150 landmarks part of Nebraska S150 book

It may come as no surprise that Nebraska’s oldest building is a log cabin.

It was built in the 1830s and lived in by Judge James Gow, who was the first white man born in Sarpy County.

That cabin, now owned by the Sarpy County Historical Society in Bellevue, was the first structure featured in a talk by Jeff Barnes at the Seward Memorial Library Sept. 9.

Barnes photographed 150 Nebraska buildings for his book “150@150: Nebraska’s Landmark Buildings,” which was published in honor of Nebraska’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2017.

Barnes has delivered his presentation more than 500 times across the state as a member of the Humanities Nebraska Speakers Bureau.

The book took five months to make and covers the whole state geographically, featuring sections on different types of structures like cabins, courthouses, churches and homes.

Barnes highlighted some of his favorites and shared unique facts about each building—like the Palmer-Epard Cabin built in 1967. The cabin was home to a family of 10 and has rested in seven different locations over the years, including its current location as part of the Homestead National Monument in Beatrice.

The Filley Stone Barn in Filley was constructed out of Nebraska limestone, with arched windows and fine masonry. Barnes said it was unusual for barns to be erected out of stone.

“If you’re building a stone barn, that means you’re going to be here for a long time,” he said.

The courthouse section of the book features the Lincoln County Courthouse in North Platte, which is Nebraska’s most expensive courthouse at $325,000 (in 1920s dollars). It also had the longest construction period—10 years.

Barnes said Lincoln County citizens passed a tax levy in the 1920s to pay for the courthouse, but it took four years for construction to begin. It turns out, the county treasurer was embezzling funds from the project. He was later jailed.

The Seward County Courthouse was designed by George A. Berlinghof and built in 1906. Barnes said Berlinghof designed one-tenth of the courthouses in the state, many with the same squareness as the Seward one.

“I love these buildings. They’re gorgeous,” Barnes said. “The courthouses kind of reflect the prosperity that you could find in these counties. They really wanted to show off themselves.”

The Houses of Worship section of the book features St. John’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lyons, which lost about half of its congregation when it took a vote on whether to add a fellowship hall onto the church.

Half the voters didn’t want it because it wouldn’t match the architecture of the original building. When those who did want the addition lost by two votes, they left the church for other congregations.

The St. Bonaventure Church in Raeville is especially large, Barnes said, considering the town had a population of 21 people.

“They built the church, but they neglected to build a train station to bring all these German Catholic immigrants,” he said. “It’s a big, ornate church, but you could fit 20 Raevilles inside the church.”

The Pilgrim Holiness Church in Arthur is known as “Nebraska’s hay bale church,” because it was built out of hay bales with a stucco coating. It is now a museum.

Barnes spoke about how to identify later additions to original buildings and the changes in styles of architecture over the years.

His talk featured prominent architects with work still standing in Nebraska, like Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the H.P. Sutton house in McCook, and Thomas Rogers Kimball, who designed the St. Cecilia Cathedral in Omaha.

The Noted Nebraskans section of the book features the home of J. Sterling Morton (of the Morton Salt Company), more commonly known as Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City, which some might consider a mansion.

“Sterling never saw this,” Barnes said. “It was a cabin at that time. His son made it bigger later to honor his parents.”

The Bee States Ballroom in Bee also appears in the book. Barnes said it was a WPA project built in 1940. It has 12 sides and has been kept up over the decades.

“It was constructed out of reinforced concrete, which you don’t see until the 1960s,” Barnes said. “It was a very modern design for a small community. You don’t get fancy or experiment with things like that unless you’re a big city.”

The final building he featured in his talk was the Nebraska State Capitol, where he met his wife on a tour of the building.

The capitol is actually Nebraska’s third, built between 1922 and 1932 out of Indiana limestone. The first two, Barnes said, were built from Nebraska limestone, which wasn’t as durable and began to crumble.

It was designed through a competition, with noted Nebraska architect Thomas Kimball serving on the committee.

Barnes said the double-blind competition was unlike most in that era. Typically, designers created drawings that would appeal to the judges. That meant most of the designs were similar.

For the capitol, the architects didn’t know who the judges were, and the judges didn’t know which firms were submitting designs.

“All the finalists looked like knockoffs of the U.S. Capitol,” Barnes said, except Bertram Goodhue’s. “Goodhue designed it as a skyscraper, with less focus on the dome. (He) really blew away the judges. It completely stood out from what everyone else had submitted.”

The design was meant to serve as a memorial to those who lost their lives in World War I and also tells the story of how Nebraska’s laws came to be and how Nebraskans became who they are, conveyed through the artwork and details in the building, its floors and the landscaping around it.

Though Goodhue died before the project was complete, he had a vision in his architecture.

“He wanted a building that was distinctly Nebraska,” Barnes said. “It really is a phenomenal building.”