Omaha Exploration

While most well known for being the home of Warren Buffett, 5505 Farnam Street has been home to many of the city’s richest and most powerful people. The house dates back to 1922 when it was built by George H. Payne for twenty-five thousand dollars. The two-and-a-half-story house was designed by architect Charles Steinbaugh in the Dutch Colonial style.

Constructed of brick and stucco, the 6,570 square foot home had 10 rooms. Located on the first floor was an entrance hall, powder room, living room with fireplace, conservatory, dining room, kitchen, large pantry and breakfast room. The second floor contained five bedrooms, sunroom and four bathrooms while the third floor was a large recreation space. The basement had a laundry room, fruit and vegetable room, wine cellar, boiler room and sleeping quarters and bath for a maid or chauffeur. It also had an attached two-car garage. Perhaps more notable was the considerable amount of money Payne spent landscaping the grounds.

Its original owner established a real estate company before forming Payne Investment Company, thereby kick-starting what would be one of the largest colonization efforts in the western United States. Payne only lived in Dundee’s Evanston addition until 1925, at which point he relocated to the stunning home at 3402 Lincoln Boulevard in Bemis Park.

Billy Nesselhous purchased the home with its beautifully landscaped grounds for his mother Martha Withnell. If the Nesselhous name seems familiar, it is because the former jockey was a key player in Tom Dennison’s political machine that dominated Omaha politics for nearly 30 years. Nesselhous owned the Budweiser Saloon, which also served as the boss’s headquarters. Nesselhous adored his mother and spared no expense buying the house for seventy-five thousand dollars and spending another thirty-five thousand dollars on furniture and pictures to fill the home. She had both a live-in maid and chauffeur. The house was often referred to as one of the city’s most beautiful.

After Martha passed away in 1934, the man who had earlier been indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to violate prohibition laws as one of Dennison’s top bootleggers moved in. Nesselhous gave the third-floor recreation room a log cabin look by finishing it with logs. He loved to entertain and would often host parties in the space with “flocks of pretty girls.” Nesselhous’s time in the house was brief, having passed away three years later in 1937. While he left the house to his sister, Ida Caldwell, it was sold in 1939 likely to settle the estate.

Its fourth owner was Sam Reynolds. The vice president and general manager of the Reynolds Updike Coal Company was later nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve as director of the Army Specialist Corps in Omaha from 1942 to 1943. In 1954 he was appointed by Governor Robert B. Crosby to the United States Senate to finish the term of Hugh Butler after Butler passed away. While Reynolds opted not to run for his own term, he did serve on the city council for a time. He moved outside the city and sold the home to Warren Buffett.

As its fifth owner, Warren Buffett was just 28 years old when he bought the home and would not take over Berkshire Hathaway until seven years later in 1965. While he altered the house in some manner in 1967, there is not much else published about it. Buffett made his fortune finding value where others did not while holding onto those investments longer than anyone else. His house on Farnam Street is no different. He paid thirty-one thousand five hundred dollars for it in 1958 and has lived there ever since, through market crashes and booms. The Oracle of Omaha, it turns out, was not difficult to locate.

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Sources

• Omaha World-Herald archives
• Architectural Digest, Warren Buffett’s Houses: Inside the Billionaire’s Long-Standing Properties, Jun 7, 2024.
• https://finty.com/us/real-estate/warren-buffett-omaha-house/