Lots of OKC pics

[SRG]

I'll just transplant a bunch of OKC pics I've taken over the ages to here.

Jefferson Park shoot (I play tennis here after work)

[SRG]

Here's my pictures of the north side of downtown, i.e., Automobile Alley (Auto Alley), Midtown, and the Arts District. New camera as well. Click first pic for background music.



















































































































































































































































































































































































And done.......

[SRG]

Now all of these from now on are taken with old cameras. This is of the Paseo Arts District a few miles north of downtown. They hold an annual arts festival that doesn't come close to the Festival of the Arts in downtown.

[SRG]

These ones are really really old, from 2006 I believe. A few are indoors because the heat and humidity must have been killing me. These are all just around downtown basically.

[TU 'cane]

Great job. Very nice pics.

[Unionstation13]

OKC has alot of beautiful turn of the century architecture.
Is that greek influenced stone structure the OKC newspaper building?

[SRG]

Yeah. Well, it's the OPUBCO (Oklahoma Publishing Company) building which was the headquarters for the people who print the Daily Oklahoman up until the 50s or 60s or so when they moved up to a spot 7 or 8 miles north of downtown. Now the YMCA has offices in there since it was donated to them. They do great upkeep on the old building.

[eweezerinc]

Nice! I love the mix of buildings and materials. OKC's DT has so much potential to be really alive. I'd love to see some high-rise residential and some major street-front retail. I haven't been in a few years. So much has changed. Would love it if one of my cousins had a wedding this summer so I can visit.

[SRG]

I found some more that I took. These are Upper Bricktown...just some buildings along East Main.









































My camera will be back really soon now that all of this has been redeveloped.

[SRG]

Here's some more of Bricktown. These are all from one morning I went for a stroll down Sheridan, and then down the Canal.










High-rise Hampton Hotel goes here:

[SRG]

Some pics from the Festival of the Arts, which is the nation's 3rd largest arts festival. It takes place in Downtown every Spring.

[SRG]

I can't find the rest of these. These are real real real old though. Shots of some shops across from OU in Norman. Norman is wear I hang my hat.









And another small set. These are aerials of Bricktown taken from a parking garage.

[SRG]

Last group. These are all downtown shots... now I know for a fact that without getting too far into all of my pics of urban stuff in Norman, that while these aren't the last ones I've taken, these are the last ones that ever made it to a computer. So, here they are.









































































Hilton Skirvin progress from this Spring

[RON-E]

wow.............thats a lot of pictures man/woman.............

COOL!

[Insighter]

Thanks for the great shots, all! I was last in OKC back in summer of '02, and I don't recall that the riverwalk was completed. I know somebody pointed out where it would go. Also, we ate at a place where they dumped a bunch of seafood out on some paper on the table. It might have been a brewpub. The dome on the capitol had just been completed.

Also, we rode up north of downtown and saw the auto alley and that very building with the old cars inside. Geez, that was over five years ago! The photos above made it easy to "tour" that loop from downtown to the north and back.

I suppose I should know more about OK as it neighbors my home state, but I really don't. This series makes me wonder about a few things.

1. Why is the capitol so far from downtown?
2. Are other state offices near the capitol? What kind of urban setting is around there? I didn't make it any closer than the expressway.
3. There was an apparent boom in the early twentieth century, but then it appears that things slowed down. Was oil the reason for the boom? Was the "dustbowl" the reason for the end of it? What happened during the post-WW2 era, specifically during the 50s and 60s?
4. When and why were those old skyscrapers built? What were the companies that built them?
5. I seem to remember reading about a skyscraper that was demolished back when I was a boy. What was that building? Where was it? Why was it demolished? Could it have been salvaged?
6. Did OKC ever toy with urban renewal? Were there any big, big mistakes from that?

Sorry for the onslaught of questions, but I've really wondered about OKC since my last trip. I agree that it has a world of potential. It does look weatherbeaten in a lot of places, but that contributes to its charms.

[SRG]

First of all I would like to mention that the intent of this thread is NOT to dump a whole bunch of random OKC pics in here, it's just for me to easily transplant all of the photography I've taken around town from our old home in the Midwest forum, to our new home in the Southeast forum, and for them to see it. Sorry I guess I forgot to say that.

