Published February 11, 2026 | Updated August 28, 2026

Constructed for the Byron Reed Company, the Farnam Building located on the south side of Farnam between 16th and 17th Streets, has seen a number of notable businesses reside within its walls over the years.

The company’s founder, Byron Reed, was born in New York in 1829 and started his real estate company in 1856. In addition to becoming extremely wealthy, the real estate tycoon also donated some of his extensive real estate holdings to the Omaha Public Library so that it could build a permanent location at 19th and Harney Street.

While Reed had passed away in 1891, his company continued and hired George Prinz to design a new headquarters in 1929 near the end of Omaha’s “Golden Age,” just before the Great Depression. Prinz was an MIT-educated architect, who worked under Thomas Rogers Kimball for a time before starting his own practice.

The seven-story Farnam Building, with elements of Art Deco, Sullivanesque, and Gothic Revival styles, contained both a full basement and a sidewalk vault, a subterranean room beneath the sidewalk. To this day, Byron Reed Company carries the distinction of being the state’s oldest real estate company. While N.P. Dodge started a year earlier, its original office was located in Council Bluffs, Iowa before the company relocated to Nebraska in 1900.

The building features brick pilasters flanking the windows, with ornamental bronze spandrel panels in between. Above the top-floor windows are limestone crowns with decorative relief, all topped by a monumental Art Deco-style battlement.

Byron Reed Company used the second floor as its corporate offices while leasing the remaining floors as both office and retail space. The ground floor included six commercial bays for retail tenants. Among the original tenants were the ticket office for the Milwaukee Road Railroad, Loftis Bros. Jewelry Store, Mangel’s, W. L. Douglas Shoe Store, and Northrup-Jones.

In 1939, Northrup-Jones, a cafeteria-style restaurant and bakery that was popular with judges, lawyers, politicians, and office professionals, wanted a distinct look for its storefront on the western half of the building. Architect John Latenser Jr. renovated the space in a Georgian Revival style with a glazed terra cotta facade, making it architecturally significant in its own right.

While Byron Reed Company moved out in 1966, Northrup-Jones continued to lease its space until closing in 1994. By that time, the building was deteriorating and half empty when NuStyle Development purchased it and converted the former office space into 30 residential units for low-to-moderate-income tenants. By 2000, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

The street-level retail storefronts have changed over the years but remain in use today. The former Northrup-Jones space at 1617 Farnam Street was converted into what may be the most unique post office retail location in Omaha.

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Read my content on Grow Omaha: Local History by Omaha Exploration | Grow Omaha

More pictures

• Omaha Wold-Herald archives
• https://www.nps.gov/places/the-farnam-building.htm
• https://preservation.cityofomaha.org/location/farnam-building/
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211047685/byron-reed
• https://block16omaha.com/
• https://tablegracecafe.com/