Omaha Exploration

The Near North Side was formed from the area north of downtown that started its life as the result of shady dealings by powerful businessmen to bring the territorial capitol to Omaha.

By 1855, the group looking to establish Omaha as the preeminent city on the western banks of the Missouri River hatched a scheme to do just that. It included giving scrip, the only currency available in the territory at the time, to legislators who supported their effort to make Omaha the territorial capitol. It essentially served as a bribe that awarded its supporters with lots in the area that would become part of Omaha proper.

The first homes in the area were quite grand as they housed many of these same prominent citizens. Not long after that, landowners hired developers to build houses around the outskirts and fill in empty lots. As a result, the area contains houses that sit on unusual and non-uniform lots.

The area known as Scriptown became Omaha’s first official annexation in 1877. Following the annexation, it became known as the Near North Side, which stretches roughly from 16th to 30th Street from east to west and from Locust to Cuming Street from north to south. To its east was the town of East Omaha.

As the area continued to develop, it was filled with schools, churches, grocery stores, restaurants, bars, and other businesses needed to support a thriving community. Its business district formed along N. 24th Street, which became the heart of the district. By 1895, the Knights of Aksarben, a philanthropic and social organization, opened its first den at 2221 N. 20th Street but relocated in 1927 after a fire destroyed its building.

Following the annexation, the area became Omaha’s melting pot due to the waves of immigrants that settled the area. Starting with Eastern European Jews and continuing with Jews from Russia, which formed an ethnic enclave called Little Russia. The Jewish immigrants were followed by Swedes who formed Little Stockholm in the area that also had sizable representation from German, Irish, Italian, and Czech immigrants. The first African Americans to settle in the area started around the 1860s. By 1867, there was a large enough community that they established St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The area gained national prominence in 1898 after banker Herman Kountze donated some of his land to serve as the site of a world’s fair called the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. The goal of the expo was to showcase the development of areas west of the Mississippi River, including the burgeoning city of Omaha. It was a rousing success as it drew more than 2.6 million people to the city to view its 4,000 exhibits. Among those visitors were President William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. The grounds stretched over 180 acres and featured a 2,000-foot lagoon encircled by 21 classical but temporary structures featuring products from around the world. The structures, designed to be temporary, were demolished by 1900. There are very few remnants that exist today.

As the middle class continued to grow, many Black entrepreneurs and professionals settled in the Near North Side. It became the heart of the Black community and was home to social events at places like the Dreamland Ballroom and Mecca Hall. Its churches, ballrooms, and social halls formed the cultural backbone of Omaha’s Black community. Starting in the 1910s and continuing into the 1920s, six million African Americans left the South and settled in areas to the east, west, and north during the Great Migration. During this time, Omaha’s Black population doubled, with many being drawn to the city due to the abundance of jobs in the meatpacking and railroad industries. Many of these migrants settled in the Near North Side, which already had a sizable population of Blacks. Its streetcar line also provided easy access to downtown as well as to the stockyards to the south.

The Near North Side suffered the devastation of the Easter Tornado of 1913, which killed 103 while destroying 800 homes and damaging another 2,000. The area’s prominence began to slip afterward as some Black-owned homes and businesses were never rebuilt while those owned by whites were. The “Red Summer” of 1919 accelerated the area’s downfall as riots broke out in the wake of the murder of Will Brown, who was wrongly accused of raping a white woman, at the hands of an angry white mob. After his lynching outside the courthouse, the mob began attacking African Americans at random before heading toward the Near North Side, at which point the city declared martial law. The declaration drew nearly 1,600 U.S. Army troops summoned from nearby Fort Omaha to the 24th Street corridor to protect the neighborhood and its residents.

In the aftermath of the riots, the city, like many others across the country, instituted the systematic racist practice of redlining aimed at preventing Blacks from moving to other parts of the city. In 1938, the Public Works Administration built the Logan Fontenelle housing projects to aid Depression-era working-class families as well as another round of immigration that included those who fled the oppression of Nazi Germany. Starting in the 1940s, as whites, including immigrants, gained the financial resources to do so, they too fled the area and moved to newly formed neighborhoods to the west. Some of the businesses followed and moved west to take advantage of cheap lots and the consumers who earned more. This spelled the end of the melting pot that was the Near North Side.

The exodus left houses and buildings empty. In many cases they remained empty and continued to deteriorate. When they were bulldozed, the lots sat empty, leaving vacant lots scattered about. Left behind were the often-times poor Black residents who had no other choice but to stay. The lack of business led to fewer employment opportunities, virtually no outside investment, and a diminished tax base that lacked political clout. As a result, the city began withholding basic services, and outside investment largely ceased. With the only available housing being that of Logan Fontenelle, conditions worsened due to a lack of maintenance. This created an environment that caused a cycle of poverty and depression that became increasingly difficult to break.

Even the Blacks who continued earning enough to be considered middle class found it difficult to keep up once streetcar service slowed before being shut down for good in 1955. Those who found a way to move to either another part of the city or to leave it altogether did so. As the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s approached, the few remaining businesses oftentimes refused to hire Black workers, making the situation even more bleak. Once it became illegal to do so, they too moved, continuing a downward spiral that made it nearly impossible to reach jobs that were located beyond the Near North Side.

The cycle continued through the 1960s and 1970s with urban renewal projects aimed at getting rid of “blighted” areas including Sheelytown and the Near North Side. The construction of the North Freeway split the neighborhood in half. This led to residents of the area demanding more services, opportunity, and an end to discrimination, resulting in the protests of the late 1960s. It resulted in a resident being shot and a Black Panther who may have been framed for an explosion that killed a police officer. Desperate and afraid, peaceful protests turned violent, resulting in confrontations between protesters and the police, not to mention firebombings, beatings, and looting.

Following the removal of the streetcar, 16th Street became the primary thoroughfare that connected the Near North Side to both downtown and South Omaha. That came to an end in 1970 with the construction of a new Hilton Hotel at 16th and Dodge. Not only was it another barrier, it also cut off access between downtown proper, which was in the process of renewing itself, and the disadvantaged area to the north, which by now was being referred to as simply North Omaha, a negative connotation that exists to this day.

While largely ignored until recently, Omaha’s Near North Side is steeped in history. Its story includes legendary musicians from Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong to world-class athletes including Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, and Johnny Rodgers, and even a military hero in Alfonza Davis.

After suffering for more than a century, the Near North Side is just beginning to see new life. It comes from the formation of the North 24th Business Improvement District, whose mission is to champion economic development, infrastructure improvement, promotion, and safety of the area, driven by community collaboration. The area includes 192 commercial properties, 177 residential, and 100 vacant lots.

The first phase of the transformational project includes a renewed streetscape, which has been successful in spurring development and attracting new business in other parts of town, including Benson and Blackstone. In addition to replacing trees to provide a better canopy, it will see the widening of sidewalks that are too narrow, the installation of missing sidewalks, and roundabouts to slow traffic, in addition to bike lanes to provide additional transportation options.

From Scriptown to the Near North Side, an area that was created as a result of bribes grew into a distinctive melting pot full of ideas and ambition before suffering from redlining, white flight, neglect, disinvestment, and frustration. While the recent improvements won’t solve all of its problems, it’s a start for an area full of history that looks to reclaim its spot as one of the city’s main cultural centers.

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