The Admiral / Sokol Auditorium

The Admiral is a music and performance venue located in the historic Little Bohemia neighborhood in South Omaha. The venue was formerly one of four Czech fraternal and sororal community centers operated by the Sokol organization that promoted fitness and community engagement through gymnastics and athletic activities. Built in 1926, the building was held an important place in South Omaha as a meeting place for many Czech, Italian, and American social groups as well as hosting recreation classes. In the 1990s and 2000s the basement, known as Sokol Underground, became an important venue for the indie music scene of Omaha. The venue was purchased in 2020 and renamed The Admiral.

The Sokol Auditorium was built in 1926 by the Czech Sokol Gymnastics Organization. In Czech the organization was known as Telocvicna Jednota Sokol. The distinctive brick building with large arched windows was an important community center for the surrounding Bohemian neighborhood. The Sokol Organization was founded in 1862 by Dr. Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner in Prague. This new Czech organization was created with the belief that physical training was a key aspect in physical and moral health. Dr. Tyrš believed that the avenue for fitness was gymnastics as it was a artistic expression of fitness. The Sokol movement found widespread adoption throughout Slavic regions in Europe and would travel to America in the early 1900s with the growing population of Bohemian immigrants.¹ Sokols and other Czech-Bohemian orders played a vital role in keeping patriotism, national heritage, and language alive in Czech-Bohemian communities around the world. The Sokol Order was primarily made up of young Bohemian men looking to stay fit and engage in the community.²

South Omaha was one of many destinations that immigrant Bohemians settled across America in the mid 19th century. The first large migration of Czechs occured in 1848 due to persecution by the Hapsburg noble family. Czech communities in Nebraska were settled in this first mass immigration. In the late 1850s the population of Bohemians boomed to 10,000 in the United States. At the turn of the century there were nearly 200,000 Americanborn Czechs. Following popular settlement trends, two-thirds of Bohemians lived in urban areas such as Omaha. The next mass immigration was due to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Around 20,000 Czechs fled the persecution they faced in their homeland. Nearly a quarter of these refugees were professionals, scholars, and artists. The 1990 United States Census reported that 1,296,000 Americans considered themselves Czech, 52 percent of these living in the Midwest.³ Communities like Little Bohemia exist in many cities in the Midwest.

The Sokol Auditorium at South 13th and Martha street in Omaha was home to 25 Bohemian lodges, as well as Italian and American social groups. The Sokol Organization hosted recreational classes for its members and the building houses a gymnasium and a ballroom with balconies. The audtiorium has been used for many events including wedding receptions, polka-dances, and as a community center.⁴

The building rose to importance in the Omaha music scene in the 1990s and 2000s as a venue for local and national indie rock acts. In 2020 the building was purchased by a group of investors made up of Omaha locals 1% Productions, Kansas City's Mammoth Productions, and Lincoln's Sean and Beckie Reagan.⁵ It was later announced that the historic venue would be extensively renovated and renamed to The Admiral. The proposed renovations aim to create a much better experience for both performers and event-goers while keeping the unique aesthetics of the building. The aim is to transform the building into a modern performing arts venue, while keeping the unique history, look, and community foundation intact. Little Bohemia is experiencing a regrowth with new businesses and investments flocking to the area. The neighborhood has changed into a hip and vibrant district, while maintaining much of history, architecture, and heritage that makes it so unique.

¹ Fridolín Macháček. “The Sokol Movement: Its Contribution to Gymnastics.” The Slavonic and East European Review 17, no. 49 (1938): 73–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4203460.

² Rose Rosicky, A History of Czechs (Bohemians) in Nebraska (Omaha, 1929), 355.

³ Kovtun, George. “The Czechs in America.” The Czechs in America (European Reading Room, Library of Congress). Accessed May 1, 2022. https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/imcz/ndl.html. 

⁴ “Reconnaissance Survey of Portions of South Central Omaha Nebraska Historic Buildings Survey,” Omaha, Mead & Hunt Inc., July 2006, Wayback Machine Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20070130201632/http://www.nebraskahistory.org/histpres/reports/omaha_so_central.pdf, (4/14/2022).

⁵McMahan, Tim. “History in the Making.” The Reader, June 3, 2021. https://thereader.com/news/over-the-edge/history-in-the-making-2.