Published August 10, 2025 | Updated June 1, 2026

Drake Court was not only Omaha’s largest but its premier apartment complex. It also served as the home to one of the city’s most famous citizens, Johnny Carson, before he headed to Hollywood.

Built by the Drake Realty Construction Company, Drake Court was the product of brothers William and George Drake. While attending Iowa State as a mechanical engineering student, William had dreams of becoming the apartment king of the world alongside his brother, who studied architecture. After graduating, they returned to Omaha in 1915.

To build their masterpiece, they acquired the former Smith Caldwell property between 20th and 22nd Streets, which was located on a strip of land between Leavenworth Street on the south and St. Mary’s Avenue on the north.

Located on the western edge of Omaha, the brothers designed, financed, and constructed the 14-building Drake Court complex over the next three years. The 216 apartment units had a central courtyard with a formal garden and two gazebos. The complex also had a playground for children and a central office that allowed tenants to pay their utility bills onsite while also leaving laundry to be cleaned and pressed and parcels delivered.

The original buildings were completed in 1916, but just three years later, the brothers extended the apartment complex west of 22nd Street with the construction of the Dartmore apartments. These five buildings included 180 one-bedroom units and look similar to Drake Court. These apartments were ideally situated as this area along the western fringes of the city had become an affluent mixed-use neighborhood. Drake Court and its owner, William Drake, captured headlines in 1920 when his tenants organized to protest a $35 per month increase in rent.

The Drakes’ growing apartment empire required a larger accommodation, leading to the acquisition of the Willow Springs Distillery near 4th and Pierce Streets. Following Prohibition, the building sat empty for a time. To allow for the specialized equipment required of a distillery, it was a one-story building that was six stories tall. After adding five interior floors, Drake converted it to a warehouse while also building a mill and offices.

Still aspiring to become the apartment king, William and his brother George held more than $4M in apartments in 1925 while the company built 1,100 apartment units in Omaha in a 10-year period from 1918 to 1928. Among these were the Coronado, Hanscom, Palmer, Alhambra, Austin, Terrace Court, Aberdeen, Carberry, Brandon, and Elwood apartments.

The prevalence of Drake apartments led to the company competing against itself for tenants. The overbuilding resulted in William filing for bankruptcy and was forced to turn everything over to his creditors. The young man who had made a fortune before he turned 35 lost everything. He moved to Chicago for a time before passing away in 1935 at just 45. George passed away in 1944 at 51.

Drake Court remained a prestigious property and even included famous television host and comedian Johnny Carson as a tenant while he was working at WOW Radio in 1949. Johnny returned to visit his old apartment in 1969 and even painted one of the walls. Fifty years after its residents first organized to protest rent increases, they did it again in 1970.

By the late 1970s the surrounding neighborhood began to suffer as the city’s population began moving further west and the area was largely ignored. Through the 1980s and 1990s poverty was evident and crime including shootings, stabbings, fires, and prostitution were rampant. The once grand apartments in the area, including Drake Court as well as Dartmore, Ansonia (Anderson Apartments), and the nearby Rorick (City View Apartments), also suffered and deteriorated. That set up a situation in which a series of negligent owners whose only interest was to milk tenants for profit without providing adequate living conditions in return. By 1990 only about 60 of the more than 200 units were occupied, with some of the buildings being condemned. Six years later they were vacant save for the homeless who sought shelter when there were few other options.

Drake Court found new life after NuStyle Development bought the complex in 2000. Founded in 1988 by Todd Heistand and his sister Tammy Barrett, the company had previously renovated the Old Market Lofts and would do the same for the Livestock Exchange Building. They gutted the Drake Court buildings, making sure to keep the exterior intact, while creating 138 modern two- and three-bedroom mixed-income units. The project also included the restoration of the courtyard as well as the addition of a fitness center, community room, and information center.

NuStyle also acquired the adjacent Grunwald building that ran along the south side of Drake Court between it and Leavenworth Street. The building once served as the bus barn, paper storage warehouse, and the temporary site of Liberty Elementary before Omaha Public Schools constructed a new school on the north side of Drake Court facing St. Mary’s Avenue. NuStyle converted it into office space, lofts, and indoor parking. When Drake Court, including the newly named Liberty Lofts, reopened in 2003, rents ranged from $450 for a one-bedroom up to $650 for a two-bedroom. Together, the buildings were part of a larger plan to rejuvenate the area that included the new school.

Drake Court was named an Omaha Landmark in 1978 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places two years later in 1980. In 2014, additional documentation was submitted and the boundary of the district was expanded and renamed the Drake Court Historic District, which by this time included the Dartmore and Ansonia apartments. Drake Court now finds itself as part of The Quarters district. In 2024 NuStyle sold the apartment complex to Harvest Development. Earlier this year its tenants formed a union claiming that living conditions have since gone downhill. Grievances included a problematic gate at the exterior of the building, a lack of security, and being forced into month-to-month leases with rent increases.

It’s been decades since Drake Court stood at the western edges of Omaha. Over the last century the city has grown around it while the once prominent area was neglected. The apartments were not immune. But the brothers’ legacy, Drake Court, still stands in an area on the verge of a rebirth.

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