I had a little time between Conestoga being essentially over and my bus leaving for Texas. So I killed some time by walking around downtown Tulsa.
This photo was taken from Bartlett Square, which is in effect the very heart of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is a very fair representation of how dead the downtown is on a Sunday afternoon.
In the absence of people, there is some very stunning architecture. Tulsa was founded in 1907. A few years later it had fully embraced the art deco architecture style of the 1920s. From what I could see, this was the first and last time that Tulsans cared about the beauty of their city. The rest of Tulsa is stripmall, chain restaurants, and inexplicably empty fields. It’s less a city than a thickening of the countryside.
Here’s a good example of the beauty left neglected at the heart of Tulsa, like a pearl in a jar of pinto beans.
This is the South Boston Building or the National Bank of Tulsa Building (it had both names written on it). Note the meticulously ornate stonework.
Is that real gold on its door? I’m going to assume that it is.
Just across the street, lions barf iron chains.
These buildings remind me of temples found in the jungles of Thailand. Etched across them are the achievements of a forgotten generation of workmen.
They are buildings meant to be photographed against a dramatic Oklahoma sky.
There’s about a dozen square blocks of this, tapering off from the tallest buildings at the center to the humbler at the edges, before become empty parking lots and decaying industrial space.
The decay is seeping into the downtown too. One whole building was burned out, all of the beautiful concrete flare within arms reach of the fire escape covered with graffiti, like beetles covering a dead wildebeest.
Steel beams, now the nesting place of sparrows, are all that remain of an architectural feature.
And in a disused storefront, are the concrete crusts of a once proud edifice.
