INTRODUCTION

From today’s dazzling Omaha Riverfront area, with its parks, hotels, bars, restaurants, arena, and pedestrian bridge to Council Bluffs, it is hard to envision the location as a muddy village clinging to the banks of the Missouri River in the 1850s. Indeed, drinking, gambling, and other vices were so prevalent that a Kansas City newspaper once suggested that the nation pray for Omaha.

In today’s Omaha, it is hard to drive six blocks without seeing a house of worship of some variety. It is estimated that more than half of the population belongs to a congregation, which is higher than the national average. Many of both the historic and new houses of worship offer visual hints to the cultures of the people who built them.

Who would expect to see an elephant atop a Hindu temple or Orthodox cupolas in a Midwestern city? For that matter, how did one of the nation’s 10 largest cathedrals come to be built in a city that had less than 200,000 people at the time construction began?

This book explores the fascinating story of how these and many other religious buildings and related landmarks came into being. It takes readers on a photographic tour of Omaha’s historic houses of worship, including tales of the people and groups that built them. Although many early Omaha congregations came and went and some preachers gave up on the community, church steeples began to dot the downtown Omaha landscape a few years after its founding in 1854.

Early Omahans established a religious culture that endures to this day. From the first, the city was religiously diverse, and this is reflected in the wide range of historic church buildings depicted in this book. No one faith dominated, although Roman Catholics were, and remain today, the largest religious group.

Because Omaha’s settlers were diverse and had to find a way to live together, they tended to be religiously tolerant. Until churches could be built, for example, Catholics, Episcopalians, and Methodists all held services in the territorial capitol building. After Catholics built the city’s first church, they shared an organ with the Episcopalians who met in a nearby commercial building. Men from the two congregations carried it back and forth weekly. This spirit of cooperation has endured.

The historic houses of worship featured in this book also reflect the city’s history of immigration, especially in South and North Omaha, where the architectural styles of many churches are physical reminders of the people who built them. South Omaha, especially, features an eclectic collection of churches of many faiths and national heritages, reflecting the diversity of immigrants who came to work in the packinghouses. North Omaha attracted its own diverse collection of African Americans, Irish, Scandinavians, Germans, and Jews, with all of these heritages reflected in historic houses of worship.

This book reflects on the influx of many of these groups into Omaha and the contributions they made by featuring their houses of worship as well as related institutions, such as a small historic Jewish cemetery in North Omaha.

Our work owes much of its inspiration to the late Dr. Charles Gildersleeve, a University of Nebraska at Omaha geography professor who used to fascinate audiences with his slide shows on the city’s ethnic landmarks, including religious buildings. He explained that it was possible to trace the movements of various groups around the city by looking at such architectural clues.

As a young religion reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, coauthor Dr. Eileen Wirth developed a special interest in the richness of the city’s religious and ethnic heritage and the beauty of many of its historic churches. Coauthor Carol McCabe has deep roots in an ethnically diverse South Omaha family and a special love for this historic part of the city.

Our research included driving the streets of the old neighborhoods of South and North Omaha hunting for historic churches. We scoured books on Omaha history and often stumbled across unexpected treasures or historically interesting tidbits that fleshed out the portrait that began to emerge.

This book takes a roughly chronological approach to the development of Omaha’s religious landscape, beginning with the historic Mormon Winter Quarters settlement in the Florence area before Omaha was founded. Settlers en route to Utah spent a couple of awful winters in the area, and many died, leaving behind the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery.

In presenting the story of the growth of religion in Omaha, we focus especially on the “First” churches of half a dozen denominations, many of which are still located either in or near downtown Omaha. In order to ensure that Omaha’s major faith traditions are all represented, we pay special attention to the earliest houses of worship of various groups regardless of when they were founded. Inevitably, we have omitted some congregations that might have been included; we apologize for such omissions.

We also focus on houses of worship listed in the National Register of Historic Places and those that have local landmark status. Buildings that were designed by important architects are also spotlighted. We especially highlight St. Cecilia’s Cathedral, not only because it is the city’s most prominent religious landmark, but also because it houses a spectacular collection of original art created for this gem.

Since it is impossible to separate religious buildings from those who built and worshipped in them, we attempt to show some of the flavor of the neighborhoods in which they are located and how these areas developed. We acknowledge significant religious institutions and some interesting people from the groups who built Omaha.

In our final chapter, we skip ahead to the present and the way that today’s newcomers are expanding Omaha’s religious diversity with houses of worship of many new faiths, a high percentage of them non-Christian.

We hope you enjoy this visual tour and that you may even be inspired to check out some of its stops!