Capitol Hill

The capital fight broke the legislature apart in January 1858. On January 7 a bill to move the capital out of Omaha was introduced, and in the uproar that followed Speaker Decker gripped the Speaker's chair, with Dr. Thrall presiding in it, and began tipping it. The next day the Council voted 8 to 4 to adjourn to Florence, and Decker and twenty-one House members took their hats and left, while thirteen stayed. Governor Richardson, on duty from the 12th, addressed the Florence group as members of the Legislature, not the Legislature, and told them they were in error.

What the plaque says

Capitol Hill This site on Capitol Hill was for a decade the location of Nebraska's second territorial capitol. The building was erected here in 1857 and 1858 and served until the seat of government was removed to Lincoln in 1868. Acting-Governor Cuming designated Omaha as the capital of Nebraska Territory by convening the First Territorial Legislature in Omaha on January 16, 1855. It met in a small two story brick building donated by the Council Bluffs and Nebraska Ferry Company and located on Ninth Street between Douglas and Farnam facing the Missouri River. It housed the legislature for the sessions of 1855 and 1857. The second capitol was a handsome brick building 137 by 93 feet. The supreme court, the library and government offices were on the first floor and the legislature and governor on the second. Corinthian columns planned for the building were removed as unsafe after several had collapsed. In 1869 the Capitol building and grounds were presented by the state to Omaha for use as a school. The building was pronounced unsafe and the first public Omaha High School was erected in its place on Capitol Hill in 1872. The present Central High School building completed in 1912 replaced the earlier building. The central court of the school represents the approximate area of the original capitol. Greater Omaha Historical Society Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joslyn Art Museum — steps away
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 1.0 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 2.4 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 5.3 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.

More markers nearby

• Before Creighton — 0.3 mi
• Creighton University — 0.4 mi
• Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church — 0.4 mi
• Captain William Clark and Private Reuben Field — 1.0 mi