Café Postale, the daytime café and nighttime event venue tucked inside downtown Omaha's Rail & Commerce building, is shutting its doors for good on November 30. The announcement closes out the chapter for a space that has doubled as a coffee stop and a wedding and corporate event backdrop at 950 South 10th Street.
Café Postale announced that it will close permanently on Monday, November 30, according to Grow Omaha. The café is located at 950 South 10th Street in the Rail & Commerce building, and it has long promoted itself as a “café by day and event venue by night,” per the same outlet.
A separate account from Omaha Exploration describes the ground-floor café as serving both breakfast and lunch, with an attached event space used for weddings, corporate events, and other functions. That combination of daytime food service and after-hours venue rentals has defined the business's footprint inside the building for its run there.
A Building With a Postal Past
The Rail & Commerce building carries a layered history tied to Omaha's rail and postal industries, though sources differ on some of the specifics. Omaha Exploration reports the structure, known historically as the Burlington Mail Terminal, was built in 1926 and designed in the Daylight Factory style by architect W.T. Krausch. The National Trust Community Investment Corporation, or NTCIC, instead states the building was originally built in 1925 as a three-story sorting facility for the United States Postal Service's Railway Mail Service.
The two sources also diverge on how long the building served its original postal function. Omaha Exploration reports the mail terminal continued to operate as a mail sorting facility until 1972, while NTCIC says the USPS converted the building from a sorting facility into a storage facility back in 1956. NTCIC further notes that the USPS ultimately abandoned the building in the mid-1970s, before developer Resumo LLC purchased the deteriorating property in 2015, according to Omaha Exploration.
Not the First Downtown Café to Call It Quits
Café Postale's closure follows a similar announcement from another Omaha coffee business earlier this year. Manhattan's Coffee, Deli, and Grill said its location at 18th and Farnam streets would shut down, with April 24 marking its last day, according to KETV. That business cited the current state of the downtown area as the reason for the closure, though KETV reported its Aksarben Village location is staying open.
No such explanation has surfaced for why Café Postale is closing its doors at the Rail & Commerce building. The café, which also maintains a presence on Instagram as @cafepostale_omaha describing itself as a historic café and event venue in downtown Omaha, has not detailed what the closure means for its space, staff, or future events booked at the site.
