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Goodbye, Gilcrease
You have five more days (Wednesday, June 30, 2021, to Sunday, July 4, 2021) to visit Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum, before the museum, as you've known it for the last 57 years, goes away forever.
Tulsa's Moton Memorial Hospital
This past Saturday morning, after visiting the Greenwood Farmers and Artisans Market, I took some photos of the old Moton (Morton) Health Center complex just west of Rudisill Library, on the north side of Pine Street between Greenwood Avenue and Greenwood Place. According to the cornerstone, the original three-story,...
Paul Harvey remembers Tulsa and his neighborhood
In March 1994, national radio commentator Paul Harvey, whose thrice-daily broadcasts were carried on over 1400 stations nationwide on the ABC radio network, reaching an audience in the tens of millions, returned to Tulsa to speak at a Salvation Army benefit. After his visit, he spoke on the air about...
Oklahoma's electrocutioner, Rich Owens
Larry Harnisch, a local history blogger in Los Angeles, has reposted a 1948 Daily Oklahoman profile of Rich Owens, who built Oklahoma's first electric chair and ran it for 33 years at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Reporter Ray Parr had gone to visit Owens at his home in McAlester...
August 27, 1922: Cornerstone laid for Tulsa's Jewish Institute
From p. 3 of the August 23, 1922, edition of the Tulsa Daily World: A building permit was issued Tuesday to the Jewish Institute, which is to be located at 629 N. Main street. The plans call for a one-story building and basement, with a large assembly hall. The cost...
April 21, 1914: Tate Brady offers to raise Indian cavalry for Mexico war
The Tulsa Daily World and the Tulsa Democrat both ran front page stories about Congress authorizing President Wilson to use the Armed Forces to intervene in Mexico. The World's front page was almost entirely devoted to the impending Mexico invasion. Above the masthead, a red banner headline read "LAND MARINES...
Tulsa Then and Now: historical photo iPhone app
Via TulsaGal, we learn of a cool new way to use modern technology to explore local history. In my Government 2.0 feature story for This Land, I mentioned last October's Tulsa Hackathon, in which teams of beer-and-pizza-fueled developers created mobile applications for local agencies and non-profits. One of the apps...
Tulsa's mystery places and mystery faces
Some years ago, I suggested that the Tulsa Library or Tulsa Historical Society put the Beryl Ford Collection on Flickr as a way to make the photos easier to tag and to make it easy to collect comments and annotations that would add context to the pictures. Several world-renowned archives,...
School board filing underway for 2012 election
Not only is this the filing period for Oklahoma's presidential preference primary, but it's also the school board filing period, and every school district in the state has at least one seat up for election in 2012. Filing for a school board seat takes place at the election board for...
1950s Tulsa in Cold War propaganda film
Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) chairman Bill Leighty came across a wonderful documentary short subject about Tulsa. The 15 minute film was part of the Cities in America series, produced by the United States Information Service, the Cold War-era organization that used a variety of media to promote a...
Paul Harvey's backward glance at Tulsa
While looking for something else, I came across this, entered into the Congressional Record by Illinois Congressman Phil Crane on August 4, 1994 (p. E1664). Crane describes it as a speech Paul Harvey gave in Tulsa on April 2, 1994, but it reads more like a radio commentary reflecting on...
Urban history online: Retro Metro OKC, Tulsa 1927
Oklahoma City has a new museum. Retro Metro OKC was launched recently, an online archive of Oklahoma City history, devoted to making artifacts and images of the city's past more readily accessible to the public via the Internet. Its mission statement: Retro Metro OKC is dedicated to educating the community...
"The Flickr community is invited to assist in the identification..."
Some time ago, I wrote a blog post urging the stewards of the Beryl Ford Collection to post the collection on Flickr, so as to invite public participation in collecting data about people, places, and times depicted in photos and ephemera from Tulsa history. A couple of months later, I...
No, Yes, Yes, Yes on the Tulsa Public Schools bond questions
Note: Reader Mike comments, "FYI, Ballots are out of sync with the school board's proposal PDF explanation. Side 2 (ballot back side) lists Question/Proposition #3 as Transportation and Question/Proposition #4 as Textbooks, Materials & Technology." I've corrected the order below to reflect the ballot proposition numbers. This Tuesday, Tulsa Public...
TU in the 1940s at Circle Cinema
Tonight (November 30, 2009) also brings another fascinating glimpse of Tulsa's past to the Circle Cinema in Whittier Square, Admiral Blvd. and Lewis Ave.: RadioTU presents a screening of "Going to College", a film about life at The University of Tulsa in the forties, on Monday, November 30 at 7:00...
The story of Mt. Zion Baptist Church
Pastor J. H. Dotson during the construction of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. The photos appear to show the remnant of the ruins of the 1921 structure, which had been roofed in 1937 and was being used for worship, being incorporated into the new structure, c. 1948. Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary...
Forgotten West Tulsa lives on in book form
If you've read BatesLine long, you'll know that I'm fascinated with forgotten bits of local history, such as the history of Greenwood between the 1921 destruction and rebuilding and its second destruction by urban renewal in the early '70s. It's wonderful to see old photos and to read reminiscences that...
Night life guides: 1948 Tulsa vs. 1959 Chicago
TulsaGal has been posting scans of past Tulsa ephemera on her blog. The latest scan is of a little 16-page magazine called This Week in Tulsa, December 31, 1948 edition. Recently she posted a copy of the competing magazine, The Downtowner, from March 19, 1948. The magazines had ads for...
My city was gone: Clinton Middle School, Tulsa Club, Tiger Stadium
Notes about demolition and neglect, here and elsewhere: From the Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society. Red Fork's oldest remaining high school building is to be demolished. The 1925 building served for most of its history as Clinton Middle School, but when first...
7th Street is westbound only
Twice this week I have been driving west on 7th St. downtown (which is the only direction you're supposed to drive on 7th St. downtown) and have encountered another driver headed east. A couple of days ago, at about 6 pm, I was in the left-hand lane on 7th approaching...
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