Photo: Khlem House circa, 1931, located at 2215 9th Avenue. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Wikipedia username: Ammodramus, 2009, public domain, accessed September, 2025.
City Hall is located at 18 East 22nd Street, Kearney, NE 68847.
Phone: 308-233-3215.
Photo: Khlem House circa, 1931, located at 2215 9th Avenue. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Wikipedia username: Ammodramus, 2009, public domain, accessed September, 2025.
Neighborhoods
Kearney [1] was incorporated in December of 1873 and went through an initial construction boom with manufacturing facilities and factories dotting the landscape. With the collapse of the boom and loss of population Kearney suffered during the 1890s, innovative city planners organized to help keep life in the town by acquiring state institutions, the most important of which was the second State Normal School approved by the legislature for Kearney in 1903.
Securing this school cemented the long-term development of the city. In order to accommodate the incoming professors in response to the school's upgrade to a State Teachers College, construction in residential neighborhoods grew rapidly. Older houses were converted to office spaces and multi-family housing to augment campus facilities. During the 1920s and the late teens a large number of new homes were constructed primarily represented by modern bungalow and Prairie School designs. However, with the dawn of the 1930s and slower economic times this building trend shifted. One innovative college staff member planned the construction and design of his own new building.
Historic housing stock in the city of Kearney predominantly dates from the 1910s through the 1920s, logically coinciding with the largest boom in residential construction. The Klehm House immediately post-dates this boom and represents a different scale and style of building. These Revival styles represent established architectural periods that were often reinvigorated and inviting during times of great growth. In fact, during its height of construction, the 1920's through early 1930's, the >Tudor Revival style was rivaled only by >Colonial Revival examples as vernacular building types present in rapidly expanding subdivisions erected throughout the country at the time. Built on the cusp of the financial boom of the 1920s and the depression era of the 1930s, the Klehm House directly illustrates the stylistic eclecticism of the Tudor Revival. The main characteristics which define the style are present in the Klehm House like the steeply pitched multiple gabled facade, the stucco finish, arched openings, dark wood and divided multi-paned windows.
Kearny [2] developed at the junction of two major railroad companies, the Union Pacific, and the Burlington Missouri River. A base population was already present in the area because of the military outpost Fort Kearny established in 1848.The decades of significant construction and early boom happened during the 1870s and 1880s when rail traffic was at a peak, financial markets were stable, and people were not only settling permanently in Kearney, but a significant population passing through on the railroad resulted in a variety of atypical service industries for the area. For example, a cotton mill was established and processed raw material into cotton sheeting and fabrics. This would not be possible without the significant rail traffic providing the raw materials. Seven banks were located along Central Avenue during these decades, a record number for a community of this size. The oldest building within the historic district located at the northwest corner of Central Avenue and 23rd Street was constructed in c. 1875 for the Buffalo County National Bank. A direct correlation is seen between the population growth, rising to more than 10,000 in the 1880s and its continued steady increase over the years with the steady growth of the built environment. Where many historic districts see a decade from which many of heir buildings date, Kearney has a wide variety of buildings from every decade of its period of significance with an emphasis on building retention from the decades of the 1910s and 1920s.