The Durham Museum

A National Historic Landmark and Smithsonian Affiliate — where Omaha's story lives inside the Art Deco grandeur of the original 1931 Union Station.

Built in 1931 by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood for the Union Pacific Railroad, Omaha's Union Station was the showpiece of a city at the crossroads of a continent. At its peak, over a million passengers a year passed through its doors. When passenger rail declined, the station closed in 1971. Reborn in 1975 as the Western Heritage Museum — and later renamed for philanthropists Charles and Margre Durham — it now houses the region's premier history museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate with ties to the Library of Congress, National Archives, and Field Museum.