Still, Gruber takes those curious about Omaha’s underworld element around to the sites of some of Omaha’s most prominent criminal and carnal locations. These Gritty City tours happen during the summer. Unfortunately, it’s no longer possible for Gruber to show off the original hotels, brothels, bars and other landmarks of the era. “Most of them are gone, that’s the bad part,” she said. “All the brothels are gone; all the good bars are gone; all the opium dens are gone.” But some of what was once sits in the cradle of downtown Omaha, Gruber said. Anna Wilson’s brothel sat in what is now the parking lot of the Courtyard Marriott. Ada and Minna Lester operated their brothel at 12th and Jackson around 1895, before opening a second during the 1898 Trans Mississippi Exposition and then making tracks to Chicago to open the Everleigh Club. North 10th Street was known as the Tenderloin or Sporting District and was dotted mainly with brothels. Bell Hotel, dens of elicit
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activity, sat at 111 South 15th St. Gruber said the Bell, in addition to offering “men-only upstairs rooms”, was reportedly a hub of both gambling and numbers running. “The Bell did way more business in the back door than it ever did in the front door,” Gruber said. Mae Hogan operated a brothel at 710 S. 17th St, near where the Douglas County Correctional Facility now sits, during the 1920s and 30s. Meanwhile, the Flatiron building was rumored to be a safe spot of out-of-state mobsters looking to avoid some heat. To the northeast, the Gayety Theatre, 15th and Harney, offered what it termed artistic arts. The burlesque house boasted a noontime special. Even today, homeowners in Little Italy often stumble upon basements with secret compartments, where bootleg liquor was made during Prohibition. Anna Wilson and her three-story mansion represented the high end of Omaha’s prostitution trade. When Wilson died in 1910, the building was deeded to the city and turned into an emergency hospital. What is known is that most of the activity was run by Tom Den-