Joslyn Castle, Omaha's First Millionaires
Near Omaha, Nebraska
This Scottish manor in the middle of Omaha is officially named Lynhurst, but everyone calls it Joslyn Castle. George and Sarah Joslyn bought the old Sutphen farm in eighteen ninety-three and finished the thirty-five-room house in nineteen oh three, at a cost of about two hundred fifty thousand dollars. They were Omaha's first millionaires.
George made the fortune in ready-print newspapers, the pre-printed sheets sent to small-town papers, and his Western Newspaper Union grew into the largest newspaper service organization in the world. When George died in nineteen sixteen, Sarah carried his memory forward in the grandest possible way. She gave Omaha a free cultural center, the Joslyn Memorial art museum, which opened in nineteen thirty-one.
The castle and the museum together are her answer to a single question. What do you do with a fortune once the man who built it is gone?
