O Street (Lincoln, Nebraska)

The street began as a rutted wagon trail and dirt footpath. When the village of Lancaster was established in the 1860, the trail was named Locust Street; it formed the southern boundary of Lancaster. When Lancaster was designated the state capitol and renamed Lincoln, a lettered and numbered grid of streets was imposed which chanced to rename Locust Street to O Street. It became Lincoln's primary commercial street and east–west route through the city.^[1]

In the 1880s a horse railway ran on the street.^[3] A flood in 1980 filled O Street with water, according to the Nebraska State Journal, in the North Bottoms area from 8th Street East to 24th Street West.^[4] Another flood filled O street in 1912.^[5] The Lincoln Aircraft Company manufactured airplanes and taught flight school at an O street factory in the 1920s; Charles Lindbergh learned to fly there in 1922.^[6]The largest bank robbery in the US took place on O Street in 1930. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was greeted by thousands of spectators on a procession up O Street during the 1936 United States presidential election.^[7] Crowds also gathered on O Street to celebrate VJ Day in 1945.^[8] Because of its central location, O Street is sometimes a site of protest. In 2025, labor unions members demonstrated against federal firings.^[9]

In 2025, the city broke ground on a project to refurbish O Street, the largest downtown revitalization project in Lincoln in 50 years.^[10]

Allen Ginsberg poetically named O Street "Zero Street" in his 1960s poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra". An early version of the poem was called "Automobile Poesy to Nebraska."^[11] The University of Nebraska Press named an imprint of LGBTQ+ literature Zero Street Fiction, after Ginsberg.^[12]