The National Willa Cather Center is opening its newest permanent exhibit, Making A Place: A Long History of Red Cloud, on Friday, March 1, also Nebraska Statehood Day. Guests are invited to celebrate Nebraska and learn about the history of the region that was central to Willa Cather's life and literature. The opening will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. at the recently restored Farmers and Merchants Bank building at 338 N. Webster Street in Red Cloud. The exhibit opening is free of charge, with light refreshments served. A suggested minimum donation is appreciated.
Guests are also encouraged to stay for "First Friday" at the Red Cloud Opera House with Switchback, an American roots and Celtic soul music duo from Iowa. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available in advance and on the day of show.
Making a Place: A Long History of Red Cloud invites visitors to explore Willa Cather's novel A Lost Lady (1923) through topics that are both present and absent in Cather's fiction. The exhibit includes Pawnee culture; Silas and Lyra Garber-in life and as portrayed as Captain and Mrs. Forrester in A Lost Lady; town-making and homesteading; banking and the Panic of 1893; and early preservation efforts led by the National Willa Cather Center's founder, Mildred Bennett, beginning in 1955.
One of Red Cloud's most arresting architectural specimens, the Farmers and Merchants Bank, was built in the Romanesque Revival style by Red Cloud's founder, Silas Garber, who served two terms as Nebraska's governor between 1875 to 1879 before returning to Red Cloud. Cather became acquainted with Lyra and Silas Garber during her childhood and used them as prototypes for Captain and Mrs. Forrester in A Lost Lady. The bank is used in two of Cather's other writings: the short story "Two Friends," and the novel Lucy Gayheart.
The bank is also the first building owned and operated by the National Willa Cather Center, known then as the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. Dedicated in 1962 as the Willa Cather Museum, the site is a fitting place to explore the notions of place-making and the history of Red Cloud's founding, as well as the early days of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. For almost seventy years, the WCPM, which has grown and evolved into the National Willa Cather Center today, has worked to preserve the historic fabric of the town that Willa Cather immortalized in her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
This two-story interpretive space highlights the ideas of building and re-building as guests explore the original bank teller cages, vaults, and offices-all a preserved rarity; view artifacts related to Red Cloud's founding and financing; and discover the origins of the WCPM's preservation mission, which began-and nearly ended-with the Farmers and Merchants Bank. Visitors can tour the exhibit as part of a guided town tour. Schools and other groups are encouraged to include this exhibit as part of their field trip experience or as part of regional and state history curricula.
The exhibit was made possible with support from Pinnacle Bank and the Dinsdale Family; Cooperative Producers, Inc.; B. Keith and Norma F. Heuermann Foundation; Rick and Kay Stahly; Susan Parry; Jennifer J. Hein; Mark Howe; Tru-Built Construction; Heritage Bank; and Michael Sirmons.
This exhibit is not presently accessible to all, but will be via elevator upon completion of the adjacent Hotel Garber later in 2024.
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