Published February 14, 2025 | Updated May 15, 2026

This is the story of Bemis Park’s first house, the Zabriskie House, a Queen Anne masterpiece if there ever was one.

The Painted Lady on Hawthorne Avenue is easily among the most recognizable residences in all of Omaha. Its builder was Edgar Zabriskie, a New York transplant. Family tradition long held that the Zabriskie ancestors had close ties to King John III of Poland, with one ancestor, Albert, supposedly banished from Poland for coveting the crown. This story has been retold across generations but has been disputed by genealogists. It seems more likely that Albert Zaborowsky fled Prussia in 1662 to avoid military conscription. The family later changed its surname, and the original name has been spelled several ways. Albert settled in New Amsterdam (present day New York), where the family remained for generations.

At 15 years old, Edgar went to sea for the first time, paving the way for him to become a ship’s officer following an apprenticeship. Not to be confused with Hamilton, but Zabriskie, too, was young, scrappy and hungry. To make a name for himself, he enlisted in the Eighth New York Artillery in order to serve in the Civil War. Following the war, he headed west with his new bride, Esther Balch.

The couple settled in Omaha and lived at 381 Capitol Avenue while he worked for First National Bank. His next job as a general agent and accountant for the Union Pacific Railroad required extensive travel, taking them from the Gate City. After returning in 1880, he worked as a cashier at Steele, Johnson and Company wholesale grocery before becoming a co-owner of Kennard Brothers wholesale drug company.

Having accumulated a significant amount of wealth, the Zabriskies hired architects Benjamin Fowler and Charles Beindorff to design a home in the new Bemis Park neighborhood in 1889. Bemis Park was a first-of-its-kind development in Omaha, as it was laid out with respect to the topography of the land rather than a conventional grid.

The architects designed the house in the Queen Anne style, one of the most distinctive and elaborate styles of house from the Victorian era. This house was designed to showcase the family’s wealth. Located at 3524 Hawthorne Avenue, the main house and its two-story carriage house were completed in 1889. Perched atop a hill, views from the rooms and the front porch looked down on the city that was being built all around. The 14-room house featured multiple peaked gables, a curved turret, two Eastlake-style porches with balconies, intricate latticework, turned spindles and jigsaw cutouts.

Its interior features are just as impressive and include two fireplaces, a formal library, seven bedrooms and intricate latticework on the grand staircase leading to the second floor. The living room had a gaslight chandelier and wall sconces, walnut flooring, and wall panels in oak, pecan and walnut imported from England. Its window glass came from France, the parquet work was completed in Sweden, and Italian tiles depicted Renaissance musicians.

Its owner also embraced technology by adding a coal furnace with a hand-cranked conveyor belt and a clock spring thermostat. They didn’t stop there, as they installed a call box that allowed Edgar and Esther to call “the help” from anywhere in the house. Its design is based on what the officer once used while at sea. Once pushed, the buzzer let the recipient know from which room it was pressed.

Esther remained in the house after Edgar passed away in 1908 at the age of 67. She was there when it lost the top of its turret during the Easter tornado of 1913. The carriage house was turned into a separate residence after their son, Edgar Jr., a private practice lawyer, and his wife Mary Barbara moved in. They turned it into a six-room house while moving it from the northeast corner of the property and turning it 90 degrees so that it faced 36th Street. Edgar the younger and his wife moved into the main house after his mother passed away in 1944. The carriage house, now with an address of 1111 N. 36th Street, was sold as a separate residence from that point forward.

Edgar Jr. remained in the house even after Mary Barbara passed away in 1958. The man who operated his practice in the Service Life Building downtown for 50 years also spent most of his life in the home that his parents built and that he grew up in. It’s fitting that Edgar Jr. passed away from a stroke while sitting on the front porch of his beloved home, only to be discovered by his housekeeper. With no children to inherit the house, the bank took ownership, presumably due to debt on the part of its owner. The contents of the house were subsequently auctioned off. The house sat vacant for the next four years.

It was rescued by Jim Bechtel in 1972. Bechtel recalled in an interview with Omaha Magazine its “hideous pale-yellow exterior” that had only been painted for its sale. While walking through the house, he even discovered a 42-star flag likely from 1889 or 1890 shoved into an attic corner. He hung the flag for one day on Independence Day 1974. Its new owner gave it a facelift and the addition of some color. It was during his ownership that the house was successfully added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and designated an Omaha Landmark two years later.

Bechtel’s daughter, Wendy, also lived in the house for a time. Since then, it appears that the house has had at least three different sets of owners, including Derek and Rebekah Pasqualetto, who bought it in 2020 and sold it in 2025. At some point over the years, the house was painted with classic pastel colors that matched its design: pink, lilac and orchid along with turquoise and complemented with cream-colored trim. Each has continued the restoration process while faithfully restoring and honoring its history. Some of the recent work includes gutting and rebuilding the kitchen, installing a new driveway, updating the HVAC and old knob-and-tube electricity, and other repairs.

When it was sold in 2025, it still had most of its original exterior and interior intact. That includes the original woodwork as well as the call box, which is fully functioning, along with the gaslight chandelier, which may be the only one remaining in Omaha and one of very few in the country. Since then, they’ve restored the original wood floors, repainted the east porch, restored the spindles, replaced light fixtures and planted flower beds inspired by Victorian gardens.

Its owners document their experience on social media at: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585938240750

While the city has since been built well beyond the Zabriskie, it still sits perched atop the hill looking out at one of the city’s most cherished historic neighborhoods. While it has seen change and even sat vacant, it remains well cared for, where another new set of owners will be proud to call it home.

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• Omaha World-Herald archives
• Beacon – Douglas County, NE – Report: 0608020002
• Edgar Zabriskie Residence – Wikipedia
• https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/NE-01-055-0019?utm
• A History of the Zabriskie Mansion in North Omaha by Jody Lovallo – NorthOmahaHistory.com
• Omaha Magazine, Honoring the House, 2023
• Omaha Magazine, A Painted Lady in Omaha: Old Queen Anne in Bemis Still a Looker, 2024
• Albrecht Jan “Albert John” Zabriskie (1638-1711) – Find a Grave Memorial
• Edgar Zabriskie (1840-1908) – Find a Grave Memorial
• https://www.ruins.blog/p/the-ed-zabriskie-house-and-what-it
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585938240750
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Zaborowsky-2