52nd and Leavenworth. Rowhaus. Quirky and cheap at the same time, this gimmicky housing is jarringly indifferent to the local vernacular. Not to be misconstrued with the Box in the Box housing I have previously bewailed, this building wants you to know it is offbeat. We feel ill at ease when driving by. Why is that? You know because you feel it too. A cartoonish and awkward, flat, gray shape and minimum legal setback threatens to dangle its future owners over Leavenworth by their own miniscule, luxury balconies. Unsure of where the homes’ entrances are, amidst a stretch of flat doors and flatter windows? Visually and spatially, we humans with pulses crave doorways to be distinguished from the overall toneless façade. All building sides give the impression of being “the rear” alley elevation because of the missing windows, clear entryways and I say, beauty. If a building is neither serviceable or beautiful…my word. There is no homecoming, no soul. Meanwhile the intact, historic Elmwood neighborhood has a sizable stock of quality housing of all shapes, sizes , and price points that have lasted for generations and continue to age well. If we are going to tear down working homes to build these pocket neighborhoods, let’s do better, Omaha.
January 2023.
“Like Slow Death,” has become a Cassette family favorite as quoted from Mr. Cassette’s dear friend, Shelly Cohen. It is dark. Feel free to toss it around. You’ll find many occasions to use it in this town. Must be declared with a deadpan expression, of course. Expect gales of laughter.
52nd Street, south of Leavenworth. Furthering the war on beauty. If you were feeling bad about the future Rowhaus homeowners’ lack of sunlight and a desirable view, here is what they will be missing. Too bad the rest of us can’t obscure the view and experience of the bathing powers. Directly to the southeast, an insidious 5G cell tower. With resignation, we wonder, have people gotten used to the ugliness of the built environment or do people even see these atrocities in their neighborhoods? I remember one day I was getting a coffee at the Legend Coffee and Comics drive-thru and BOOM, there this thing had sprouted up like an evil weed.
Our little lady house at 4314-4316 Leavenworth, at the back side of the Barrett’s Barleycorn Pub & Grill parking lot. Here she is viewed on February 19, 2022, no longer with tenants. The second image shows the leveled sight in earlier April 2023. One of the oldest mystery houses in the neighborhood (and why was she set back that far?), I will reserve this story for my full investigation forthcoming. She was a gem! Slán go fóill. Solidarity with all small town Leavenworth businesses fighting the good fight.
27th Avenue and Harney.
I will say it publicly: These white things are bad for mental health. They have degraded the environment and in taking cues from this sad contribution, our spirits have collectively sunk. Have you seen someone trying to navigate these in the snow in order to park? All I can pray is that concern for visibility and, presumably, safety overcame the team who created these white delineator-round-post arrangements. I have come to understand that a group of planners wanted to move parked traffic into the inner lanes in order to create a specific bicycle lane on the outer edge of Harney Street. Now I support cycling. I no longer ride my bicycle on the streets of this city, it is true, as I no longer have a death wish but I do support cyclists in their enthusiasm to ride on Omaha’s city streets. In honor of them and all who remain among the living, the ugliness and plastic-ness of this plan needs to be reworked. Since the month they were very first installed, I cried out to our city’s forefathers that I not lose the will to champion Omaha. Unsurpassed shamefulness. It looked like a grade school project forcefully pushed through the city channels without regard for our sanity and already stressed aesthetic fragility in this forsaken town.
25th and Harney.
27th and Harney. No one knows what these paintings are telling us to do.
13th and Harney. How can we disrespect the Old Market like this? This is the historic Baum Hydraulics Corporation, for Mercer’s sake!
10th and Worthington. Children being educated in a crematorium. What has the world come to? Truly the places we live, work, sleep, play, eat and die in shape us. When the education building resembles the cremation chamber or the jail downtown, we’ve got to reevaluate. I am not picking on this school (this is possibly a gymnasium)—there are many of them. Drive around and look at new elementary school additions these days. Look at high schools; drive by UNO. Limited windows with growing emphasis on inner rooms and smart tech buildings. Expansive ceilings when one walks into the building with inner windowless rooms. Same as the new houses without windows on the sides.
Frosted Screen at 8601 West Dodge Road. No one knows why this is here except to impress and announce that they updated the building’s entrances. (On that note, they do get a Like Slow Death award for making their entrances clear!) Lacking local character or purpose, I have begun imagining it as a huge, backlit screen for Asian shadow theater with ornate Chinese puppets. These shows only happen at night, sometimes with projections. We can drive up and park in rows in front of it. It is very odd. We can turn our radios to a certain channel and hear the Chinese comedy unfold. It’s the new West Dodge Drive-In. This daydream has taken the unsightliness and misery of the 8601 screen to a place of wonderment. Give it a try next time you are wondering how much money was spent on this frosted ornamentation.
Saddle Creek and Leavenworth, facing northwest toward Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. The now desirable Saddle Creek flood corridor is slowing scraped away for its future UNMC makeover.
