TULSA DECO, & Historic Photos & Ephemera
Page 10 (Postcards-Individual Buildings)
PHOTOS & POSTCARDS - ADVERTISEMENTS - MAGAZINES - DOCUMENTS
Above: 320 South Boston Building, also known as the First National Bank Buidling Tulsa, OK.
Above: Lobby, First National Bank Building, Tulsa
Above: Lobby, First National Bank Building, Tulsa. There were several phases where the building was added on to and some features remodeled. During one remodel, the early ceilings in the lobby were redone with this "grottesca" design. One fun point of interest is to note how the winged mermaid figures sport bob haircuts that were popular during the jazz age!
Above: This photograph captures the 1927 excavation phase for the landmark 22-story expansion of the Exchange National Bank Building.
The caption on the back of our photo gives us the perfect narrative of how the famous "Oil Bank of America" moniker was cemented in Tulsa folklore.
DETAILS
* The 22-Story Skyscraper: The Exchange National Bank initially constructed a 10-story headquarters at 3rd and Boston in 1917. In 1927, they broke ground on a massive, block-wide 22-story addition to support Tulsa’s skyrocketing oil wealth. Our photo shows this second phase of construction.
* The 48-Foot Depth & The Caissons: Standard downtown skyscrapers had to be anchored deep into bedrock to carry the immense weight of steel frames. The caption notes that engineers were drilling holes for massive concrete-filled caissons—structural pillars anchored deep into the subterranean earth—when they unexpectedly hit the shale oil pocket.
* "Nine Sticks of Dynamite" While folklore often states they simply "stumbled" onto the seep, our "press slug” proves that workers used blasting explosives to shatter the tough underground shale layer to make room for a caisson column, accidentally fracturing an active oil-bearing fissure just 48 feet beneath the bustling city streets!
When news broke on May 12, 1927, local Tulsa newspapers treated the oil strike inside the bank vault excavation with a mixture of raucous humor, municipal pride, and classic oil-boom theatricality.
Local journalists immediately jumped on the irony of the situation. Tulsa was already billing itself globally as "The Oil Capital of the World," so finding an actual petroleum seep right underneath its premier banking house was seen as the ultimate proof of the city’s destiny.
* Headlines read along the lines of: "Exchange National Bank Decides to Cut Out the Middleman!"
* Editorial columns joked that while other banks had to buy or lease oil fields to generate wealth, the Exchange National Bank simply had to drill into their own basement to fund their new 22-story skyscraper.
The local reporters went deep into the trenches to get the colorful details that national wire summaries trimmed out:
* The "Gusher" in a Pit: Local reports described a heavy, dark petroleum slick rapidly bubbling up out of the freshly blasted rock. It pooled at the bottom of the caisson hole, forcing foundation workers to scramble up ladders to avoid getting drenched in raw crude.
*The Chemical Test: The papers gleefully reported that bank executives—including oil tycoons like Harry Sinclair, who had originally helped organize the bank—marched right out of their offices, stood at the edge of the muddy pit, and watched engineers analyze the liquid to confirm it was genuine, high-grade mid-continent crude oil.
"The Oil Bank of America" is Born
The local coverage permanently solidified the bank’s marketing strategy. Almost overnight, the bank began running its own local newspaper advertisements proudly utilizing the phrase "The Oil Bank of America" as their permanent corporate tagline. They explicitly told depositors that their money was being held in a vault that sat directly on top of the very liquid that built the city.
By the time the 22 story tower was completed two years later, the "pit where they dynamited the shale and found oil" was completely sealed under millions of pounds of steel and concrete, living on only through local newspaper print archives and the rare press photograph you see here.
Above:
On the back of our photo is this "slug" (newspaper slang for the information written or pasted on the back of a photo)
That alphanumeric code—2084X907—is a neat find. It is a vintage press photo inventory control number used internally by Underwood & Underwood to track their master glass plate negatives or original silver gelatin prints.
The format breaks down exactly how large photo syndicates managed massive, fast-moving news catalogs in the early 20th century:
* The "2084X" Prefix: This is the master assignment or batch sequence number. The "X" was typically added by photo agencies to denote an out-of-town or regional assignment (meaning the photo was captured by an Underwood & Underwood stringer or regional field photographer dispatched to Oklahoma, rather than their staff photographers based in New York or Washington D.C.).
* The "907" Suffix: This indicates the specific frame or sequence number within that assignment batch. It means the photographer took a large series of shots chronicling the oil capital's expansion, and our print is frame number 907.
* "Excavation.": This served as the primary file category or telegraphic shorthand. News desk clerks used it to manually file the print in physical layout cabinets under "E" for Excavation, alongside major construction projects, rather than general geographical files.
Above: High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Atlas Life Building Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Hotel Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Tulsa Club Building , Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Bliss Building, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Sinclair Building, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Philcade Building, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above & Below:
The ceilings in the Philcade lobby were originally done in an ancient, Italian Renaissance "grottesca" style. Waite Phillips upon seeing the finished ceiling did not like this "old" style and had the ceilings redone in the more modern "Art Deco" style. Yes, that is all real gold leaf, overlaid with colored glazes to create the shimmering, Art Deco designs.
Above: Alvin Hotel, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Hillcrest Medical Hospital. Postcard was postmarked Dec 2 1949. Orignally known as Morningside Hospital, the building is near 16th and Utica in Tulsa, and was constructed in 1928. The building still stands but is mostly hidden amongst new additions to the hospital complex.
Above: Gallais Building, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Above: Bradford Hotel, "formerly the Ketchum Hotel" Tulsa, Oklahoma
