How is it that the smallest, in terms of population, of the three holy suburbs -- College View, University Place and Bethany -- had two different business districts a half-mile apart, even two concurrent street railway systems?
All three college villages were self-sufficient with city governments, education systems through high school, banks, and post offices. Bethany alone sought annexation before it was even logistically possible and is also alone in not retaining its university.
Joseph Z. Briscoe was born in 1838 in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He immigrated with his family to Omaha where his sister would marry local banker Samuel Cotner. Briscoe had graduated from the Pittsburgh Merchant’s College and, at 16, taught briefly in Maryland. Arriving in Lincoln in the 1870s, he became a merchant, selling shoes first at 1043 O St. and was elected to the city council in 1887. In 1886, still living at 17th and Locust in Lincoln, Briscoe headed a group which acquired the 321-acre Hawley farm about four miles northeast of the capital city. There the group platted the city of Bethany Heights, named for the suburb of Jerusalem, an “education center of the Jews.”
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The principal street was then named Saunders in honor of Nebraska Gov. Alvin Saunders and the other streets after the Disciples of Christ’s other universities. Near the center of the plat and on the highest point of land, they set the principal building of the Nebraska Christian University, later named Cotner University after Samuel who temporarily redeemed the university with a large gift of land and money.
To aid in financing the school and building, a land auction saw the sale of lots in what would become North Bethany as well as the south business district, usually just called Bethany.
A year later John Ames incorporated the Bethany Heights Railway, whose offices were at 1127 O St. in Lincoln and announced it would run trolley cars from 33rd and V (later Vine) streets to Nebraska Christian University. Also, in 1889, J. A. Beattie, president of the university, bought three lots directly north of the new school building on today’s Colby Street and built the extant house in 1892.
In the first decade of the 20th century the house was bought by Samuel Miles, who built the brick Miles Block in North Bethany. Samuel’s son Clarence graduated from Bethany High School, later Harvard Law School and became the mayor of Lincoln in 1947. The house is now listed on the National Register of Important Places.
In May of 1904, as Bethany Heights Railway sat undeveloped, the new Omaha, Lincoln and Beatrice Railroad announced a six-mile track from Lincoln to North Bethany at Garland Street and North Cotner Boulevard with grading proceeding to the northeast, headed for Papillion and Omaha. The route east and north of today’s North Cotner Boulevard, however, was never completed.
A second interurban rail line was built from the South Bethany business district a mile to the south, financed by Bethany businessmen who formed a $25,000 corporation. This line ran from the university campus south to Holdrege Street then west to the Lincoln Traction Co. at 27th and Y streets then on to downtown Lincoln.
Beginning Aug. 24, 1912, the two Bethanys each had separate interurban connections to Lincoln. The fare between Lincoln and the Bethanys was 5 cents on both lines. Later that year the O. L. & B. Railroad built a track down Warren Avenue (now 48th Street) to Nebraska Wesleyan University with a wye at 49th and Garland, allowing passengers to transfer between O. L. & B. and Lincoln Traction Company railroads. Lincoln Traction Company routed its cars to the O. L. & B. tracks in 1915 but with World War I, this service ended.
In 1916 a city directory showed Rowland Lumber & Coal Co. operated in both North Bethany and South Bethany. Advertisements featured Reddick & Son General Merchandise, J. Z. Briscoe Real Estate and First State Bank which had opened in 1905.
On May 12, 1928, the O. L. & B. stopped all passenger service to Bethany with the North Bethany lumberyard hosting virtually the only remaining train service leaving both Bethanys without passenger train and no interurban connection. The North Bethany lumberyard, once with another yard a mile south on the northeast corner of North Cotner Boulevard. and Holdrege Street, was then owned by Jacob Hayden who also owned the coal yard across Cotner Boulevard to the northeast. Later owned by Larry Price and Jim Kerrey, the lumberyard was purchased by Paul Hood in 1958 and is now the home of Nebraska Printing Center.
On Jan. 6, 1890, the Bethany Heights post office opened in North Bethany with A. Rathburn as postmaster. At some not-well-recorded point the post office moved to South Bethany “two blocks southwest of Cotner University” under “mysterious” circumstances with C. O. Turner postmaster. There the post office remained until it was moved to Gateway Shopping Center in the late 1960s.
In 1930, South Bethany’s businesses included Tanner’s (later Tyrrell’s) Greenhouse, the A. B. A. filling station, Reddick’s Grocery, a shoe repair, post office, two barbershops, Wood’s Grocery, a confectionary, lumberyard, café and two physicians’ offices. North Bethany listed Rowland (formerly Turner’s) Lumber Co., a drugstore, two physicians, a grocery, restaurant, shoe repair, broom and brush factory and Roy McCartney’s Garage which would soon move to the southeast corner of North Cotner Boulevard and Holdrege.
Cotner College was a victim of the Great Depression and closed its Bethany campus in 1933 though it would continue in various locations and still exists today as a virtual learning school. In October of 2019, the two-story, masonry building on the northwest corner of Garland and North Cotner Boulevard burned resulting in it and semi-attached structures being razed. Little now remains of the North Bethany business district, but South Bethany prospers and has grown considerably to the south and southwest.
PHOTOFILES: LINCOLN'S EARLIEST DAYS
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.