History of 1516 Jones
1516 Jones Street has an amazing history beginning in1854 when it was first identified on a map at the time Omaha was founded to now, 172 years later, as the location of Urban Abbey’s new home. This history will be summarized in three parts over the next several weeks, followed by a special recognition in October with a focus on the location’s night club phase, including one of the most successful gay bars in Omaha – The Club Joy.
There will be a teaser in the weekly newsletter with a link to the Urban Abbey Blog for more detail. Part 1 will summarize 1516 Jones’ residential phase. Part 2 will summarize the commercial business phase. Part 3 will focus on Carl A Anderson, the owner of 1516 Jones St. for the longest period yet, and at the time, one of the most charitable persons in Omaha.
This history was compiled from extensive research of Douglas County property records, the US Census, old maps, the Omaha City Directory, and searches of the on-line archives of the Omaha World Herald.
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1516 History Summary Part 1: The Residential Phase
The new home for Urban Abbey was first identified on a map when “Omaha City” was founded in 1854, and a surveyor was hired to plat the original arrangement of streets, alleys, blocks, and then lots that made up each block. Our new home was Lot 6 of Block 171. That legal definition still exists and shows on our deed from the purchase of our property on November 24, 2025. Urban Abbey is the 17th owner of the property. Here is a map, made in 1866, showing that original plat of the city.
Our new home was just a patch of prairie grass for the first 11 years of its legal identity, as were most of the lots in the early days of Omaha. There were 10 owners of Lot 6, Block 171 during those 11 years as the property was bought and sold during a period of land speculation. From 1858 to 1862, Lot 6 Block 171 was owned by land investors John and Eliza Hughes, residents of Manchester, England!
The address “1516 Jones Street” was assigned in 1865 when Andrew and Amanda Orchard had a house built on the property for their new home. The Orchard family, including 10 children at the time, was a classic pioneer family, traveling west from Indiana to Omaha in 1862 in two covered wagons. They originally lived in a tent close the Missouri River near the ferry landing from Council Bluffs. There were no bridges at the time. Eventually they saved enough money to buy the property and then hire a builder to construct their home. With 10 children, the Orchard family was the original “crowded table” of 1516 Jones. One of the Orchard children co-founded a very successful furniture store located at 16th and Harney Streets. “Orchard and Wilhelm” was in business from 1893 until 1971. The site was redeveloped and is now the headquarters building for OPPD. Andrew Orchard died in 1880. Amanda remained in the house for about a year before moving about one block away with the youngest children still living at home. She sold the property to Ferdinand Streitz in late 1880.
“Ferd” Streitz immigrated to America from Germany in 1851 and can first be placed in Omaha in 1863. Streitz was a carpenter and is believed to have built the home at 1516 Jones for the Orchard family. The Streitz family lived near 11th and Capital Streets. Over a period of years, Ferd bought several homes in central Omaha, turning them into rental properties as he did with the house on Jones Street. The first renters were Clive and Christine Anderson and their two children, plus five “roomers”, all being immigrants from Sweden. It was in this period, the 1880s, that most of the homes located on the block bounded by Jones, Jackson, 15th and 16th streets were occupied by immigrants including from Ireland, Canada, Italy and Hungary in addition to those from Sweden.
Ferd and Fredericka Streitz had four sons. One, named Emil, fancied himself as an amateur chemist and entrepreneur. He invented a concoction which he believed when injected in a few coyotes, would make them contagious with a deadly disease and cause the death of a large population of the animals. He approached the State of Wyoming to sell his serum as a method to help ranchers in the state save their livestock from losses to predator coyotes. To help sell the idea, he conveyed how he injected the chemical into his pet dog and cat, which, thankfully, did not live long enough to infect the neighbor’s pets! Wyoming would have nothing of Emil’s crazy idea and sent him packing. Emil never married and died a pauper.
Like so often with landlords in the urban core, Ferd let the property deteriorate due to lack of maintenance. 1516 Jones (the main home plus the converted wagon shed to the rear) transitioned from a single-family rental into a boarding house situation, with individual rooms rented to unrelated persons who could not afford better housing. Starting in about 1890, most of the residents were African American, typically paid little for the hard work they did. One of those residents (in the converted wagon shed), named Lizzie King, worked as a maid for the Abraham Reed family (as documented in the 1900 census). Abe was president of the Byron Reed real estate company, a firm founded by his father in the early days of the city. The Reeds were one of the wealthiest families in Omaha at the time. The Byron Reed company operated under that name until 2021 at which time it became part of Century Real Estate. Another resident at 1516 Jones (at the main house) in the early 1900s was Charles Austin. He was identified as a “colored porter at Burcham’s saloon” in a World Herald article reporting that he got in “a row” with Jake Williams, who suffered a fractured leg and died two days later in the hospital. The death was ruled an accident. Many of the African Americans who lived at 1516 Jones were born into slavery in southern states, moving north for opportunity in the years following the Civil War.
In 1910 Ferd Streitz sold 1516 Jones to Harry Brown, who kept the property as a low-cost rental. Then, in 1916, the property was sold to Carl and Emma Anderson for $15,000. Accounting for inflation, that is equivalent to $458,284 in 2026 dollars. It is possible the Andersons continued to rent out the home for a few years, but being landlords was not their long-term plan. More about that in Part 2.
This 1918 map shows the block bounded by Jones, Jackson, 15th and 16th streets as being well into the transition from residential to urban land use.
In 1916, when purchased by the Andersons, the house was 51 years old and believed to be in disrepair, suffering from a lack of attention during the period it served as a boarding house and from the quality of materials used in the original wood frame construction in 1865. The house at 1516 Jones Street is believed to have looked very similar to these homes, photographed in 1912, located at 15th and Jones.
