Story #58: Was This House Once Part of Gate City Nursery?

Recently, a former Country Club resident reached out with this memory:

"When I was young our next-door neighbor talked about his home being the original farmhouse for Gate City Nursery. She also mentioned a creek that ran through the lower part of Erskine Street near Jack Payne's house."

So...was it true?

We started with the creek.

An 1891 Omaha map from the Omaha Public Library clearly shows Saddle Creek winding through the neighborhood. An earlier 1886 street railway map by Richard Orr also identifies the creek by name. At the time, 52nd Street was known as Wadsworth, and Erskine Street was called Vicar (sometimes spelled Vigar on early maps). Longtime WOW (now WOWT) sports director Jack Payne, who lived at 5124 Erskine Street, really did live just north of where the creek once flowed.

Next came the house.

The home in question, 2403 N. 52nd Street, on the northeast corner of 52nd and Erskine, is listed by the Douglas County Assessor as being built in 1924. Since assessor dates for older homes aren't always exact, we dug deeper.

The property is part of Auburn Hill, a subdivision platted in March 1886 by Dennis Cunningham and Thomas Brennan. That certainly made it possible the home dated back to the 1890s. But when we checked the 1910 and 1918 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, there was no house shown on the corner, suggesting it had not yet been built.

Then we found the answer.

Newspaper advertisements and articles show that Gate City Nursery occupied the property between 51st and 52nd Streets along Erskine beginning in the early 1920s. Most convincing was the February 1925 obituary of nursery manager John H. Marnette, which states that he died at 2403 N. 52nd Street, the very house in question.

So while the house wasn't an original farmhouse from the 1890s, it was the residence of the Gate City Nursery manager and served as part of the nursery during its final years. When the nursery closed in 1930, the property was sold, and by 1932 the former nursery grounds were being developed into the residential neighborhood we know today.

That's one neighborhood mystery solved.

Have a question about the history of the Country Club neighborhood? Send it our way. We may not always know the answer, but we'd love to go digging. Email us: council@countryclubhd.org