After cruising through the small towns of northeast Oklahoma, Tulsa felt different. Obviously, the city was much bigger than any of the Oklahoma towns and cities we’d driven through, but it also had a newer, “hip”, boom town feel. Tulsa had been built on oil, declined a bit during the last recession, and has done a great job of bringing in new businesses and industries to expand the city.
As far as Route 66 is concerned, Tulsa was the home to Cyrus Avery and it was in Tulsa that the idea for the highway was conceived and developed. Tulsa became a hub on the new highway when it was officially designated. Today, the city readily embraces its heritage and relationship with Route 66.
Our hotel in Tulsa was a restored older hotel right on the original Route 66. The Max Campbell building was built in 1927 on the western outskirts of town, at the end of a trolley route from downtown Tulsa. It faced the new highway and was designed for a large number of commercial businesses on the first floor with a hotel, the Casa Loma, occupying the second floor. The second-floor hotel was accessed by a grand staircase that had an entrance on the main street.
The hotel serviced travelers on Route 66 and also travelers arriving by train who could take the trolley to the hotel that offered more affordable lodging than what was available in the downtown area.
The building came under the ownership of a company with an eye to revitalizing the neighborhood in 2009, and it has been restored as an upper level boutique hotel.
The rooms are “themed”, and we had the Tulsa Art Deco Room, with a dark and metallic décor reminiscent of the roaring 20’s.
After breakfast the next morning, we headed out from the hotel to explore a bit of Tulsa before getting back on the highway to the western side of Oklahoma.
Driving down 11th Street, the original route of the highway into downtown Tulsa, we saw quite a few signs reminiscent of the original highway. Some of the neon and chaser lighting graced existing businesses that recognized their historical value and a few businesses that let the signs fall into disrepair.
Just before getting to the downtown area, we passed a historic 1940’s Meadow Gold Dairy sign that has been preserved and restored, placed atop a special brick pavilion, designed to display it, with plaques to tell the story of the signs history.
It’s inspiring to see these items from our cultural history being attended to and preserved. In this case, the work was made possible partly due to a grant from the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, and the committed partnership of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, the City of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, who all made significant contributions to the effort to save the sign.
When we got to the downtown area, we saw two iconic gas stations from the early days of Route 66 that have been or are being restored and repurposed.
The first station was a 1931 Phillips Petroleum station. Phillips was looking to cash in on the routing of Route 66 and purchased a residential property for conversion to the gas station. The station was designed in a quaint cottage design. A second building for service bays in a matching architectural style was also built and is still on the property.
Phillips ran the station as a corporate entity for a number of years and then started leasing it out to individual entrepreneurs. The station remained popular and productive through the 50’s and into the early 60’s before rerouting of the highway to the super slabs drew down traffic. The station closed in 1973 and the property continued life as a property for paid parking and fell into disrepair. In the early 2000’s, a new owner recognized the historic value of the property and took on restoration after the property was listed on the Register of Historic Places. The efforts resulting in the successful repurposing of the property as a car rental service for downtown Tulsa. The rental office uses the gas station, and the building with the service bays is used to prep and clean the returned vehicles.
A second gas station in the downtown area defines a gentrifying commercial neighborhood and is on a path to restoration as a historical property to be used as an intimate event space. The Blue Dome building is located on the early routing of Route 66, was built in 1924, opened as a White Star Gulf Station, and served as Tulsa’s first 24 hour gas station.
An interesting aspect of the station design (besides the eye catching blue dome) is the fact that the station is a two story structure. In fact, because the station was designed as a “24/7” business, the company felt it was important to have the operator always available and the second floor was designed as living quarters.
The Blue Dome didn’t last that long as a station; it’s reported that sometime in the 30’s it was repurposed as a bar, moving through a number of owners. Finally, in 2013, nearby bar owners with an interest in historic value purchased the property with an eye for renovation. It’s an icon for the neighborhood and hopefully will someday be available as a cozy public/private event space.
As we drove through the downtown area, we noticed a large number of well-kept art deco style buildings that proved an interesting architectural find. Historically, the city experienced a building boom in the early 1900’s that coincided with the rise of art deco architecture in the United States and resulted in many art deco buildings dotted through the downtown and midtown areas. The impressive collection of art deco buildings has attracted preservationists and many of the buildings have been restored.
