Historical home fades into past
Clockwise from top left:
The Kennard and Gillespie homes, on the
southeast corner of the Nebraska State
Capitol Grounds, 1872. .
Not exactly modern, the kitchen is origi
nal to the nouse built in 1869.
Brent Carmack, tourism facility operator,
stands on the staircase of the Ferguson
House, which will have its last tour on
Sunday.
*
The houses as they appear today.
The master bedroom of the Ferguson
House.
Photos by Shaun Sartin
Courtesy of State Historical Society
By Adeana Leftin
Staff Reporter__t
Only three days remain until a small
piece of Lincoln’s history will
fade into the past.
Cuts forced on the Nebraska Legis
lature by the state’s tight economic
condition has put a strain on the Ne
braska Historical Society.
Something had to go.
Brent Carmack, tourism facility
operator, said the Ferguson House, lo
cated at 10th and H streets, was chosen
as the thing to go.
Carmack said the Ferguson House
was interesting architecturally but
compared to its neighbor, the Kennard
House, and other historical sites, it didn’t
have “a lot of critical Nebraska his
tory.”
The Ferguson House was built by
William Ferguson, a wealthy Lincoln
businessman, in 1909 and ifc a good
representation of a wealthy Lincoln
family in the 1920s, Carmack said.
Cynthia Kccnportz, a tourism aide at
the Ferguson House, said that when
constructed, the house cost about $38,000.
To add perspective to how much money
that was in 1909, she said, wages at that
time were $1 a day.
Mrs. Ferguson lived in the house
until she died in 1962 at the age of 103.
Because her grandchildren inherited the
furniture, the current furnishings have
been donated by the Historical Society.
Keenportz said the furnishings are typi
cal of the 1920s.
The living room has a Swiss music
box from 1884 that plays 36 tunes.1
Along with the music box, the living
room has one of the house’s four fire
places, three of which are marble.
In the master bedroom is a 1760
rope-frame bed. Rope is wound through
the Irame of the bed supporting a four
inch mattress.
“Not very comfortable,” Kcenportz
said.
The mattress would sag if the ropes
became loo loose, so at the foot of the
bed there is a crank to tighten them up.
Kcenportz said that although the
Fergusons had two teen-age sons and no
daughters, the Historical Society thought
it would only be fair to have a girl’s
room loo.
The girl’s room is furnished with a
Queen Anne high-boy, a sleigh bed and
among other accessories, a five-pound
iron hair dryer.
Just outside the girl’s room is the
sitting room — the perfect spot for
reading or sewing, Kcenportz said.
The room contains a small rendition
of a grandfather’s clock that she said is
called a granddaughter’s clock.
In the basement is a walk-in vault.
“They thought of everything,” Kcen
porlz said.
The four-level, 18-room house has
been called “high tech” by some of its
visitors, she said.
Electricity was a new concept as
well as a status symbol, Kcenportz said.
Each leVel of the house has a framed'
fuse box to show off the fuses. How
ever, because electricity was still unre
liable, electric light fixtures also were
equipped with a gas back-up system.
Plumbing was modern enough to
install permanent bathtubs instead of
claw-looted mbs.
The showers could spray from the
side as well as the top, but the Fergusons
had to be careful not to shock them
selves by touching the light switch that
was in the shower.
“That shows how new electricity
really was,” Kcenportz said.
When it stormed, rainwater washed
through drainage pipes into a cistern to
be pumped through the house.
Because the house was so big, the
Fergusons installed an in-house tele
phone to call from room to room.
Another modern convenience that
Keenportz said is a lux ury even today is
a central vacuuming system. The
Fergusons’ maids would only have to
carry around a vacuum tube to connect
to one of the many outlets throughout
the house.
The vacuum collector in the base
ment of the house supposedly only had
to be emptied once every two years, she
said. '
“Now that’s something I’d like to
have,” Keenportz said.
Keenportz said she would be disap
pointed when the house closed on Sun
day.
“We’ve really come to love it,”
Keenportz said. “It’sa dream home for
a lot of us.”
Carmack said the title to the house is
held by the state, and the Historical
Society had been the caretakers. Now
he said the house will return to the slate
department of administrative services.
He said he thought the house would
be put on a surplus list, but past that,
“we have no idea.”
Some staffing cuts will -be made
with the closing of the house, Carmack
said. But no decisions have been made
yet, he said.
What won’t suffer from cuts is the
Kennard House.
The Kennard House, built by Ne
braska’s first Secretary of Stale Tho
mas^. Kennard in 1869 to instill confi
dence in the struggling prairie town, is
the Nebraska Statehood Memorial.
Melanie O’Brien, a tourism aide at
the Kennard House, said the house was
built by Kennard to convince people
that it was OK to settle in Lincoln.
Kennard, along with Nebraska’s first
governor David Butler, and the state’s
first state auditor, John Gillespie, had
been commissioned to choose a site for
the state capitol.
They chose Lincoln and built the
first permanent homes, of which the
Kennard house is believed to be the
oldest, to encourage others to move to
the new capitol.
The interior of the house is painted a
Pepto-Bismo! pink with rainbow-col
ored carpeting.
In the living room is a sofa from
1850 upholstered with woven and dyed
horsehair.
Also in the living room isaStcinway
and Sons piano with only 85 keys.
One room of the house, the gover
nor’s room, holds pieces of furniture
collected from the possessions of past
governors.
In one corner is a horn and hide chair
that O’Brien said was a popular item
because some Nebraskans felt they had
lost out on the “wild old west.”
An 1854 sewing machine as well as
educational toys fill the upstairs girl’s
room, and across the hall is a room
dedicated to displaying the early his
tory of Lincoln and the Kennard House.
O’Brien said the two houses offer
quite a contrast in the history of Ne
braska and that by closing the Ferguson
House, tourists would not be able to sec
the contrast.
She said the Ferguson House de
picted the luxury of a thriving Lincoln,
but the Kennard House was from the
time when Lincoln was just struggling
to gel on the map.
Now, though, it is the Ferguson House
that has struggled and lost.
“We’re all going to try to give that
last lour before itcloscs,’’O’Brien said.
The final tour will be Sunday after
noon.