Okay guys and gals, we’ve come to end of our Like Slow Death rant. Do not worry—I’ve got a great impromptu residential mystery coming up (a real whodunnit that I need your help with) and of course, the tail end of 9402 Pacific Street house saga. I hope you understand that with all of the Omaha cheer, sometimes a sleuth just gets fed up with the growing throwaway culture. Mr. Cassette wants to launch his own website about how much he hates the looks of Omaha and I am sure it would tremendously popular.
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Thank you for shouting out about Omaha’s ongoing sad state of architectural affairs. I laughed out loud at “for Mercer’s sake!”
Hi Steve,
Good to hear from you. I hope you are doing well. Mark and Sam Mercer and Tom Rudloff have floated by those white things in front of Antiquarium and do not approve–I am sure if it!
I completely agree with Mr. Cassette. Omaha has indeed become ugly. I am so sad to think and say that out loud, because I grew up in Omaha and remember when it was otherwise. It no longer has any heart, any soul, or charm. The city planners and soooo many architects/designers/project managers apparently have all fallen down the same rabbit hole, and the Mad Hatter is running amuck. And they aren’t drinking tea at the Tea Party; it appears to be ‘the Kool-aid’, and Omaha is what’s getting stuffed into the teapot by the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, not the Dormouse.
PS: those white-posted lane things are simply an abomination. Whomever designed/approved those is definitely drinking the Kool-aid. Or smoking crack.
Marilyn–ha! You make me smile. I forwarded what you wrote to Mr. Cassette. He will say amen! Thank you for riding in. Don’t “accidentally” hit the white cone thingies in an attempt to clear or rearrange them. They just kind of pop back up. Unlike the buildings popping up around town, these white things are surprisingly tough and built to last.
Great post! Unfortunately I live in one of those boxes, just in a different part of the town. The 10th & Worthington Elementary example is one of the buildings that OPS did not tear down from the old Mercy campus when they attached a brand new elementary school to it. It may be that they chose the wrong building to salvage, but they tried!
Hello Jim! Thank you so much for writing in. I really appreciate you giving me more information about that odd building attached to Pine. I didn’t know that Mercy Hospital had stretched that far down the street. Fascinating! I wonder what they had use that building for? It just might have been the morgue! These are my jokes. Maybe it was some kind of recreation building–for those who like to work out in the dark.
Many cities require these ugly cell towers to be appropriately “disguised” to make them less obtrusive. I think we need that here.
it was Grace University, I went there. They owned the Mercy Hospital campus to the south for a time when they thought expansion was in the cards for them, unfortunately things went in the other direction… So the old Grace campus got sold to OPS to build a new elementary school. They tore down the chapel, library, and residential hall and cafeteria and some classrooms but kept the gym. So I guess it is kind of nice for the kids there to have a fully functional gymnasium (which was only built like 20 years ago to pretty modern standards… once again this was built in a time where the college though they were going to be expanding pretty significantly). The other part of that is at 9th/William was the north campus of Grace, student housing, admin offices, a few more classrooms. That has been repurposed as a very interesting Dahlman Flats project. Anyway, good stuff as always Ms Cassette
It is SO nice to have you back on Facebook! You have been missed… Mr. Cassette is absolutely correct: The “Cancer of Ugly” contines to infect Omaha, and there does not appear to be a treatment. “Metromestastization.”
This is among some of your best work, best commentary.
I’ll add some thoughts later, but for now, here’s a link to an article relating to these incredibly stupid, short-sighted, inconsiderate trends: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might-not-lower-housing-costs-do-it-anyway
This “trend” is happening everywhere, but it’s especially bad in Omaha… no surprise. Lack of talent and 5 over 1 construction is destroying what little character there is and what little has survived the last 100 yrs.
Here’s a really good article that explains a good deal about the current state of development:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/4/26/upzoning-might-not-lower-housing-costs-do-it-anyway
They are ugly and sprout up almost over night. Blocking the view. They just need to stop!!
Also note that two Reinhold Hennig designed duplexes were torn down to build the rowhouses
The buildings are ugly and boring. What happened to all the great and beautiful houses and buildings we had in Omaha. Being torn down and putting up crap in it”s place. What a shame. Sad to see 9401 Pacific torn down. Another part of Omaha history gone.
As someone with kids in elementary schools, the lack of windows is definitely on purpose, for very good, very unfortunate, reasons… Even older buildings have had windows removed completely or replaced with smaller, more… impact resistant… ones.
The Rowhaus is weird looking simply for weirdness sake. Jay Noddle must have ordered his “architects” to make it look so stupid that its ugliness would be less noticeable. My brother and I used to live in one of the nice little homes that were demolished to make way for this unsightly gray box with a crumpled accordion roof. Hate seeing this happen to such a great neighborhood…these real estate developers and their accomplices in the City Planning Department should be ashamed.
Thank you for this ENLIGHTENING article. I look forward to these “walks” around the city. Keep up this wonderful investigating.