For years preceding and following the turn of the century 9th street was definitely a street of wickedness. In fact it was dedicated to the ways of wickedness—it and the shadowy region west, extending down to about K street. There was a law on the books against the sort of houses that filled the redlight district, but instead of enforcing it the police exacted tribute. Every first Monday of the month proprietresses in silks and plumes rustled into the city hall and majestically laid down their gold. As the rate was, we are told, about $15 for inmates and $25 for managers per month, they left a considerable stack on the municipal desk. Most of it went into the public school coffers.
This noisome neighborhood kept police busy. No mere saunter up to the station for a list of parking offenders was the police run in those hectic days. Often a brief telephone call—murder or/and suicide at Rose’s or Rae’s or Kitty’s, took police and reporters hopping. The district was finally closed by the expedient of enforcing the law. The man undertaking this revolutionary method of procedure was Co. Atty. Frank Tyrrell.
One of the well known notorious houses, known as Lydia’s place, stood at 124 So. 9th st. This same building, cleansed in purpose and aspect, was a number of years ago turned into the City Mission by interested Lincoln churches. At the top of the house a lighted star now beckons shabby wayfarers to a free meal and night’s lodging. Looking in at the mission any evening one may see, not parading painted women in short skirts, smoking cigarets—unmistakable marks of sin in the 80’s and 90’s—but seated derelicts lending their cauliflower ears to the nightly religious service.
No. 13—Aeronautical Institute
When a blond young man, silent and tall, brought his smoking motorcycle to rest in front of E. J. Sias’s airplane and flying school at 2415 O, on April fool’s day, 1922, he probably had no idea, and certainly Lincoln had no idea, that what he learned at the flying school would one day catapult him into fame. Unnoticed Charles Lindbergh traversed the streets of Lincoln, quiet and untalkative.
After his spectacular air voyage of May 20-21, 1927—spectacular and yet on his part made as quietly as his entrance into Lincoln five years before, the flying school suddenly became a mecca. Young men were siphoned out of Australia, Scotland, China, New Guinea and dumped at the door of the school—young men talking in divers tongues but speaking the same language aeronautically. Since the war started men in uniform have almost cracked the walls of the aeronautical institute.
The name of E. J. Sias is synonymous now with the words flying school. But 30 years ago he was the energetic young minister who plucked Tabernacle Christian church out of a cocked hat before the startled eyes of south Lincoln. One day, June 21, 1912, he and a group in his home thought up a Christian church in that part of the city. Two days later they met and planned a building and 60 men volunteered to put up a structure between morning light and evening dark. The heat of late June prevented quite this much of a miracle, but anyway, on June 30, nine days after the initial meeting, the tabernacle was ready for occupancy. Rather, it was occupied—by 800 people listening to the dedicatory sermon. This building sufficed its congregation ten years. By that time Mr. Sias was deep in something else—flying.