Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church

The father the church honors was Christian Kountze, an immigrant from Saxony; Augustus, born in Osnaburg, Ohio, in 1826, was one of his seven children. Augustus reached Omaha in 1855 and with his brother Herman opened the Kountze Brothers bank in 1856, the house that became the First National Bank of Omaha, with Edward Creighton as its president until 1874. Brother Charles founded the Colorado National Bank in 1866 and Luther a Kountze Brothers bank in New York in 1868. Augustus moved to New York in 1872 and died there in 1892.

What the plaque says

Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church In 1858 the Allegheny Synod of Pennsylvania sent Rev. Henry Kuhns as the first Lutheran missionary to Nebraska Territory. On December 5, Kuhns and fourteen charter members organized Emanuel's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Omaha. In 1862 the congregation dedicated a small brick church at 1210 Douglas Street. A larger church was completed in 1885 at Sixteenth and Harney Streets with a gift from charter member Augustus Kountze. In gratitude, the congregation renamed the church in honor of Kountze's father. The present building, completed in 1906 at a cost of $92,000, is constructed of white limestone in German Gothic style and boasts curved pews, a magnificent skylight, inspirational stained glass, and a tower housing the bell from the 1862 church. The Fellowship Hall and Education wing was completed in 1942 at a cost of $100,000 and expanded in 1969, followed by a $2.5 million entire building renovation in 2006. Kountze Memorial, the oldest continuous Lutheran congregation west of the Missouri River, creates an atmosphere in which all can worship, grow in spiritual commitment, and engage in lives of service: "A City- Wide Church with a World-Wide Ministry." To those who served during the first 150 years Nebraska State Historical Society, 2010

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joslyn Art Museum — 0.3 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.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 1.3 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 — 5.4 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

• Capitol Hill — 0.4 mi
• Creighton University — 0.5 mi
• Before Creighton — 0.7 mi
• Duchesne Academy — 1.0 mi