Yeah your questions.

1. The capitol was actually added to Oklahoma City in the early 20s, so it was sort of built on the edge of the town that was closest to downtown (and still is). Oklahoma voters moved it from Guthrie to Oklahoma City because, while Guthrie was a hotbed of Republican politics, the state as a whole was and always has been 2/3 Democrat. Oklahoma City better reflects that, demographically I guess even though as it became more urban it became more moderate. You see the higher numbers of Democrats in more rural areas these days.

2. The Capitol is a very interesting area since today it's only a 45-second car drive 23 blocks up Lincoln Boulevard. It was intended to be a grand complex, with the main Capitol Building (which was intended to have a dome originally) anchoring the park surrounded by Lincoln Boulevard, and matching Art-deco office buildings lining Lincoln Blvd across from the park in the center. About four of those matching Art-deco office buildings got built. The rest were added later and are clearly not Art-deco. Today the area centered by Lincoln and 23rd is a hodge-podge of Art-deco and drab government mid-rises, with the Governor's Mansion and the Oklahoma History Center to the east, I-235 and Midtown to the west, the grand mansions of Lincoln Terrace to the north, and the dozens of midrises (including 4 under construction right now) in the Oklahoma Medical District, to the south.

3. The oil boom in the early 20s was the reason for Oklahoma's incredible prosperity in the first half of the century. Before the oil boom Oklahoma prospered simply as something that was "new and hot." People were anxious to set up shop in the largest city of the brand-new state. After that wore off, it was definitely the oil boom. And then the oil bust in the 70s is what really killed OKC for good. From the 70s on to the late 90s were pretty miserable times in OKC, and this town really was stuck in the Dust Bowl it seemed. The last decade has been about gradually modernizing and becoming competitive with the cities that surround us--Dallas/Fort Worth, Kansas City, Little Rock, etc. The 50s and 60s were fine times not unlike any other city undergoing the white flight at that time because of desegregation.

4. Oil companies during the Great Depression and shortly thereafter.

5. The Biltmore Hotel which was about 400 feet tall. It was dilapidated and abandoned for years and they finally tore it down in the early 70s I think. It was replaced with the Myriad Gardens, a beautiful park. I still wish the skyscraper could have been left standing though, but it wouldn't have gotten any attention until now still.

6. Yeah sure did a whole lot of urban renewal during the late 60s, and all of the 70s. They destroyed downtown's retail core, and demolished everything that was in disrepair at the time. In all nearly 60 individual buildings, all grand and impressive, were demolished. There were plans to redevelop all of downtown but the oil bust settled in before half of them became reality, so we were left with a lot of vacant lots, some lots that were filled in with crap, and other buildings that became abandoned later as downtown whithered away.

Hope that answers your questions. I love this town by the way. Few cities have a story like this, and this town is only just over a hundred years old, which is young. What few people realize is that OKC really is a very urban place, and that OKC is in fact, a very gritty, historic place with such a story, with Cowboys and Indians, then settlement, oil boom, prosperity, oil bust, decay, more decay, urban renewal, and in the last ten years, an incredible rebirth almost as if this town has risen from the ashes. The story of how prosperous, competitive, and successful OKC is as a community and as a city is incredible when you look at where rock bottom was for so long.

[TU 'cane]

The dust bowl MAINLY effected western OK (the panhandle pretty much). About 300,000 "okies" left for California where they were not welcomed and were looked upon as trash.

I wonder what Tulsas and OKCs pops would be if those 300,000 didnt leave.. OK's pop. would probably be about 400,000-900,000 people more wouldn't you say? Taken that 75% of those people had kids..

[Insighter]

Thanks for the answers. Look forward to more of these posts.

[roboticbrad]

Great collections of pictures, SRG.

[Raleigh-NC]

This is a HUGE contribution, in my opinion. I have never seen so many [nice] photos of Oklahoma City, although I must say the skyline had impressed me the first time I saw it - I still think it looks good Anyway, great photos, and by no means stop here. Keep the image coming