702 N 40th Street
Building permit: September 1887
Building Type: Eclectic with gambrel roof
Building cost: $1,500
Architect: George Fisher
Owner: Lowe Avenue Building Association
This house and the one next door were built at the same time and are the oldest houses on 40th Street. A.J. Poppleton owned the land when the houses were built. He was listed as a contractor in the Lowe Avenue Building Association in 1887 but would later become involved in a lawsuit against the company.
In 1892 the Lowe Ave. Building Association sold the house to Anderson Ong. Mr. Ong was the president of the Omaha College of Shorthand and Typewriting, which as re-named the Nebraska College of Business in the early 1900’s. A 1900 phone directory ad states that the college had “equipment in every department unapproached by any school west of Chicago, thus affording young people every advantage to qualify themselves for the duties of life.” The college offered courses of study in bookkeeping, banking, shorthand, typewriting, and English. In listing the advantages to attending the school, the ad boasts that the school had the “best lighted rooms in the city of Omaha.” The school was originally located above the Boyd Theater at 15th and Farnam but has had many moes, and for many years maintained a campus at 37th and California Streets. The college is till operating today, but is now called Hamilton College.
