ABOUT/Downtown Tulsa History

Historical Walking Tour Map [pdf]

The historical Central Business District of Tulsa offers a meaningful account of the downtown's early years and the opulence and wealth of the oil barons of the '20s. Their infatuation with Art Deco produced some of the finest examples anywhere of Zigzag skyscrapers, the Streamline style of the '30s and the Classical style of the Great Depression and the New Deal.

Tulsa developers and builders have maintained many of these architectural treasures through effective management and often through creative adaptive reuse of buildings which might otherwise have outlived their usefulness. Newer structures now dominate Tulsa's skyline, including the 52-story Bank of Oklahoma Tower designed by Minoru Yamasaki.