Fairview, Home of William Jennings Bryan

The Queen Anne house sitting here on a wooded rise was home to one of the most consequential political voices in American history. William Jennings Bryan built Fairview in nineteen oh one and oh two, paying for it with proceeds from his writing. He called it Fairview for the pleasant overlook toward Antelope Creek below.

Bryan was already famous when he moved in: his Cross of Gold speech at the eighteen ninety-six Democratic National Convention had made him a national figure overnight and won him the first of three presidential nominations. He ran again in nineteen hundred and in nineteen oh eight. He later served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. In nineteen twenty-one, Bryan donated the house to the Nebraska Methodist Conference for use as a hospital. The medical complex that grew around it eventually obscured the fair view entirely. Fairview was declared a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-three and today houses a public museum on its first floor.