Sixth Annual Foundation Awards

The Tulsa Foundation for Architecture will host the Sixth Annual Foundation Awards on Thursday, October 29th from 5 - 7 PM in the Penthouse at the Mayo Hotel and Luxury Residences, 115 W. 5th St, 18th Floor. There will be free street parking available and valet parking at the Mayo Motor Inn for a nominal fee. The Mayo Hotel and Luxury Residences is the receipent of this year's Foundation Landmark Award and Jack Frank is the receipent of this year's Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. Due to space limitations, please RSVP at 583.5550. You may also purchase tickets online here.

Third Annual Downtown Living Tour

As part of its mission to enhance Tulsa's livability and revitalize downtown, the TFA will host its Third Annual Downtown Living Tour, June 27 and 28, 2009. Five unique sites will be featured on the weekend tour and the T-Town Trolley will provide transportation to each site and is included with each tour ticket purchase. Tour hours are Saturday: 11 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and Sunday: 1:00-5:00 p.m. Single ticket: $20 or Two tickets for $35.

To kick off the weekend tour, the TFA will host a Patron Party on Friday, June 25, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. at a private residence near Third and Kenosha. Each Patron Party ticket includes two (2) tickets to the weekend Downtown Living Tour; food from local restaurants including Blue Dome Diner, Daily Grill, Elote Cafe and Catering, Impressions, Joe Momma's, and F.B. Oscar's Gastropub, with select wines from Girouard Vines and an assortment of beers from James E. McNellie's Public House. Patron Party Ticket: $50.

Living in HiFi: Lortondale Home Tour

"Living in HiFi" will be an annual modern home tour hosted by the Modern Tulsa committee of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture. Focused on mid-century modern residential architecture, the tour will seek to promote an awareness and the preservation of this oft-overlooked and dismissed style of architecture. 

"Living in HiFi" will premiere June 13th in the historic Lortondale Neighborhood. 
Designed and built in 1954 by Tulsa duo Donald Honn (architect) and Howard Grubb (builder), the Lortondale Neighborhood was the recipient of a multitude of national design awards. The neighborhood was featured in an array of magazines including House and Home and Better Homes and Gardens. 

In recent years Lortondale has experienced something of a rebirth. A new generation of homeowners, interested in modern design, are snapping up the houses just as fast as they come on the market. After decades of neglect, many of the houses in the neighborhood are being restored to their former modern glory. Most importantly, the Lortondale Community is experiencing the same restoration. 

This year's tour seeks to convey the energy that is the Lortondale Neighborhood today. Featured are 6 houses in various stages of completion. From the beginning stages of a restoration to a virtually complete example of HiFi-modern bliss, this tour of Lortondale will show you what all the buzz is about. 

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 day-of. The tour will take place from 5:30 - 8:30 with an after party lasting from 8:30 -? 

Tickets are available for purchase at the following locations: 

Dwelling Spaces 
119 South Detroit 

Urban Furnishings 
3636 South Peoria 

Ida Red 
3346 South Peoria 

TFA Architectural Archives 
321 South Boston, Suite #LL01 

Old City Hall Update

In this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, there is an article about the future of the Old City Hall.  There are a few interesting comments about the site, but nothing too shocking.  Like I mentioned in the previous post about the Old City Hall, city officials are hoping the site will be developed into a "convention-class hotel."  I don't know what a convention-class hotel is, but I am guessing it's a hotel designed around hosting conventions?  Anyway, the City did not receive any official proposals by the March 31 deadline.  Given the size of the proposed project, it is no surprise that the current economic situation is cited as one of the reasons for lack of interest in the site.  Although, a few City Councilors believe the lack of interest is also due to the difficult nature of developing a site with the Central Library and the County Courthouse in close proximity and the deterioration of the plaza.  While there is more bad news, there is also some good news; Mike Bunney, an economic development officer with the City, is quoted as saying that the City is open to adaptive reuse possibilities, meaning that the developer would reuse the existing building.  The bad news is that Bunney also states that all the developers interested in the site have commented that the building will have to be razed.  I suppose the positive side of this is that the City isn't planning on demolishing the building on the hopes that someone will develop the site, which is what often happened with urban renewal in the 1970s.  Now, they are at least giving the developer the opportunity to use the existing building.  Maybe someday the City will make adaptive reuse mandatory for redevelopment downtown.                

