Travels on the Mother Road, Route 66: Part 22, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Tulsa is the second big city in Oklahoma that Route 66 travelers passed through (coming from the west). According to the Route 66 Adventure Handbook, Tulsa was the home of Cyrus Avery, who was instrumental in establishing Route 66. Tulsa was historically a major oil city.

In the 1930s, Meadow Gold Diary erected a large rooftop sign on a low building on Eleventh Street (Route 66).  In 2004, the sign was saved and re-erected on a Route 66 commemorative brick base, now at Quaker Street. Nice work to save this handsome icon.

The Boston Avenue United Methodist Church is one of the most amazing examples of Art Deco architecture that I have seen outside of New York City. According to their tour web page,

It is considered to be one of the finest examples of ecclesiastical art deco architecture in the United States and has been designated by the Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark. It is also an international United Methodist Historic Site and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Like many Art Deco buildings, Boston Avenue United Methodist Church reveled in the use of various different building materials, so metal, glass, terra cotta, Indiana limestone and Minnesota granite can all be found. The exterior is decorated with numerous terra cotta sculptures by the Denver sculptor, Robert Garrison, who had been a student of Adah Robinson's in Oklahoma City. These sculptures include several groups of people at prayer representing Spiritual Life, Religious Education and Worship. In these groups again can be found the motif of two hands together upward in prayer. While the building is in many ways unique, the idea of the large, semi-circular main auditorium has an earlier precursor in another Methodist church, Louis Sullivan's St. Paul's Methodist Church, designed in 1910 and built, somewhat modified, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1914.

The building's straight, vertical lines suggest the church's reaching toward God, and the tower's four shards of glass are placed at angles to the four directions - receivers and reflectors of light. The downward-flowing lines in the terra cotta motif symbolize the outpouring of God's love and are echoed throughout the building. The tower is 255 feet high and fifteen floors. The first fourteen are offices, and the top floor is a small prayer chapel with space above for an electronic carillon.

11th Street (Route 66), Tulsa (Kodak BW400CN film, Olympus Trip 35 camera)

Route 66 signs will direct you through central Tulsa, although with traffic and other distractions, they can be a bit hard to follow. On the day I was in town, the temperature was blazing, but there was a brilliant clear sky. In the northern part of town, Route 66 follows Eleventh Street for several miles. This is now a typical nasty American strip, and there was not much Route 66 architecture. I hope the photograph above conveys the sense of summer heat.

Olympus Trip 35, Kodak BW400CN film, polarizer filter

8929 11th Street, Tulsa. Olympus Trip 35, Kodak BW400CN film, polarizer filter

We saw some old motels and car dealerships, but not as interesting pickings as I expected.

Oasis Motel, 9303 E 11th Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma

The Oasis Motel at 9303 East Eleventh Street has a Route 66 appearance. The sign is, I think, a modern one intended to resemble a classic Googie sign. Googie design elements developed in the 1950s as an offshoot of Streamline Moderne architecture. "This was achieved by using bold style choices, including large pylons with elevated signs, bold neon letters and circular pavilions."

Dear Readers, this ends my 2017 trip along Route 66. Some day, I will drive the section between Tulsa and Chicago. If you want to see my articles covering the Mother Road between Los Angeles and Tulsa, you can type "Route 66" in the search box or use a Google search:  Route 66 site:worldofdecay.blogspot.com .

En route to Tulsa, we passed through McGehee, Arkansas, another small town lost in time.

The four black and white photographs above are from Kodak BW400CN film taken with an Olympus Trip 35 camera, with a polarizing filter to darken the sky. I did not have the right size polarizer, so I simply held a 52mm polarizer over the Olympus' lens.