On the same day as the previous entry, I revisited this well-restored Italianate house on the west edge of the Fort Omaha campus. General George Crook was most famous for his success in containing the Plains Indians, the complete opposite of arrogant Custer in treating them honorably, most notably in the case of the Ponca chief, Standing Bear. Standing Bear left their Oklahoma reservation to bring his young son's body back to be buried in the Ponca homeland, west of Niobrara along that river where it runs into the Missouri. Crook testified for Standing Bear and also secretly got newspaper support, the outcome a famous decision in declaring Native Americans citizens with all those constitutional rights. (Standing Bear was secretly buried with other family members in the Ponca cemetery, now restored, south of the equally restored Ponca Agency along a road south of Niobrara State Park. The fine bridge over the Missouri to South Dakota at the old ferry landing site is named for him.)
Crook was not only the Commander of the Department of the Platte, which territory ran from the Missouri to Montana, from Canada to Texas, with headquarters at Fort Omaha--through which my great grandfather, John Christopher Luckert, had to pass to be stationed in Arizona and northeast Nebraska--but he was also a good friend of President Hayes and entertained both ex-President Grant and his wife and, later, the Hayes family at this house.
This is the east side partway up the long steep north-south ridge. I wish I had taken a side shot, because the house is quite long/deep, running east-west. I was fascinated with a very old print of Fort Omaha because it so clearly portrays the Omaha hills in our earliest years, bare of all the trees we have now (a very wooded city). Fort Omaha is in the south part of Florence, the north end of riverside Omaha, where the Mormons had their 1846-47 Winter Quarters and their hilltop cemetery, now with a visitors center and new tabernacle. Metropolitan Community College was deeded the fort in 1975, and it's now a branch campus, becoming famous for its Cuisine Department.
This is the Reception Room where the Grants and Hayes were entertained. I played a couple of pieces (with permission) on the square rosewood concert grand piano. At the right is a very old coin-operated music box set diagonally in the corner.
None of the furnishings belonged to the Crooks, but everything is authentically from that period. Ordinarily I prefer streamlined modern, not all the fussiness, but this is a handsome house. Besides the quality of the restoration, what I was most impressed by were the many, varied wallpapers, also authentic reproductions and visibly Victorian in their intricate patterns.
The special-effects version highlights the patterning. Even the kitchen has busy wallpaper, at the left. The right shows the care with ceilings and corners (a hallway). The stairway paper is stamped to look like embossed leather.
I missed the U.S. Treasury Seal on the outside doorknobs and backplates but did notice the specially made brass hinges.
The old Knox Hotel in Center had a horsehair sofa like this.
I think my favorite room was the elegant dining room.
Decorated trees are everywhere, including in the bathroom, often decorated with dried hydrangeas, roses, and other flowers, peacock and ostrich feathers, scallop seashells.
General Crook's own bedroom has a dresser that looks exactly like my great grandparents' sitting in my bedroom, except for different drawer handles.
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