The Benson City Hall and Fire Station, now known as the Benson Community Center, is located at 6008 Maple Street in the
Benson neighborhood of
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha ( ) is the List of cities in Nebraska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is located in the Midwestern United States along the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's List of United S ...
. It was built in 1915, shortly before Benson's annexation by Omaha.
History
The first public building in Benson was a city hall built in 1892 at
Military Road
A military road is a type of road built by an armed force
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily Weapon, armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and ma ...
and Spencer Street. In 1901, it was moved to the intersection of Military Avenue and Wirt Street, where it remained until 1916, when it was sold at auction.
In the mid-to-late 1910s, the city of Omaha began a course of annexations of suburban communities to its north and west. Benson, seeing itself as a likely target, decided to add as many civic improvements as they could before this happened. The reasons for this were twofold. First, Bensonites feared that the much larger Omaha government would be slow in responding to their desire for such improvements. Second, they knew that upon annexation, their municipal debts would be assumed by the whole city of Omaha. In May 1915, popular Omaha architect
Everett S. Dodds
Everett may refer to:
Places
Canada
* Everett, Ontario, a community in Adjala–Tosorontio, Simcoe County
* Everett Mountains, a range on southern Baffin Island in Nunavut
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* Everett, Massachusetts, in Middlesex County, Massachu ...
submitted designs to the Benson City Council, and in the fall of 1915 the Council hired the Rasmussen Construction Company to erect a new combined city hall and fire station.
[Moffett, Chad, Emily Schill, Erin Pogany, and Christina Slattery. Retrieved 2013-10-28.]
After Benson was annexed into Omaha in 1917, the building became a community center, and in 1923 the second floor was designated for use by the
Omaha Public Library
Omaha Public Library is the public library system of the city of Omaha, Nebraska. A library association was founded in 1857, but the library board was not appointed until 1877. In 1895, the library became one of the first six in the nation to c ...
system as the Benson branch. After a new library was constructed in 1941,
[ the building continued to house the Benson Community Center.Benson Community Center]
City of Omaha Parks and Recreation Department. Retrieved 8/27/10.
See also
*
History of Omaha, Nebraska
The history of Omaha, Nebraska, began before the settlement of the city, with speculators from neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa staking land across the Missouri River illegally as early as the 1840s. When it was legal to claim land in Indian Coun ...
References
External links
Modern photo
History of Omaha, Nebraska
Fire stations completed in 1915
Government buildings completed in 1915
Defunct fire stations in Nebraska
City and town halls in Nebraska
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