From 1909 to 2016, a three-story building stood by N. 24th and Cuming Streets. It had a bunch of lives, but when it was gone barely anyone noticed. This is a history of the Independent Telephone Company Exchange Building in North Omaha.

Origins and Architecture

These are original architectural drawings of the building designed for the Independent Telephone Exchange Building at 926 N 24th St by Fisher & Lawrie.

In June 1907, The Omaha Evening Bee reported that the Independent Telephone Company was going to build a brand-new northwest telephone exchange near the busy intersection of 24th and Cuming streets. The company bought land from the McCague Investment Company for $4,000, and started designing it right away. It was going to be a single story with a full basement.

The company hired the popular Omaha architectural firm Fisher & Lawrie. Original blueprints confirm they ended up designing a two story brick structure over a raised basement. Featuring a fancy roofline on the front, there were decorative brick crosses and thick foundation walls, and the building used heavy interior support columns to create open, flexible utility work floors. There was a single staircase in front for the workers to access the second floor.

Built by general contractors Bridges & Hoye for around $12,000, it was a 42-by-80-foot, two-story structure. Using imported mottled brick, the outside matched other utility buildings across the Midwest at that time. It was fitted with special vent systems and electric fans that kept the building temperature strictly controlled with low temperatures needed by the automatic switchboards, and was designed to host direct telephone switching infrastructure for up to 5,000 subscribers across North Omaha.

During the boom era when competing phone companies were racing to wire Omaha, the Independent Telephone Company Exchange Building at 926 North 24th Street was a really important place starting the day it was opened for business in early 1909.

Turning Into a Factory

Here are two products manufactured by the Steril Manufacturing Company factory at 926 N. 24th St. in North Omaha. The first one is a cemetery sledge, and the second shows the Steril Flower Arbor. The second pic is courtesy of the Durham Museum.

The stout brick building near 24th and Cuming streets didn’t stay in the phone business long. In November 1917, the Nebraska Telephone Company sold the property for $20,000 to the Steril Manufacturing Company, and they moved in shortly afterward. Steril made funeral tents, cemetery tents, and related products for funerals and cemeteries that were sold across the Midwest and beyond.

A quiet manufacturing business on North 24th Street for over 75 years, Steril’s new plant had thick brick walls—measuring up to three feet deep at the base. Inside, workers made cemetery tents, undertaker garments, awnings, and casket equipment. On the second floor, seamstresses sat at long rows of sewing machines run by a single motor. They spoke to workers downstairs using a speaking tube that dropped straight into the basement.

Maintaining their focus on the funeral industry, the Steril Manufacturing Company expanded greatly over the decades. Moving from tent manufacturing, they eventually made a wide range of products including embalming fluid, vases, specialized sledges, and more. They owned patents to a number of products, and in the 1940s were studied by the U.S. Congress for having an illegal monopoly for the lowering mechanisms used in cemeteries across the country.

Over the decades, the complex expanded north along the block. In 1991, two commercial garages were built onto the building. By then though, Steril’s long run on the block was ending. The company moved west to Center Street in 1994. Steril still operates from that location, first continuing to make funeral accessories and later expanding into manufacturing and selling awnings, tents, boat covers and canvas products. Today its part of a business called Atlas Signs and Graphics, which still has roots in the original factory opened in 1917 in North Omaha.

The Steril factory was there for 77 years. After they moved out, a new business opened briefly in the space, but it shut down quickly. The building then went to the Omaha Economic Development Corporation and sat empty for a few years.

New Life with State Farm

In June 1997, State Farm Insurance bought the property for $213,000 as part of its national program to invest in urban neighborhoods. Instead of tearing the building down, State Farm hired a minority-owned contractor to renovate it.

Crews preserved the vintage oak banister in the front staircase, they kept the original open feeling of the building. Turning the 1991 service bays into auto-damage claim inspection areas, it was a full service insurance site, and in 1999 it opened as the State Farm Insurance Kellom Heights Sales and Service Center. The old exchange began the new century housing two dozen workers, bringing jobs and vital services back to the Near North Side.

Demolition and Forgetting

Unfortunately, the preservation of the Independent Telephone Exchange Building was temporary. After just 17 years, in 2016 the historic exchange was bought and demolished by Creighton University. Like much of the Near North Side south of Paul Street, they bought and cleared the land for modern expansion. Today, the CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center campus is located on this corner.

While the physical structure is gone, the building remains a longtime chapter in North Omaha’s early industrial, infrastructural, and architectural heritage. Maybe someday its history will be remembered on a plaque commemorating the one-time importance of 24th and Cuming in the Near North Side.

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MY ARTICLES ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OMAHA’S NEAR NORTH SIDE
GROUPS: Black People | Jews and African Americans | Jews | Hungarians | Scandinavians | Chinese | Italians
EVENTS: Redlining | North Omaha Riots | Stone Soul Picnic | Native Omaha Days Festival
BUSINESSES: Club Harlem | Dreamland Ballroom | Omaha Star Office | 2621 North 16th Street | Calhoun Hotel | Warden Hotel | Willis Hotel | Broadview Hotel | Carter’s Cafe | Live Wire Cafe | Fair Deal Cafe | Metoyer’s BBQ | Skeet’s | Storz Brewery | 24th Street Dairy Queen | 1324 N. 24th St. | Ritz Theater | Alhambra Theater | 2410 Lake Street | Carver Savings and Loan Association | Blue Lion Center | 9 Center Variety Store | Bali-Hi Lounge | Independent Telephone Exchange Building
CHURCHES: St. John’s AME Church | Zion Baptist Church | Mt. Moriah Baptist Church | St. Philip Episcopal Church | St. Benedict Catholic Parish | Holy Family Catholic Church | Bethel AME Church | Cleaves Temple CME Church | North 24th Street Worship Center
HOMES: A History of | Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects | The Sherman | The Climmie | Ernie Chambers Court aka Strelow Apartments | Hillcrest Mansion | Governor Saunders Mansion | Memmen Apartments
SCHOOLS: Kellom | Lake | Long | Cass Street | Izard Street | Dodge Street
ORGANIZATIONS: Red Dot Athletic Club | Omaha Colored Baseball League | Omaha Rockets | YMCA | Midwest Athletic Club | Charles Street Bicycle Park | DePorres Club | NWCA | Elks Hall and Iroquois Lodge 92 | American Legion Post #30 | Bryant Resource Center | People’s Hospital | Bryant Center
NEIGHBORHOODS: Long School | Logan Fontenelle Projects | Kellom Heights | Conestoga | 24th and Lake | 20th and Lake | Charles Street Projects
INDIVIDUALS: Edwin Overall | Rev. Russel Taylor | Rev. Anna R. Woodbey | Rev. Dr. John Albert Williams | Rev. John Adams, Sr. | Dr. William W. Peebles | Dr. Craig Morris | Dr. John A. Singleton, DDS | Dr. Aaron M. McMillan | Mildred Brown | Dr. Marguerita Washington | Eugene Skinner | Dr. Matthew O. Ricketts | Helen Mahammitt | Cathy Hughes | Florentine Pinkston | Amos P. Scruggs | Nathaniel Hunter | Bertha Calloway
OTHER: 26th and Lake Streetcar Shop | Webster Telephone Exchange Building | Kellom Pool | Circus Grounds | Ak-Sar-Ben Den | Harlem Renaissance