Ponca Hills is packed with beautiful homes looking over rollicking hills. Many of them are modern, with the most fanciful and elaborate details, clean and sleek lines and wide, expansive views from vacuum-sealed plastic windows. A few houses are different though, including one designed by a noted architect. This is a history of the iconic Latenser Round House in the Ponca Hills.

The Story of Frank Latenser

Frank Latenser graduated from Omaha Central High School in 1908 and studied at the Columbia University School of Architecture. He served in World War I from 1917 to 1919 with the U.S. Shipping Board.

When he joined his family’s firm, John Latenser & Sons, Latenser began his influence over Omaha’s built environment. Throughout the course of his career Latenser designed more than 300 buildings throughout the city, including public and private structures, homes, businesses, schools and more. Some of his well-known designs include…

• Omaha Athletic Club, 1714 Douglas (1917)
• Federal Reserve Omaha Branch Bank (1955)
• INorthern Natural Gas Company Home Office (1958)
• Omaha University Applied Arts Building (1959)
• University of Nebraska College of Medicine (1960)
• Children’s Hospital (1960)
• Douglas County Hospital (1966)
• University of Nebraska Science Building (1969)

A later newspaper article referred to Frank as enjoying “a unique local reputation as a host par-excellence and raconteur.” Heavily invested in Omaha’s history, he used his influence to lead historic preservation across the statewide. He served as a member of the board of the Nebraska State Historical Society for more than 20 years including serving as its president.

Along with being a member of the State Board of Examiners for Professional Engineers and Architects, he was also a board member of the Joslyn Art Museum, the State Capitol Murals Commission, and the Nebraska Centennial Commission. Latenser also played an active role in his professional community too, holding membership in the American Institute of Architects, the Nebraska Engineering Society, Omaha Engineers Club, a Life Member of the Nebraska Engineers Society, and president of the AIA Nebraska Architects Association.

Frank retired when he was 71 years old and died at the age of 82 at home. He was buried at Forest Lawn.

Alma Latenser was apparently quite the figure herself. A 1962 feature on her in The Benson Sun described her saying, “Even the subtlest pretense is foreign to her nature, and her natural democracy is something to behold. She is simply like nobody but Alma Latenser—and there never was a mold to throw away.” It went on, “Sunburned and blue-jeaned, she is completely indifferent to such effete feminine thrills as lipstick and pancake powder.”

A determined horse lover, Alma taught riders at her farm including her grandkids. With parenthesis, the paper wrote, “(She teaches all beginners to ride bareback),” like it was whispering a ghastly detail. Growing up in Elgin, Nebraska, her father was a farmer, rancher and banker who sent her to Brownell Hall in Omaha for school, then to Vassar College in New York.

Alma took care of the horses in the family, including Frank’s son Nes’ five daughters’ horses. A veteran of Omaha horse shows, Alma recalled going to Fort Omaha with the city’s elites to watch the Army horses drill. She loved hosting people in her palatial, special house. “I love to have company, I just love it if I have people for supper. I love to cook.” Stories of her achievements included taking secret boat driving lessons and learning how to reupholster furniture at Tech High as an adult. She helped the neighborhood 4-H group learn to ride and show horses, and her friends gushed over her as a friend and figure. “Isn’t she something!” said an “erudite English teacher” who was her friend.

The Bellwether Mansion

Some of the most remarkable homes in the Florence area were built by the Latensers for themselves. After buying the farm in the Ponca Hills, the hilltop original referred to as the Ponca Hill became the site of the Latenser family’s homes for several generations. Located on the old Tibke farm, it had twenty acres and included orchards and “a comfortable cottage.” 

In 1911, the local newspaper was excited to announce that, “Architect Latenser will next summer live in his summer house on Ponca Hill, a mile and a half north of Florence. It lies between the river and the hill roads…”

In 1918, John Latenser built a large mansion on the farm called Bellwether. It was designed as a 5,500 square foot Italianate style home with two and a half stories, large dormers and fantastic details across the whole house. It originally had six bedrooms and sat isolated in a forest.