Meadow Gold Sign

Tulsa's historic Meadow Gold sign is finally going back up.  For those that may not know, the Meadow Gold sign was a neon sign put up in the 1930s at 11th & Lewis by Meadow Gold Dairy, which is a brand that at one time was owned by Beatrice Foods.  This project started back in 2004 when TFA was awarded a grant from the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor to restore the Meadow Gold sign, which was mounted on top of a small one-story building.  Soon after the project began, ownership of the building (and sign) changed.  The new owner soon made it clear he planned to demolish both the building and the sign.  Through the efforts of the National Park Service, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, and multiple articles about the endangered sign, funding was sought and awarded from the City of Tulsa's Vision 2025 initiative to save the historic sign.  Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor will officiate the public dedication of the sign on May 22, lighting the sign for the first time since the 1970s.  Here are a few pictures of the sign going back up.  

                 

Oklahoma's Endangered Places

Preservation Oklahoma has released their list of Oklahoma's most endangered places for 2009. Sadly, four things from Tulsa made the list; the Tulsa Club (5th & Cincinnati), Midtown Tulsa (teardowns), the Downtown YMCA (6th & Denver), and the Ponca City Savings Building (7th & Boston). The YMCA and Ponca City Savings Building are listed as examples under the Mid-Century Modern Architecture. I guess this is an improvement over the list from a couple of years ago when downtown Tulsa as a whole was listed. Click here, for the story in today's Tulsa World about the list.

Old City Hall

In this month's Preservation magazine, there is an article about Boston's brutalist-style City Hall that reminded me of Tulsa's out of favor City Hall, the old City Hall that is. Out of all the buildings in downtown Tulsa, the old City Hall building, perhaps more than any other, will elicit strong opinions, almost all being very negative. When we had the White Glove Open House back in January, I purposefully put a drawing of the building out wanting to see the reactions. I think I heard 3 (maybe) people say that they liked the building. Numerous people commented that it looks much better on paper than in person. Surprisingly, there were quite a few people who upon first glace mistook the old City Hall Building for the Warren Petroleum Building. I won't tell you what I think of the building, only that it (and the entire Civic Center) is a very important part of Tulsa's architectural heritage. The Civic Center is representative of Tulsa's (and the nation's) post-war optimism that was so strong in the 1950s and 1960s. It was Tulsa's second major building boom (the first being the 20s and 30s when we built deco instead of modern) and a time when people took great pride in their city and its built environment. The post-war era was a time, like today, when people cared about downtown and wanted to see the area flourish.



Whether you like the building(s) or not, they are a part of Tulsa's architectural history and we would lose a significant piece of history if the building is demolished, not to mention the enormous amount of material that would go straight to a landfill. I had a professor in grad school that was constantly reminding us that 'history isn't always pretty' and I think that is applicable in this situation (not that I'm saying Old City Hall isn't pretty, but I know most people don't think so). I hope that people will recognize the cultural significance of the Old City Hall and realize how shortsighted it would be to demolish such an important piece of Tulsa's architectural history just because some people don't like the way it looks. Sure some may think it's 'ugly' now, but there was also a time when people hated Art Deco; I know some may have a hard time believing it, but it's true. By the time people started realizing how important the Deco buildings from the '20s and '30s were, almost half had already been demolished. Thankfully, people stopped before all of our deco buildings were gone. I really hope that we don't have to demolish half of Tulsa's iconic mid-century buildings before we realize how important they are.