George and Sarah Joslyn Home

The house went on working long after the family. Omaha Public Schools made it the district's headquarters in 1944, added an office annex in 1958 that took in walls of the original greenhouses, and stayed until 1989, when the property passed to the State of Nebraska. The Joslyn Castle Institute for Sustainable Communities moved in during 1996 to manage and preserve the estate, and in December 2010 the state sold it to the Joslyn Castle Trust, a private body formed to maintain it. Listed on the National Register in 1972, it is open for tours, events and rentals.

What the plaque says

George and Sarah Joslyn Home The Joslyns purchased the Sutphen farm in 1893 and began landscaping the five-acre site. Omaha architect John McDonald designed the mansion to resemble a Scottish manor. Named Lynhurst and known locally as "Joslyn Castle," the thirty-four-room house was completed in 1903. It includes an interior conservatory designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen in 1913. The Joslyns made their fortune in the ready-print news business and owned the Western Newspaper Union. They gave generously to many Omaha organizations. Joslyn Castle Neighborhood Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joslyn Art Museum — 1.4 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 — 2.1 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.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 2.4 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.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 5.1 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

• Poynter Hall — 0.4 mi
• Duchesne Academy — 0.5 mi
• Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church — 1.2 mi
• Historic Prospect Hill--Omaha's Pioneer Cemetery — 1.3 mi