Monday, April 24, 1882
(Evening)
New York Dramatic Mirror, April, 1882
To Helena Sickert
April 25, 1882, Fremont, NE
Last night I lectured at Lincoln, Nebraska, and in the morning gave an address to the undergraduates of the State University there...[1]
(Letters, p. 165)
O Street, Lincoln, Nebraska between 9th and 10th Streets c. 1878, with paving and sidewalk under construction.
Wilde's lecture venue is the pale colored buildng, center, with the words CITY HALL on the ornament of the north facing cornice.
The two-story high second floor was a concert hall.
Picture credit: Ed Zimmer, Historic Preservation Planner, Lincoln/Lancaster County Planning Dept.
905-941 O Street, Lincoln, NE (now 921 O Street)
Built: c. 1878 (Frederick Schmidt)Premises: Various commercial and theater use
Destroyed (fire): December 12, 2010, when occupied by Romantix, an adult novelty store. Cause undetermined. Subsequently demolished.
Lincoln and the Adult Novelty Store
Following recent demolition work in Lincoln, it is now possible to identify (for the first time here) Wilde's lecture venue in Lincoln, which for over a century had been unknown or misinterpreted.
One source of confusion is that the theater where Wilde lectured was known as "City Hall"—with the name used in the sense of a music or concert hall, (e.g. as in Carnegie Hall). The lecture did not take place at a city hall in the usual sense of a municipal building.
For more on the verification of the venue see the feature Not That City Hall.
Picture credit: Archive Images of Lincoln Nebraska
221-243 N. Ninth Street (south-west corner of Ninth and Q Streets), Lincoln, NE
The Omaha Daily Bee, April 26, 1882, 1
Oscar Wilde In America | © John Cooper, 2020
