Territorial Homes for Regular People

When OKC residents think of historic houses, we think of the beautiful old mansions of Heritage Hills, or the only-slightly more modest homes in neighboring Mesta Park. We think of the Overholser Mansion, built in 1903 and regarded as Oklahoma's first mansion.

But this is a working-class town, built first as a railroad depot, then as an industrial and commercial center to support the people brought to the Territory by the Land-Run, and finally as an oil town with dozens of wells actually inside city limits (and, for that matter, on the grounds of our capitol building).

For most of us, the lifestyles of these working-class people is a bit of a mystery--not one many of us have even thought about. In fact, someone informed me the other day that the first settlers to OKC after the Land Run lived in "mud huts," by which he seemed to mean the sod houses of the homesteaders. A student of Oklahoma history, however, will know that people were building permanent wood and brick structures remarkably quickly, as this photo supposedly taken four days after the land run shows. After all, we were a rail yard, which means that we had easy access to the pre-cut wood that defined the National Folk Style home.

Most of these first houses, built very quickly, were intermingled with the businesses and industries along the railroad tracks, and are of course gone, long since replaced by skyscrapers and warehouses. But just southwest of downtown, a few very early, modest homes remain.

The largest concentration of these early homes is not in Heritage Hills, but in the neglected little neighborhood between the old I-40 and the river, and between Shields and Wheeler Park. The oldest I found on my own hunt through this neighborhood was this one on SW 5th street, built in 1901:

But when researching for this post, Kate Singleton's "Intensive Level Survey of Downtown," led me to this house on a different street which was built in 1900. This may well be the oldest extant home in Oklahoma City (if there's one older, I hope someone will let me know).

Photo: Oklahoma County Assessor

The intrepid OKC-phile who is not afraid to wonder into the 600-700 blocks of SW 5th through about SW 8th will find dozens of houses built between 1905 and 1910 (plus a few built as late at the 30's and 40's). These are the homes that saw Oklahoma Territory become the State of Oklahoma.

These houses aren't particularly dignified. Most of them are hopelessly run down, and none of them appear on the National Register of Historic places. According to Singleton's survey, few, if any of them would even be eligible. They are working-class homes and have been added on to or altered often, usually as cheaply as possible by residents who had neither the resources to nor the interest in preserving the historical value of these houses.

In fact, most people in general would not be particularly interested in preserving these houses. Tiny, wood-sided houses just don't feel very historic to us. Even Paul Revere's home in Boston became a tenement and a series of shops before a descendant of Revere bought it to save it from being demolished. Houses like these may be historical, but they are not valuable.

In fact, these houses survived this long probably through an accident of twentieth-century urban planning. Cheap houses were built in this area initially because, early in the city's history, the land along the river was prone to flooding. This meant that land value here was low, so small, affordable, working-class houses were built here. They remained here likely because of Old Interstate-40. Wedged between the Crosstown Bridge and the river, this area became no-man's land, at least for the kind of people who are able to tear down old things to build new ones. Nestled safely between the formidable (and ugly) boundaries of I-40 and the North Canadian, the city's periodic attempts at urban renewal always skipped over these blocks. Thus, the fact that this land had no value meant that it was left alone. Had these historic homes been worth anything, they would be gone.

Now, however, I-40 has moved, and has been set below grade with a handsome pedestrian bridge traversing it. Money is being spent on the Core to Shore projects and we're about to put in a really nice downtown park right next door to this neighborhood.

This means that the land where these old homes sit is about to become very valuable. Several houses have already been demolished to make way for the park, and once it is done, developers will rush to acquire the land that borders the park in order to build luxury apartments and condos. These modest nuggets of territorial history will be gone--gone the way of the real Deep Deuce. So go see these houses now while you still can. But take your safety precautions.