A Smartass Guide to Tulsa Architecture #5

Today's focus: The BOK Center (also known as "Turn on Denver, you can't miss it.")

Featuring seating for 19,199 (because 19,200 would be a little too indulgent), the BOK Center opened on August 30th, 2008 with performances from Garth Brooks and Hanson. They're local acts that made it big at one time, folks. It's not like we blew all the money on construction and then decided to hire the same acts as the State Fair. Ahem...

Tulsa commissioned famed architect Cesar Pelli to design the arena. He incorporated elements of design themes indicative of Tulsa, drawing on Art Deco, Native American and contemporary styles... Mostly on the inside. The outside, on the other hand, looks like a cinnamon roll made out of duct tape. Which is fitting, given Tulsans' affinity for both baked goods and MacGuyver-like repair projects.

It's blight on downtown's skyline and often frustrating lack of parking aside, the benefit of the arena has outweighed it's flaws. From a business perspective, it has opened the door for more new businesses downtown, including new restaurants, bars and much more creative stories from bums asking you for spare change. It has also helped out many Tulsans in finally figuring out just where the hell those arena football games take place.

Also, it has raised the level of pride in the city. Finally, we can boast that Springsteen, U2, the Eagles, and other big name acts have been in Tulsa without the story involving their tour busses breaking down.

A Smartass Guide to Tulsa Architecture #4

Today's focus: The Oral Roberts University Campus (also known as Six Flags Over Jesus)

Tulsa is a college town. However, it is also a Christian college town. This usually means that we have just as many parties, just less booze and most of them are over by about 10:30. I used to live close to the University of Tulsa, where things are a bit wilder, and several late night keggers in my neighborhood made me pine for the days I lived next to Oral Roberts University.

In the early Sixties, Oral Roberts claimed that God had come to him and told him, ""Build Me a University. Build it on My Authority, and on the Holy Spirit..." Looking at the campus' bizarre architecture, one would imagine God also told him, "Give a five year old a gold crayon and have him design it for you."

I imagine the inside of the buildings as being very functional for the purposes of a top ranked university. But the outside of the buildings? It's as if the architects went a little mad with their protractors and said, "Hey, let's use every conceivable angle except for level!"

Seriously, folks, if you stand at the right spot at sunset, the silhouette of all of the campus buildings looks like a heart monitor when the patient gets shocked with those paddles. CLEAR!

New buildings have been added over the years to accommodate the growth of the school, and the overall look of the school has been maintained throughout. They say that it's to keep the look consistent, but I suspect they're still holding out hope that someone will use the campus to remake Logan's Run, shot for shot.

The campus is also home to the Praying Hands, a legendary Tulsa landmark. There's an old joke that the hands used to be wide open until the day someone tossed up a nickel, at which point the hands closed to catch it.

A Smartass Guide to Tulsa Architecture #3

Today's focus: One Technology Center (also known as Tulsa City Hall and The Dirty Ice Cube)

Williams Companies (whose founder was also responsible for our last architecture feature, the BOK tower) built this structure. Like the BOK Tower, which is right next door, it was a stupid idea from the start. Mainly because it is a glass building in a city in the middle of Tornado Alley, What could possibly go wrong? Well...

About a month after this building was open for business, a large gust of wind blew through downtown Tulsa, blowing out whole rows of windows on the northeast corner and sending shards of glass crashing to the street below. The windows were fixed and reinforced, no doubt by the second lowest bidder this time around.

Fortunately, no cars were on the street below when the glass fell. Otherwise, it would've prompted several phone calls to insurance companies starting with the words, "OK, bear with me here, 'cause this is gonna sound reallllly strange..."

Now, this building houses Tulsa's City Hall. Because nothing says I have a dead-end job with the city quite like a building that looks like it was designed by the Borg Collective.

A Smartass Guide to Tulsa Architecture #2

Today's focus: BOK Tower (formerly known as the One Williams Center)

Before becoming an enduring symbol of the tragedy of 9/11, The World Trade Center towers were known in the architecture community as the building so bland, they made it twice. No frills, no pizazz, just the plainest skyscraper ever built... And then, they decided to make it a matching set.

Tulsa, with its rich history of Art Deco in its architecture, inexplicably decided in 1975 to model this building after the aesthetic equivalent of a full-body yawn. They even went so far as to hire the same architect. It was originally planned as four 1/4 scale replicas of the WTC towers, but after city planners pointed out how stupid of an idea that would be, the design was changed to one tower with a base 1/4 the size of the WTC, and 1/2 its height. It's this little bit of trivia that made me flash back to the math section of my SATs.

It should be noted that this building is the tallest skyscraper in the "Plains States". Irony brews strong in T-Town.

Another note of interest: on September 11, 2001, the BOK Tower was evacuated. You know, in case a small commuter jet was hijacked.

A Smartass Guide to Tulsa Architecture #1

Today's focus: The City of Faith Towers (now known as the Cityplex towers)

Oral Roberts commissioned the design of these towers to correlate with biblical descriptions of Noah's Ark. It apparently was difficult to find an architect that didn't immediately say, "What the hell is a cubit?"

The tallest tower is the length of the Ark, the second tower is the width, and the shortest tower is the height. Ironically, the building is not built to handle a flood.