John’s wife was Anna (1869-1951), and the couple had six children. After the mansion was built, the family lived there and at a house in central Omaha. John tutoring two of his sons in architecture during this time, and two of his young daughters died tragically from the Spanish flu while visiting Philadelphia in 1918.

John himself died at the Bellwether mansion in 1936.

The Round Up House

The second home constructed by the Latensers on the old Tibke farm was built in 1930. It was a remarkable and innovative home designed by Frank Latenser called the Round Up House, and had nearly 3,000 square feet and was built with a round roof projecting over all of the walls. An era newspaper article said it “approximates Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.”

A later advertisement for the house bragged about all its attributes. Describing the eleven acres reached by a private drive that was “an avenue of tall pines,” it talked about “acres of old oaks, walnut and pine.” It bragged about the sixteen 21-foot-tall pillars around the house, but didn’t mention the round design.

Gushing about the inside, the ad said “within you will find a walnut paneled living room with a massive stone fireplace, dining room, kitchen, den and half-bath on the main floor. Follow the circular stairway that rises through the center of the house all the way to the copula view tower. Stop on two for three bedrooms and two baths. Lower level has great knotty pine rec room and a 3/4 bath.” There was also a line about “the terrazzo veranda and three porches for sun, sleeping and dining.”

A 1951 feature on the home said, “The floor and ceiling joists for this unusual house fan out like spokes of a wheel from the masonry cylinder to the outer walls…”

The center staircase of the house wraps around a caracole, or spiral staircase, which wrap around a concrete cylinder holding hot water and gas pipes and goes almost four stories up, beyond the roof of the house. The surface of the walls is painted with with a mural wrapping around it by noted Omaha artist Frank J. Sapousek (1902-1993) showing rolling hills and storybook castles. There was a feature in the July 15, 1951 edition of the Omaha World-Herald about the work and Sapousek’s commission. It said the artist painted the center part of the caracole with a…

“Big pine tree with branches and needles showing only the ceiling” of the top room, referred to as a penthouse. Apparently you could walk onto the roof of the house from the penthouse. There was “a mountain landscape, with roads starting out and disappearing over the horizon, with another pine tree in the foreground for two-plus stories, and other features of all outdoors in altitudinous terrain. And up near the top are thunderheads and other clouds which actually come out from the cylindrical walls. The feeling one gets is that it’s a stairway to heaven.”

I don’t know whether this mural has survived or what condition it is in—if you do, please leave a comment on this article.

There were apparently other artistic elements in the home as well, including sculptures of lions’ heads and three red sandstone Greek gods’ heads from the old Boyd Theatre. Latenser salvaged all of them and incorporated them into the new home.

In 1973, the house was nominated to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but did not make the cut. Frank’s wife Alma died a decade later in 1983, and in 1984 the Latenser Round Up House was put up for sale. The listing valued the estate including the house at $162,500.

Soon after, a religious group owned the Latenser Round House and estate, as well as the other Latenser houses nearby.

Nes Latenser also designed a later Ranch style home on his farm, built in 1957. A far less notable home than the others, it still has some interesting elements and stands today at 4028 North Post Road.

The Tibke Farm Today

As of 2024, the same religious organization continues to operate the former Tibke farm with several of the historic Latenser family homes. They also constructed a nearly 10,000 square foot facility there in 2014. The organization is largely isolated from the surrounding neighborhood and offers no access to this historic house or the rest of the property.

You Might Like…

My Articles About the History of Ponca Hills
Ponca Road | Ponca School | Latenser Round House | Blue Windows House | Pries Lake | Hummel Park | Cabannè’s Trading Post | Wyman Heights | Fort Lisa | Forgot Store | River Drive | J.J. Pershing Drive

Elsewhere Online

• “Frank Nestor “Nes” Latenser (1925-2006), Engineer,” Nebraska State Historical Society.
• “Frank J. Latenser (1890-1973), Architect,” Nebraska State Historical Society.

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