Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
Moderators: Coyote, nebugeater, Brad, Omaha Cowboy, BRoss
Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
Anyone else see the blurb on WOWT news this evening mentioning the placement and renovation of an old Omaha streetcar at 14th and Leavenworth, in which a coffee shop would be located?
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I saw it... The street car looked rough. Â It was the old streetcar the ran up and down maple and still has the "Benson" in the front window. Â They didn't say much about the 14th and Levenworth location. Â I am assuming at this day and age it would be in a lot, not like a street like the old spaghetti works car was. Â Another strange thing... 14th street Coffee is 2 blocks away.
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One Of City's Last Streetcars Gets New Assignment
KETV wrote:An Omaha neighborhood landmark is getting a new address. For the past 50 years, a street car has sat in the back yard of a house near 73rd and Miami streets. On Tuesday, crews began moving it downtown to 14th and Leavenworth streets for its new job as a coffee shop. The car is one of Omaha's last remaining streetcars. It used to run on the Benson Line until it was decommissioned.
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I heard there were lots of them from the Omaha/CB system sitting in a field somewhere.
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Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City, 1963
Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City, 1963
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This junkyard has a lot of relics including many older vintage Metro Area Transit buses. They even had some of those buses from the late 60's that were like two buses with a rubber flex middle between them. (Like that description makes any sense.) However, I don't recall ever seeing any streetcars. At least I couldn't see any from the highway. Maybe the streetcars are tucked away in back somewhere.Coyote wrote:There is a junk yard along Hwy 32 just west of Tekamah that may be the place you are thinking about.
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I guess you are right Guy, this was not the place.
This was Robert Sklenar Estate & Sklenar Truck & Equipment Company who auctioned everything off last year:
And those buses were called Flexible Buses.
http://www.stockauctionco.com/sklenar.asp
This was Robert Sklenar Estate & Sklenar Truck & Equipment Company who auctioned everything off last year:
And those buses were called Flexible Buses.
http://www.stockauctionco.com/sklenar.asp
TEKAMAH, NE- Â For forty years Robert Sklenar was the one purchasing old vehicles from Auctions, but on the 29th all those items will be sold at his own estate auction. Â
After living in the Tekamah area his entire life, he started his business by working on vehicles, manufacturing truck boxes, and buying and selling vehicles on his own time which started in the early 1950s and was then later licensed as an auto dealer in 1964. Â He was also a farmer until the early 1980s. Â According to family members, when he started in the business, he named the vehicles in his inventory. The first was named Gazelle, he ended up trading back for it years later.
With 40 years of buying vehicles Sklenar came up with an inventory of approximately 2,000 vehicles spread over sixty plus acres. Â One of the vehicles Sklenar used to own, and is now selling the remains too is on display in the America On the Move exhibition at the Smithsonian. This bus section that is now in the Smithsonian was part of the Omaha Transit Company bus #1210. Â The bus was purchased in February 2003 by the Smithsonian. Â
A year later Sklenar was in the news again when Metro Area Transit, the Omaha bus company, bought back a dozen buses it had sold him decades before.  These buses are still in use on downtown circular routes.  Sklenar also collected many military vehicles, among those  is a Military trailer that was in World War II.  Other vehicles that are being sold are classic cars, construction equipment, farm equipment, in the midst of many others.
Here is the car
Its been stitting in a back yard at 73rd and Miami (72 and Maple) for 50 years
Its been stitting in a back yard at 73rd and Miami (72 and Maple) for 50 years
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According to Richard Orr's O&CB Streetcars of Omaha and Council Bluffs in 1955 30 cars were purchased for the Twin Brooks Bible Camp and were scattered over the hills in a rural setting where some were converted to meeting rooms and dorms while others wer vandalized. That was were Durham got #1014. I tried looking up "Twin Brooks Bible Camp" and only can find it was a 123 acre camp north of Omaha run by the Presbyterian Church. That is all that I found.
