Fontenelle Bank - County Courthouse

The 1969 National Register nomination looked past the failed bank to the building. It is a two-story brick block under a hipped roof, with four brick pilasters across the first-floor front in the Greek Revival manner and elaborate window caps and tall openings that show early Italianate taste, a rare transitional mix in Nebraska. Few exterior changes had been made since 1856, and what was evidently the original bank vault survived on the first floor. Mrs. LeMar had been renting the building to an antique shop.

What the plaque says

Fontenelle Bank - County Courthouse This building of handmade bricks was constructed in 1856 to serve as the Fontenelle Bank. During the financial Panic of 1857 the Fontenelle Bank failed as did most of the other poorly backed wildcat banks in the Nebraska Territory. In 1861, by authority of the Territorial Legislature, the building was acquired by Sarpy County for use as the courthouse. In 1875 the County Seat was moved to Papillion. The City of Bellevue then utilized the building as the Town Hall until 1960, when a municipal building was completed. In 1961 Mrs. Harold D. LeMar purchased the building for preservation. In 1969 this rare structure was entered in the National Register of Historic Places. With the aid of a grant for historic preservation from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this building was purchased by the City of Bellevue and restored. In the history of Nebraska, buildings such as this have given service as the transition has been made from frontier settlements to modern communities. It has been preserved as one of the earliest public buildings in the State and remains a tribute to the heritage of Bellevue and Nebraska. Mrs. Harold LeMar Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 8.2 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.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 9.0 mi
  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.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 11 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 — 14 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

• First Presbyterian Church — 0.2 mi
• Bellevue — 0.3 mi
• Bellevue Log Cabin — 0.3 mi
• Bellevue Rifle Range — 1.2 mi