Poynter Hall

The dean the building honours was born in 1875 in Eureka, Illinois, and was the son of William Poynter, Nebraska's tenth governor from 1899 to 1901. He finished Albion High School in 1892, taught school in Boone County, and took his M.D. from this college in 1902 before practising in Lincoln from 1903 to 1911 and studying in Vienna. When all four years of medical teaching moved to Omaha in 1914 he took the chair of anatomy, holding it until 1946. He died in 1950, remembered as a confidant of the 1,800 graduates of his deanship.

What the plaque says

Poynter Hall In 1902 the Omaha Medical College, a private medical school, affiliated with the University of Nebraska to form the University of Nebraska College of Medicine. At first, classes were split between Lincoln and Omaha. After much debate, in 1909 the Nebraska Legislature approved this site on what was then the western edge of Omaha. A national competition was held for the campus design. During construction this building was in the direct path of the devastating Easter Sunday tornado of March 23, 1913, but survived unscathed. The first building on this campus, it was completed in September 1913 at a cost of $110,000. Initially, it held all medical school classes. After other buildings were added to the campus, it remained the home of the departments of anatomy, embryology, microbiology, and pathology and was known as the North Building. In 1970 it was renamed in memory of Charles William McCorkle Poynter, the longest serving dean of the college (1929 to 1946). In 2012 Poynter Hall was completely refurbished and is now home to the department of psychiatry. McGoogan Library of Medicine Wigton History Fund Nebraska State Historical Society, 2014

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Joslyn Art Museum — 1.6 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) — 2.5 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 — 2.5 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 — 5.5 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

• George and Sarah Joslyn Home — 0.4 mi
• Duchesne Academy — 0.9 mi
• Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church — 1.3 mi
• Creighton University — 1.6 mi