House with Chimaeras
Due to the steep slope on which the building is situated, it had to be specially designed out of concrete to fit into its foundations correctly. From the front, the building appears to have only three floors. However, from the rear, all of its six floors can be seen. One part of the building's foundation was made of concrete piles, and the other as a continuous foundation. Usually, these two approaches do not mix well but Horodecki somehow succeeded in overcoming this technical problem.
First National of Nebraska
First National of Nebraska had its roots in the construction of First National Bank of Omaha's headquarters building, First National Center, in the 1960s. It was determined that total expenses, including the $2.5 million already paid to Woodmen of the World and adjoining property owners for land, would come to $13.9 million. It became necessary to form a holding company because there is a statutory limitation on the amount of money a bank is allowed to invest in brick and mortar. The U.S. Code draws the line at 50 percent of the financial institution's capital and surplus account, and they had decided to invest as much in that building, literally, as First National's entire net worth. A parent corporation, acting technically in its own name and on its own behalf, can go ahead and incur a sizable debt for construction purposes without running afoul of federal law, as long as it owns at least 80 percent of its subsidiary's stock. With that in mind, First National Bank's directors created (August 27, 1968) and its shareholders approved (January 21, 1969) First National of Nebraska, Inc.