Oscar Wilde's 1882 Lecture Tour

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.

Venue

City Hall

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

Not "City Hall"

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

Accommodation

The Arlington

221-243 N. Ninth Street (south-west corner of Ninth and Q Streets), Lincoln, NE

Built: 1880 (J. S. Atwood, builder)

Premises: the largest hotel in Nebraska at the time of its construction; capacity: c. 250 guests

Later known as: Opelt (or Opelt's) Hotel (Joseph Opelt, landlord), 1886

Newspaper report

Lecture Tour of America 1882

Writing and Research on Oscar Wilde

Lincoln

Nebraska

Verification

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)

[1] Address to students at University Hall