The owners of the Kotera and Sloup Grocery
The neighborhood of Hartman Addition or 16th and William is a close neighbor to the famous
Little Bohemia neighborhood on South 13th Street. Little Bohemia was founded in the late
1870s by the Kountze Family. That neighborhood is a predominantly Czech area with some
Italian and German families intermixed due to the proximity to Little Italy and St. Joseph
Catholic Parish, which was a German majority church. 16th and William, or Hartman Addition,
was also a predominantly Czech neighborhood, with Italian and German influence. This
community was established just after Little Bohemia in the 1890s. Overall, Hartman Addition
grew on labor from the industrial areas and railroad yards to the north, in what is now the Old
Market, as well as the packing house jobs of South Omaha.
Hartman Addition depended greatly on the streetcar line that went down 16th Street, from
Vinton Street in the South to Florence in the North. This public transportation system fueled
economic growth along 16th Street, generally, and in Hartman Addition, specifically, and
connected both the south side and north side of the city with downtown. With the rise of car
culture and suburbanization in the post-WWII period, many white ethnic residents began to
flee traditional inner-city neighborhoods like Hartman Addition for the suburbs. The streetcar
system began to decline and the 16th Street line was halted for good in 1951, dealing a major
blow Hartman Addition. These changes were further exacerbated by the decline of the packing
industry to the south and the industrial areas to the north. With many businesses that relied
on foot traffic and the need for services near to home, the intersection became increasingly
abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s.