be his mother. Altho already supplied with a child of her own, the woman found it impossible to refuse. And, happily, he turned out to be the best of sons and the finest of men.

No. 57—St. Mary’s Cathedral

Encountered by another heaven-kissing spire, so delightful to look at, so difficult to encompass in small space, we decided to invite you inside St. Mary’s, to contemplate the high altar and reflect on the enduring work of that fiery first bishop of Lincoln—Bishop Bonacum.

This advantageous position, 14th and K, was first snatched by members of the Christian church, who built an edifice very like the one now standing opposite the capitol. They lost it during the 90’s depression and Bishop Bonacum took over, rebuilding once after a fire had well nigh demolished the church.

A cathedral is a bishop’s church and in it the first bishop’s successors, Bishops Tihen, O’Reilly, Beckman and Kucera have presided. Since Msgr. C. J. Riordan has become pastor the entire basement has been finished, so that it contains two large halls. In one of them each Sunday a second mass is celebrated at 11 o’clock, while the solemn mass is celebrated upstairs. From the kitchen each school day noon are served hot meals to the entire student body of the Cathedral school.

University art classes each year visit the church to sketch its architectural beauty.

No. 58—Northeast High, Sixty-third and Baldwin

Those three sister territories, University Place, Havelock and Bethany, spread out side by side in northeast Lincoln and once quite separate divisions of the city, were tied together as neatly by the new Northeast high school as three handkerchiefs are secured by one knot in the corners. Thus caught up, they are a flag of friendly challenge, not to say defiance, to wave across to Lincoln high at 21st and J. Overnight a feeling of solidarity sprang up at the new high school.

There had been murmurs when the school neared completion over a year ago that the name Northeast was undesirable—that it had a cold, damp sound and that no one could love an institution with such an appellation, and so why not name it for some Nebraska or national notable. Others contended that the name was not the thing—that dear old Northeast could entwine itself as firmly around the heart as dear old VanWyck or Montmorency.

The latter seem to have been right. The three lines of youngsters we see converging on Northeast these mornings approach their new institution smiling. Probably one could learn to love Hogwallow school if associations and surroundings were pleasant. Speaking of appearances and surroundings, the picture above is a very inadequate representation of the building itself. The surroundings, naturally still a little barren, have been improved by a cement walk, and with gravel on 63rd.

Lincoln’s third high school is in College View.

No. 59—State Historical Society

Conquerors sweep thru a nation or state bent only on conquest; traders camp on its borders intent only on immediate gains; missionaries kneel on its soil with the welfare of souls in mind; pioneers break the sod for the purpose of putting four walls around their families, bread in their mouths. It falls to the historian to follow after these men of one purpose, to gather up the fragments; to keep alive, in words at least, the spark struck off by fleeing hoof or flintlock or ringing ax.

Musing with half-closed eyes one can see a throng of people entering Nebraska, spreading out over it in patterns interesting and intricate. One can see a giant, colorful picture painted on the plains, even hear the throng moving to simple slow strains of music—and realize how literature, painting, music, are born of movements of people, individual or en masse.

There is no lack of romance in the building of Nebraska, beginning with its Indians—ships with adventurers and settlers sailing far up the rivers; the Mormon migration; the underground railroad (slaves were sold on the block in southeast Nebraska in the early sixties); the fight for the capital, the building of the railroads (which reminds us of Building of the Union Pacific, given by the Ballet Russe in Lincoln several years ago); Wild Bill Hickok, Doc Middleton and their brother bandits; the struggle between homesteaders and cow men in the north and west of the state.

The State Historical Society, state capitol (Dr. A. E. Sheldon, superintendent) has all this locked in drawer and file and safe—except for interesting exhibits spread on its walls. The picture above, drawn at Omaha for Leslie’s Sept. 26, 1860, depicts the arrival in that pioneer village of the Jennie Brown, bound for Fort Benton, Mont. It is one of over thirty thousand pictures filed by the librarian, Martha Turner, pertaining to the history of the state.

No. 60—Orthopedic Hospital, 11th and South

The time has come, we believe, gently to remove the guide who has been walking ahead in these Lincoln explorations, and to let those following—if there are those following—go on, each with his own sightseeing. Possibilities have not been exhausted. There are, for example, the state orthopedic hospital, with its bright-eyed little birds, seemingly survivals of some great battering storm; the state reformatory, once a normal college (a thousand tapped on its door for admission 50 years ago this fall), later a military academy and now, last chance for wayward boys and young men; the state hospital, with its population of 1,440, widely known its treatments.

There are old houses, patient, wise and worn; churches, each with its own flavor, history and problems; parks we have not mentioned; hospitals and theaters. The agricultural college, apple cheeked sister of the university we have inadvertently neglected.

If you are interested particularly in the historical aspects of a community you will visit the historical society museum in the capitol. Here time will cease for an afternoon as in spirit you move rapidly from 1842 to 1942 and back again to 1842, your fingers touching visible evidence of periods between those dates. For Nebraska had its white people even before 1842—its fur traders, trappers, missionaries. In Bellevue, first Nebraska town, first territorial governor Francis Burt took his oath of office Oct. 16, 1854—only to die two days later in the log cabin home of Rev. William Hamilton.

... In short, we commend all ramblers into the past to the state historical society. It will serve as an excellent guide to early Lincoln and Nebraska.

And so, goodbye.

(THE END)

Street Directory

Streets running north and south are numbered from 1st to 78th eastward and to 2nd westward commencing at 1st street, the western boundary of the original city and continuing to the city limits.

Streets running east and west are either alphabetical or named. Alphabetical streets begin at the southern boundary of the original city at A, omit I and continue northward to Y. Named streets continue south of A and north of Y to and beyond the city limits.

Block and house numbers begin at O street north and south end at 1st street east and west. Streets north or south of O are designated by the prefixes N and S respectively. Addresses West of 1st street are designated by the prefix West, abbreviated W. For example, 534 W. Washington. Odd numbers appear on the west and south sides of the streets and even numbers appear on the east and north sides.

The location of each street is indicated by showing the number of blocks north or south of O, or east or west of 1st. The length of the street is indicated by showing the streets at which it begins and terminates. For example, Apple street is shown as follows: Apple—10th N of O...27th to 40th. This indicates Apple street is 10 blocks north of O and runs from 27th street east to 40th street.