The building was first identified for demolition by Omaha's civic leaders in the 1930s, who thought of it as an eyesore in a modern metropolitan city.

[1] In the early 1960s the General Services Administration declared the building too costly to maintain and quickly built a new facility.

He was planning a design for a new Catholic church at 62nd and Dodge Street and proposed salvaging the granite blocks.

[3] More than 50 years after the building was razed, Douglas County Historical Society created the Ethel C. Flannigan Memorial Architectural Garden that showcases four granite pieces salvaged from the 1898 structure.

Critics charged that the closure of 16th Street was a heavy-handed attempt to inhibit the flow of blacks from the predominantly African-American North Omaha at a time of a fear of rising social unrest and riots nationwide.