Haymarket History
Lincoln: The New Capital
In 1859, a handful of settlers met on the banks of Salt Creek to organize Lancaster County in the Territory of Nebraska. As the county seat, they selected a grassy plain on the east bank of the creek, about a mile southeast of a natural salt basin. The county’s founders believe that a profitable salt collection industry could be developed there, but they were proven wrong. Instead, the future of Lancaster, the little hamlet which had ‘no original reason for existence, ’ lay in the political squabbles over the location of the state capital for Nebraska, admitted to statehood in 1867. Following months of fierce debate in the Legislature, a Capital Commission was empowered to select the location. In July 1867, the commission met in Captain Donovan’s cabin near what is now 9th and ‘Q’ Streets and voted to make Lancaster, renamed Lincoln, the Nebraska capital.
In Lincoln’s first years, the area we call ‘Haymarket’ was a place of dwellings and retail stores. As the town grew, and especially as it succeeded in the 1870s and ‘80s in attracting railroads to the Salt Creek bottom lands, wholesale jobbing and manufacturing businesses began displacing the stores and houses east of the railyards. Today, several large warehouses remain in that area that reflect Lincoln’s boom town decade of the 1880s, in which the population grew from just over 13,000 to more than 55,000. The Haymarket district’s few, small buildings of the 1890s correspond to a time of nationwide depression, matched by a decline in Lincoln’s population to about 40,000 by 1900. The ensuing 20 years were Haymarket’s principal period of construction, matching Lincoln’s steady growth back to the 55,000 level of population by 1920.
Wholesale Houses
The ‘wholesale jobber’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the new middleman in the distribution of goods. Rather than selling goods owned by others and earning his living on a commission basis, the jobber purchased goods from manufactures and utilized traveling salesmen to sell directly to retailers. Manufacturers could concentrate on supplying a relatively small number of jobbers, rather than marketing (and extending credit) to hundreds of shopkeepers. Retailers could deal with traveling salesmen, rather than searching out their own suppliers. And the jobber, by holding title to the merchandise, took a greater risk than the commission merchant and had a greater opportunity for profit. The number of sales men and the size of the sales territory were great sources of pride to wholesale firms and were almost always included in their promotions. ‘Today [1923] the Western Glass & Paint Co. does a large wholesale business in 8 states through a staff of 9 traveling salesmen.’ By 1904 Lincoln’s market region included not only all of Nebraska, but the Black Hills of South Dakota and portions of Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, New Mexico and Utah. Only Omaha, with its river port and rail hub, boasted larger jobbing trade in Nebraska.
The jobbing trade had three hallmark building types; hotels for the traveling salesmen, warehouses for the merchandise, and railroad depots and trainyards for shipment. Haymarket retains two old hotel buildings (both on 7th Street, see buildings #20 and #22) of the dozen or so that operated at various dates. A modern Hilton Hotel at the east edge of the district is also a reminder of this tradition. The Burlington Northern Depot which anchors the west side of the district and the 8th Street loading docks and spur tracks recall Haymarket’s transportation lifeline. Most of all, a dozen substantial warehouses reflect one of early Lincoln’s most vital commercial activities.
Why Haymarket?
The ‘Haymarket’ name can be traced to Lincoln’s first decade. In the original plat of Lincoln of 1867, a ‘Market Square’ was designated between ‘O’ and ‘P’ Streets from 9th to 10th. That square was an open-air market for produce and livestock, as well as a camping ground for immigrants and general gathering place. Machines, wagons and animals thronged Market Square, along with land sharks, tin-horn gamblers and the other denizens of a pioneer town.
When the federal government decided to erect a post office and courthouse in Lincoln in 1874, the city and state donated the original ‘Market Square’ and moved its functions two blocks north, creating ‘Haymarket Square’ bounded by 9th and 10th, ‘Q’ and ‘R’ Streets. Scales were provided for weighing hay, cattle and produce. Haymarket Square continued ‘to provide space for the teams and wagons of country fold, a mart for hay and a camping ground’ well into the 1880s. It became the location for the first City Hall from 1886 until 1906. Today it serves a version of its original function as a city-owned parking lot.
The Haymarket name survives in the historic warehouse district immediately west of the old Haymarket Square. The Lincoln City Council designated the eight block Haymarket Landmark District in 1982, giving it recognition and protection as a major element of Lincoln’s heritage. The National Park Service subsequently certified Haymarket as the equivalent of a district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with the protection and privileges of that status. In 1985 Haymarket was selected as a demonstration project by the National Main Street Center. Haymarket is the first urban warehouse district to undertake that highly successful economic revitalization program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
