Building Modern Nebraska

Beloved buildings like the State Capitol in Lincoln will always stir Nebraskans’ pride. Now a new generation of structures inspires. These seven places show how design can fulfill Nebraskans’ needs, nurture dreams and honor history.

Southeast Community College Academic Excellence Center, Beatrice

Architects and school leaders at Southeast Community College in Beatrice wanted to create a modern open feel for this 60,000-square-feet multipurpose building. Used by traditional students and members of the community and local industries, it needed to be open and inviting.                                                                    

Natural sunlight streams into the classrooms, science labs and common areas. The day-lit thoroughfares feature gathering spaces with tables and chairs. These cheery nooks encourage collaboration. The building’s terra cotta flourishes wink at the area’s history. Terra cotta was often used in special buildings in the region, such as the 1904 Beatrice Carnegie Building in Gage County and the 1892 courthouse and tower in neighboring Jefferson County.

The main inspiration, though, is Kansas University’s Earth, Energy and Environment building in Lawrence, clothed in terra cotta for its durability and beauty. About 25 percent of campus enrollment is from Kansas, just 12 miles away.

The terra cotta wall on the Beatrice center’s west side, which is also the main entrance, brings the outside in, with terra cotta facing the interior stairwell and lining half the ceiling of the building’s large multipurpose room. Outfitting the school with technology was also a top priority.

“We wanted it to be a marvel outside, with connectivity inside,” said Bob Morgan, campus director.

Inspired by their building’s warm earthen touches and natural light, Southeast Community College students face a bright future.

Holy Family Shrine, Gretna

Interstate 80 across Nebraska offers 25 official rest areas. Consider Holy Family Shrine number 26.

The 45-foot-high shrine off Exit 432 offers an unimpeded view of the Platte River Valley through enormous glass windows. Its wood arches resemble grain stalks. An ornamental stream flows through a channel from outside the chapel to inside.

The shrine projects a Catholic perspective with its crucifix and portrait of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.

The owners prefer anonymity. They want God alone to receive the credit for the shrine’s location, beauty and tranquility, said shrine manager Matt Sakowski said t

The architects wanted to attract thousands of I-80 motorists. They first inquired about property on Ruff Road in Sarpy County. The county assessor misunderstood the request and showed them a site a mile north on Pflug Road. The owners did not consider the confusion a mistake; instead, they saw it as the Lord’s direction for their project and chose the Pflug Road location.

Tom Everson, an Omaha Catholic, stops by, driving the mile-long gravel road off I-80 to the Shrine whenever he’s in the area.

 “It’s like a beacon, inviting you to come to see it,” Everson said. “Because it’s a glass structure, you absorb the nature around you. The stream of water that flows right into the chapel evokes living water.”

Visitors may discover their cups run over.

Nebraska Center for Advanced Professional Studies, Fairfield

Curiosity compels students to peer through small classroom windows at a traditional school. Do their friends look engaged? Is the teacher interesting? What’s being written on the whiteboard?

One school in Fairfield maximized this peeking idea. Glass classrooms allow students to see each other at work. Furniture is movable. Even the walls can be written on. The design sparks new energy and ideas. It only took a tornado to make these futuristic changes happen. 

After a 2016 twister tore off the front of the school and damaged the roof, South Central Nebraska’s Unified School District 5 reinvented its high school’s look with an open house design and flexible interior spaces. The curriculum changed, too. The district’s high school is the only Center for Advanced Professional Studies school in Nebraska. The nationally recognized CAPS program encourages students to pick from career pathways including transportation, healthcare, or construction and provides mentorship with real-world training.

The school’s curriculum and the design lure students who may be reluctant learners in traditional classrooms. At the Nebraska Center for Advanced Professional Studies, one student has committed to the real-world enterprise of laser printing and engraving. Other students are launching a sports marketing business for small college athletic departments.

The way forward is wide open in the hip new futuristic environs – just don’t accidentally walk into the glass.

Rangeland Laboratory, Chadron State College, Chadron

Chadron State College’s agricultural business program competes with Texas A&M and Oregon State for students. Like other Nebraska schools, the college uses its architecture to give it an edge.

The college’s Rangeland Laboratory sits atop a hill, a glass cathedral looking out over the short-grass prairie. Architects modeled it after traditional ranching facilities, aligning its structures to form a windbreak. Geothermal, solar and wind power help power the site. Corn crib siding, metal-clad walls and cedarwood siding nod to the region’s ranching roots. The location impresses parents who visit with their prospective students.