According to the Roster of Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars there are two other preserved streetcars in Nebraska one in Pioneer Village in Minden and the other at Union College in Lincoln.
According to the Roster of Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars there are two other preserved streetcars in Nebraska one in Pioneer Village in Minden and the other at Union College in Lincoln.
What ever happened to this project? Â They got the street car and the bus in, but never saw anything after that...
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- Bosco55David
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I know the discussion is a couple years old now, but I remember what appeared to be a passenger or subway car in a little plot of land just west of the viaduct in Council Bluffs. It was right up against some train tracks and mostly covered by vegetation, but I always wondered what the story was with that.
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
I just had a good idea, you know how they did those O! things. Well instead have streetcars with artwork on them around town. That would be a cool new art project.
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
Paid for by....?PotatoeEatsFish wrote:I just had a good idea, you know how they did those O! things. Well instead have streetcars with artwork on them around town. That would be a cool new art project.
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
It would certainly celebrate the history of streetcars in Omaha. I think any art project is a great idea. It gives the city a sense is of vitality.
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
There used to be a scrap yard between Tekamah and Oakland which may have had a selection of cars to get a project going, but that is now gone. There was supposed to be a camp site that was going to use street cars in Nebraska's Loess Hills somewhere, but I haven't heard about them in a long time... The Spaghetti Works car is in someone's backyard. It would be hard to find a local stockpile to easily do a project like you imagine...
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
You are referring to Sklenar Salvage near Tekamah. There are a lot of stories about that place. Some I am sure are streached a lot but some are pretty close to true I am guessing. I grew up probably 8 miles from there. Lots of cars, buses, and military equipment on a whole lot of land and right up to the highway. Got in trouble with the State too for releasing oils and such into the land.
Coyote wrote:There used to be a scrap yard between Tekamah and Oakland which may have had a selection of cars to get a project going, but that is now gone. There was supposed to be a camp site that was going to use street cars in Nebraska's Loess Hills somewhere, but I haven't heard about them in a long time... The Spaghetti Works car is in someone's backyard. It would be hard to find a local stockpile to easily do a project like you imagine...
For the record NEBUGEATER does not equal BUGEATER !!!!!!!
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
Yes, that was who I was referring to, the Sklenar Salvage yard. I remember driving past that place years ago, but never really stopped to see what was there (didn't want to run into their dog), but I think we have the list of auction items in one of our threads here...
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Coyote wrote:According to Richard Orr's O&CB Streetcars of Omaha and Council Bluffs in 1955 30 cars were purchased for the Twin Brooks Bible Camp and were scattered over the hills in a rural setting where some were converted to meeting rooms and dorms while others wer vandalized. That was were Durham got #1014. I tried looking up "Twin Brooks Bible Camp" and only can find it was a 123 acre camp north of Omaha run by the Presbyterian Church. That is all that I found.
According to the Roster of Preserved North American Electric Railway Cars there are two other preserved streetcars in Nebraska one in Pioneer Village in Minden and the other at Union College in Lincoln.
I spent a week of my life living at Twin Brooks Bible Camp in 1973. It was located just North of 66th and Northern Hills Drive. It cost $36 for a week of heck on earth starting on Sunday afternoon and ending Friday night. The cabins were old street cars and buses with no tires and the seats taken out. They had not put 5 nickels worth of paint or repairs to the buses or street cars either. The camp was run by students from Grace Bible Institute and it was run like a boot camp. The food was pig slop. The first few days we all laughed about how bad the food was and did not eat it. By the end of the week we were starving! The buses all had a few windows out and there was no screens in them. Many of the buses had wasp nests in them. The Grace Bible College Students ran the camp with an iron fist during the day and then all packed up and went home at night. This lead to the kids raising heck all night from dusk to dawn. I did not get even an hour of sleep any night due to the loud noise. This was truely one of the roughest weeks of my life!
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Re: Streetcar coffee shop at 14th and Leavenworth
I'm still surprised no one remembers the streetcar or subway car that was in the lot right off the CB viaduct. That thing was there for years.