The bricks works are almost sixty years old. It is an interesting fact that as late as 20 years ago there were nearly 50 brick plants in Nebraska. Gradually they disappeared, for one reason or another, one of which was that the right kind of clay can’t be found just anywhere one might throw up a factory. There are now four in the state—at Yankee Hill, Nebraska City, Hastings and Endicott. Yankee Hill, adjoining Pioneers park on the southeast, makes all kinds of brick, many of which are used in Lincoln and many shipped to other places. Plant capacity is 80,000 bricks a day.
No. 56—Whitehall, 5903 Walker
Whitehall has romantic appeal, for a number of reasons. It was once the home of Mrs. C. C. White, pioneer Lincoln resident and Methodist, and, in its calico and cornbread days, one of Lincoln’s first young ladies. When in later years one of the White daughters became the wife of an Italian count there was a general pleased feeling of something or other—as that east and west do sometimes meet, or that it’s just one step from pioneer to peeress.
Mrs. White, who had presented Wesleyan university with a college building named for Mr. White, long deceased, later gave Whitehall to the state as a home for children. There is sometimes romance in Whitehall even yet. We once wrote a story about the children, picturing the one red headed child, a good and wistful little boy. The parents of red haired twin girls, seeing the picture, arranged to adopt him.
It is of course dangerous to expose yourself to childish charm at Whitehall—you might come away a parent. Forty years ago a train of New York waifs was sent out thru Nebraska. A woman, feeling idle curiosity, went down to see the train come into her small town. As she stood on the platform she noticed a small boy—he is now a Lincoln man—walking forward and looking up most earnestly at all the people around him. When he saw this woman he took her hand and said, modestly but confidently, that he would like her to be his mother. Altho already supplied with a child of her own, the woman found it impossible to refuse. And, happily, he turned out to be the best of sons and the finest of men.
No. 57—St. Mary’s Cathedral
Encountered by another heaven-kissing spire, so delightful to look at, so difficult to encompass in small space, we decided to invite you inside St. Mary’s, to contemplate the high altar and reflect on the enduring work of that fiery first bishop of Lincoln—Bishop Bonacum.
This advantageous position, 14th and K, was first snatched by members of the Christian church, who built an edifice very like the one now standing opposite the capitol. They lost it during the 90’s depression and Bishop Bonacum took over, rebuilding once after a fire had well nigh demolished the church.