“Mom and Dad bring their kids to the building, look out the window, and see rangeland in any direction,” said Jim O’Rourke, founder of Chadron State College’s Range Management program. “Walk out the door, do some field demonstration or a measurement on the hillside.”

The Lab hosts fall and spring semester classroom studies and summertime fieldwork in five areas: range ecology; wildlife management; equine management fire ecology; and range livestock production. Students staff deer check stations, work with horses, assist with firefighting and move cattle.

Cattle can trample grassland to dust. Rotating cattle by season and moving them from one prairie patch to another preserves healthy soil and air. Proper livestock management adds organic material, half of which is carbon, back into Nebraskan soil.

No one should have a beef with that.

St. Benedict Center, Schuyler

Water in the form of a small lake is central to the tranquility that St. Benedict Center offers, nestled into bluffs five miles north of Schuyler off Nebraska Highway 15 and what feels like a million miles away from big cities.

Located on 160 acres of farmland, the center has a low, simple, elegant profile. Its reflection shimmers in the adjoining lake, with concrete piers lining the water’s edge. Through the windows of a library and sitting room, guests see a gentle fountain at the center of the lake and on the opposite shore a bigger-than-life statue of St. Benedict, a fifth century Italian priest, dressed in simple clothes, his hands and head lifted to Heaven – the picture of peace.

Father Thomas Leitner runs the center, and sometimes leads “contemplative” prayer retreats, in which he trains participants “to receive the pure and simple light of God directly into the summit of our souls.” Among the techniques he teaches to “divest” the mind of distracting thoughts and to breathe in prayer.

During the holiday season, the retreat displays nativity scenes created and imported from Africa, Asia, South America and Europe.

The center offers overnight and daytime accommodations open to people from any faith tradition. Locals received a $25 discount. Offerings of peace are freely given to all.

Nature Conservancy Niobrara River Valley Preserve, Johnstown

Lightning ignited drought-dried tinder in north-central Nebraska in 2012. The Fairfield Creek Fire burned 74,000 acres, including homes, fencing separating 500 bison from 2,500 cattle, and parts of the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

The Nature Conservancy owns the preserve, an ancient biological crossroads that straddles Brown, Cherry and Keya Paha counties. After the fire, the conservancy decided to build a new visitor center that would blend into the environment and be fire-resistant. Architects choose a Japanese technique, Yakisugi – also known as Shou Sugi Ban – which treats cedar building planks with fire.

“Once you burn something, it creates a fire resistance,” said Mark Bacon, principal designer for the Lincoln architectural firm BVH, which designed the new center. The fired wood also repels pests. BVH chose repurposed cedar planks from an old onsite horse barn and living red cedar, which grows like a weed. “It pops up where you don’t want it,” Bacon said. “Harvesting and milling the red cedars turn a disadvantage into an advantage. It’s upscaling.”

Clearing red cedar prevents it from fueling future fires, protecting the area’s mature ponderosa pines.

The center is at the end of a 16-mile gravel road drive off Norden Road in Keya Paha County. Its deck offers an expansive view of the Niobrara River and trees like the ones Native Americans and homesteaders witnessed more than a century ago.

Baxa Cabin at Cedar Point Biological Station, Ogallala

Physician Max Baxa’s dying wish was for other students to find joy in learning as he had done at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala.

After being discharged from the Navy in 1979, the Columbus native enrolled in a five-week course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Cedar Point Biological Station near Ogallala. He dove to the floor of Lake McConaughy and found a previously unidentified freshwater clam. He wrote about it for a peer-reviewed journal, Nautilus.

Baxa later linked his professional achievements to his experiences at Cedar Point. He created a scholarship fund and provided financing for a field research facility.

The scholars’ cabin named for Baxa at Cedar Point Biological Station is handsome, but simple. Its construction began with red cedar harvested from nearby canyons. Today, the station mills cedar for additional cabins with a machine provided by Nebraska Environmental Trust.

Red cedar isn’t just an excellent building material, but it’s ubiquitous, as any Nebraska landowner may attest. “We’re never going to get rid of it,” said Jon Garbisch, associate director at Cedar Point.

A solar panel provides just enough electricity to power a few LED lights and charge a smartphone inside the cabin. Louvered windows keep it cool during hot summer days. Bug screens help occupants sleep better at night. Otherwise, there’s no reason to be inside. Outdoor learning awaits.