The Lewis-Syford House

The Syfords kept the house for sixty-one years. DeWitt Syford, a railroad man and cattle breeder credited with introducing Angus cattle to Lancaster County, bought it in 1904, after Professor T. Hodgeman had lived there for ten years. When DeWitt died in 1926 it passed to his three children, Lester, Ethyl and Constance, all University of Nebraska graduates and none of them married. Lester died in 1952, Ethyl in 1955 and Constance, the youngest, in 1965. The university later used the house for counseling services, and today it is a privately owned rental.

What the plaque says

The Lewis-Syford House Elisha M. Lewis, early Nebraska pastor and missionary, built this French Second Empire style house in about 1878. The Syford family owned the property from 1904 until the daughter, Constance, willed the house in 1965 to the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation, which is responsible for its preservation. The Lewis-Syford House is the oldest remaining building on the University of Nebraska campus. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nebraska State Capitol — 0.8 mi
  Bertram Goodhue's 400-foot tower on the prairie, built in four phases from 1922 to 1932 and paid off on completion, home of the only one-house legislature in the country.
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum — 24 mi
  Two hangar-sized halls beside I-80 near Ashland holding the bombers and reconnaissance planes of the command that ran America's nuclear force from Offutt, south of Omaha, from 1948 to 1992.

More markers nearby

• Pershing Rifles — steps away
• The Nebraska State Historical Society — 0.2 mi
• The University of Nebraska — 0.4 mi
• Lincoln's Founding Block — 0.6 mi