Whenever I'm ailing or depressed, there's a gap here. I've been battling a deep cold for over a week, but I need to make some more entries. I have already said that architecture was my original major for the first two weeks of college and has remained deeply important to me, as this entry should demonstrate.. This entry shows the originals for the Model Railroad Garden's models.
In the foreground above is what is now called the Rose Theater for Mrs. Blumkin, with her husband the founders of Nebraska Furniture Mart of now national fame through size and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway meetings. Mrs. Blumkin bought a derelict theater and started its restoration funding. It was first the Paramount in 1927, the Astro when I last went to a movie there, and recently had its starlight ceiling restored and publicized, above the Moorish-baroque ornamentation. It is used primarily for children's theater and the ballet.
Behind it stands Omaha's first skyscraper, the Omaha Building model (and I've already traced its history). On a recent bright Sunday morning--no parking, no people problems--I took these photos, the first of the Rose, and second of the Omaha, with our city's present ruling skyscraper, the First National Bank Tower, behind it. You can even see the eagle over the entrance, as mentioned in the modeling materials earlier.
Below are the models of the new national headquarters for the Union Pacific Railroad in front, the Woodmen Tower behind it. Taken from the Gene Leahy Mall, the second photo below shows the Union Pacific building in front of the First National Bank Tower downtown. The view is northwest. The low reddish brick building to the far right behind the new UP is the old Union Pacific Headquarters across Dodge Street to the north, to be razed for an all-glass condominium tower. Part of the mall is in the foreground.
Below is the First National Bank Tower model to the right of the Woodmen Building, looking not so very much taller, though it is, it is. First National now dominates the skyline day and night, a massive presence, with its notable sculpture garden in Pioneer Courage Park at its base across 16th Street.
Obviously, this is the Woodmen Tower, looking near the size of First National to the left behind it, with the red-brick Omaha Building at Woodmen's lower right corner. I consider the Woodmen architectural pablum, but it was where I first worked in a free-lance court reporting firm and has several law firms, because the Old Courthouse, properly the Hall of Justice, is just across the street to its right.
What most outsiders don't realize is that most of downtown Omaha is on a sidehill, beneath which is an aquifer that makes big buildings problematic. (Omaha is surprisingly hilly anyway.) The Woodmen gains its height effect by being high on this sidehill, above the lower site of the First National, on the floodplain flat, shown here behind the new, low Federal Building (with the peculiar roof wings) named for Roman Hruska, noted for his defense of mediocrity in the Supreme Court and the legal system generally but a longtime Nebraska Senator. At the right Douglas Street heads downhill to the flat and Gene Leahy Mall.
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