As expected, the buildings include a number of office buildings.
The influence is also seen in churches built during the building boom, for example the Boston Avenue Methodist Church, built in 1929.
The art deco influence even carried over to strip mall type buildings built during the period. We saw one, the Warehouse Market, that was built originally as a Public Market in 1929. The original building, with its ornate art deco tower, housed a variety of shops and a farmers market on one end when it opened.
By 1938, Warehouse Market, a food chain took over the building until 1978. The building floundered as a host to a variety of commercial uses until the entire property was purchased as a package by developers for a Home Depot store. Rather than tear down the iconic art deco structure, the developer saved the façade as a front for a new commercial strip mall adjacent to the big box home improvement store.
After our little tour of Tulsa’s downtown area, we worked our way to the point where the original Route 66 crossed the Arkansas River. The original 11th Street Bridge, built in 1916 and incorporating all modern features for its time, was 1470 feet long and 34 feet wide, carrying one train track flanked by one roadway and pedestrian walk in each direction. It was one of the longest concrete structures in the Midwest at the time.
The route was already busy with traffic in 1926 when it became part of the new Route 66. In 1929, the bridge was refurbished with new lighting and roadway upgrades. It was upgraded again in 1934, when it was widened to four lanes.
Much of the traffic carried by the 11th Street Bridge was rerouted in 1967 with the completion of the I244 bridges just upstream to the west. Still, the bridge deteriorated to the point it was closed to traffic in 1980 and fully replaced by a new Southwest Blvd bridge just downstream to the east.
The original bridge was listed on the National Register in 1996 and Tulsa voters approved a series of projects in 2003, one of which involves promoting and enhancing Route 66 in Tulsa. Part of the plan involved renaming the 11th Street Bridge as the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge and building a Memorial Plaza and Park leading to the bridge. The Plaza includes a bronze sculpture titled “East Meets West”, further memorializing the Mother Road and Cyrus Avery.
Initially, the 11th Street Bridge was kept open to pedestrians, but continued degradation resulted in it being gated and closed in 2008. It’s still a centerpiece to Tulsa’s memorial to Avery and Route 66, but restoration costs to even make the bridge safe for pedestrians keep climbing. As was noted in a news report on the status of the bridge in 2009, “it’s too expensive to repair, too historic to demolish, and too valuable to ignore” (Emory Bryan, Historic Tulsa Bridge to Remain Closed, newson6.com, Posted: May 14, 2009 4:19 PM CDT).
The plaza was a great start to Tulsa’s Memorial to Avery and the Road he conceived, but finding a way to restore and open the bridge as part of the memorial would be the “crown jewel”. Here’s hoping that Tulsa finds a way to restore the bridge to centerpiece status for their Route 66 Memorial.
About a mile further down the road as we were leaving Tulsa, we stumbled on one more “gem of Route 66”, Howard Park, a relatively small roadside park dating back to 1918.
The park was created on a donation of 14 acres of land by Tulsans O.R. and Inez Howard. The land was nestled between an early oil refinery and what would become a major railway yard. Still, the forested property offered a green respite for the residents of Red Fork and west Tulsa. As the road alongside the park grew to be a major highway, the park was also a favorite spot for passing motorists to take a break, sometimes turning the park into an informal tourist camp.
In 1990, Howard Park was dedicated as an historic US 66 park. By then, the park had shrunk in size by about half when I244 was constructed land between the park and rail yards. Despite the encroachment of the interstate, the park and its mature trees and green space still offers a bit of a quiet respite. Strolling through the park’s established trees, it wasn’t hard to imagine the giggles and laughter of kids running around playing tag while Mom and Dad got out the fixings for a picnic lunch during a road trip in the 40’s or 50’s.
Recognizing the historic value of the Park, the City of Tulsa commissioned the creation of three stone monoliths for placement in the park. The sculptures were designed by the artist to commemorate not only Route 66 but all the things and industries that have contributed to the cultural identity of Tulsa.
The sculptures were placed prominently in the park in 2017. It was a pleasant stop before we continued down the Mother Road to Oklahoma City and beyond.