Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Tulsa Art Deco. It is no secret. I really like art deco, and Tulsa has lots and lots of it.
Tulsa’s art deco architecture is simply astounding. The quantity of it, the quality of it, the variety of it (zigzag, streamline moderne, PWA style and more) – this is one of the most extensive (and finest) collections of art deco in the United States.
It is said that Tulsa and art deco came of age together.
As Tulsa boomed in the 20s and 30s the art deco went up all over the city and not just downtown. Oil money paid for a lot of this.
This first set will stay outside the downtown. Many of these buildings (in this post and the two to follow) are on National Register of Historic Places.
There was a light rain most of the day on which I did the primary shoot. I was thankful for it. (I mean, a high and bright overcast without rain would have been better but I won’t complain.) I used a fast shutter speed and “shot through” the rain. Although the colors don’t jump out, there was a complete absence of shadows in these shots, and I was not plagued by the usual backlight issues on sunny days. It was much more difficult to shoot the next morning in the bright sun, often into the backlight and encountering deep shadows.
Many of these shots were taken on or near the two Tulsa alignments of Route 66.
The very first few photos are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Richard Lloyd Jones House (a/k/a Westhope), 1929. Next, the Fairgrounds Pavilion at the Tulsa State Fairgrounds (now called Expo Square Pavilion), 1932, and the Warehouse Market Building, 1930. Other buildings in this set include: the Tulsa Monument Building (1936), the Tulsa Fire Alarm Building (1934), Will Rogers High School (1938) and Tulsa Union Depot (1931).
A few of these buildings have been repurposed. For example, the Union Depot was the former central railway station for Tulsa. Passenger trains continued to stop at the landmark deco building until 1967. The building sat empty and deteriorating, for about 20 years, until it was saved and restored in the 1980s. The Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame is currently headquartered there. The Warehouse Market Building has been architecturally vandalized and sits next to a Home Depot parking lot with only a portion of the building remaining. Its featured business is a pizza place. How sad.
