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| Inside the Oklahoma state building: art. |
No one's really seen to keep it up. The tar is cracking in places. And sometimes it just ends. I was flying down one portion in Texas when all of a sudden the tarmac ended and I was rumbling across white chalky gravel, kicking up a huge cloud, stones rattling underneath. When I couldn't see where the road picked up again and so backed up and retraced the 8 miles to get back on the interstate.
Sometimes, thinking you're about to go off the steady truck laden interstate and enter a rambling time vortex of hot rods, you find yourself on a cracking blacktop less than a 100 yards from the interstate. You can wind up spotting the ABF truck that cut you off 5 miles ago or pace alongside the same red Jeep Cherokee, this time with prairie grass between you. Other times you suddenly veer off south rather than bulldoze through a looming hill and then you are in the dusty backroads of Route 66. Cracked motel windows, empty two tank filling stations, roadside restaraunts and tire repair shops now weathered, pealing and forsaken. A glance into a yellowing diner window will reveal a scene that looks like everyone suddenly evacuated because someone yelled Fire! and never came back.
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The architect of Oklahoma's state capital was Solomon Andrew Layton, who not only designed the Oklahoma state capital, but the governor's mansion, several of the first buildings at the University of Oklahoma, the county courthouse, high schools, the Oklahoma Gas and Electric
building and other corporate structures, hotels, department stores, and community buildings (the Shriner hall, civic auditorium, etc).
Oklahoma was originally intended to be a place to store all the Natives who were still wandering from agency to agency at the whims of local and federal politicians, settlers and the army. There was even a few scattered legislative attempts to make it an all-Native state, going so far as finding a name for it - Sequoyah - named, unironically, for the Cherokee chief was defeated and whose people who lived in Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida were forced under gunpoint to walk to Oklahoma. Needless to say the state never materialized, mainly because as eastern Native tribes were herded into Oklahoma but the 10s of thousands, white settlers were running in during the famous give-it-away land grabs of the 1880s. Sequoyah does get a statue, though, prominently placed in from of the capital.
I mention this because by the time there were enough white men in Oklahoma and when it dawned on some of them that the oil in Texas also flowed in Oklahoma, statehood was found necessary, though there wasn't much infrastructure let alone cities to build a state around. Sensing opportunities, Solomon Andrew Lloyd, born in Iowa, came down here during the land rush. And it was true. As if he and his firm were the only architects in the entire area, he managed to build just about everything that could be called Oklahoman. They are handsome, classical, occassionally beaux arts, very much of their time. The gorgeous dome was supposed to be built with the rest of the building, but no one got around to it until 2002.
With nothing but open space, the Oklahoma state capital is more like an enormous, Ayn Randian campus, with each governmental department awarded its own building. It's a huge complex with freshly cut grass and a looping roadway that connects them all. And with great pride, two oil derricks stand in front and behind the state building.
More on Lloyd:
The Oklahoma Historical Society's website has more interesting stuff in it than you'd ever imagine: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/L/LA036.html
http://www.64knights.com/components/history_lessons.htm
More art in the Oklahoma state building.
The architect of Oklahoma's state capital was Solomon Andrew Layton, who not only designed the Oklahoma state capital, but the governor's mansion, several of the first buildings at the University of Oklahoma, the county courthouse, high schools, the Oklahoma Gas and Electric
building and other corporate structures, hotels, department stores, and community buildings (the Shriner hall, civic auditorium, etc).
Oklahoma was originally intended to be a place to store all the Natives who were still wandering from agency to agency at the whims of local and federal politicians, settlers and the army. There was even a few scattered legislative attempts to make it an all-Native state, going so far as finding a name for it - Sequoyah - named, unironically, for the Cherokee chief was defeated and whose people who lived in Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida were forced under gunpoint to walk to Oklahoma. Needless to say the state never materialized, mainly because as eastern Native tribes were herded into Oklahoma but the 10s of thousands, white settlers were running in during the famous give-it-away land grabs of the 1880s. Sequoyah does get a statue, though, prominently placed in from of the capital.I mention this because by the time there were enough white men in Oklahoma and when it dawned on some of them that the oil in Texas also flowed in Oklahoma, statehood was found necessary, though there wasn't much infrastructure let alone cities to build a state around. Sensing opportunities, Solomon Andrew Lloyd, born in Iowa, came down here during the land rush. And it was true. As if he and his firm were the only architects in the entire area, he managed to build just about everything that could be called Oklahoman. They are handsome, classical, occassionally beaux arts, very much of their time. The gorgeous dome was supposed to be built with the rest of the building, but no one got around to it until 2002.
More on Lloyd:
The Oklahoma Historical Society's website has more interesting stuff in it than you'd ever imagine: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/L/LA036.html
http://www.64knights.com/components/history_lessons.htm
...
Oh and, for your insatiable Route 66 curiosity, here's a tidbit from Wikipedia:
In 1927, Oklahoma businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the "Father of Route 66", began a campaign to create Route 66. Using an existing stretch of highway from Amarillo, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma to form the original portion of Highway 66, Avery spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to oversee the planning of Route 66, based in his hometown of Tulsa.[54]
In 1927, Oklahoma businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the "Father of Route 66", began a campaign to create Route 66. Using an existing stretch of highway from Amarillo, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma to form the original portion of Highway 66, Avery spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to oversee the planning of Route 66, based in his hometown of Tulsa.[54]
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More art in the Oklahoma state building.
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| Native women learning the complexities of western dance. |
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| Jim Thorpe |
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| From the small but interesting state art gallery on the ground floor. |
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