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This gorgeous Art Deco bar opened in the historic Oxford Hotel (c. 1890) the day after prohibition ended in 1933, and has changed very little since. Filled with neon lighting and decorative panels designed by Denver artist Alley Henson, it’s a must-stop in Denver for cocktails. The Oxford Hotel is a great place to stay in Denver for the historic ambiance, its convenient downtown location, the complimentary Grand Marnier in the lobby, and especially The Cruise Room.
The current issue of Preservation Magazine has a cover story on the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is chock full of Art Deco buildings. Unfortunately, many were demolished in the past 30 years but there are still plenty to be enjoyed, and many have been restored. Author Wayne Curtis (also author of the highly recommended book And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails) writes:
It may come as a surprise to learn that Tulsa is one of the nation’s premier centers of art deco architecture, putting it in the classy company of Miami Beach, New York, and Los Angeles. The style was hugely popular here from the outset and remained so through several evolutions—as the geometrically ornamented structures of the 1920s gave way to the simpler and more heroic public architecture of the Great Depression and then to the sleek streamline moderne of the later 1930s.
“The 1970s were a pretty dark decade,” says Lee Anne Zeigler, executive director of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, a nonprofit devoted to historic preservation. Recent satellite imagery, she says, shows that some 52 percent of downtown Tulsa has been conscripted into duty as parking lots.Zeigler estimates that demolition claimed about half of the city’s deco buildings. Among the losses: the jewelbox-like Security Federal Savings and Loan, remodeled in 1937 with black Vitrolite and geometric shapes, and razed for parking in 1999. Grand theaters—such as the Delman, the Will Rogers, and the Palace (the latter artfully redesigned in 1935 by Koberling with a subtle zigzag styling)—came tumbling down. Tulsa Art Deco, first published by the Junior League in 1980 and republished by the foundation in 2001, is pocked with editor’s notes that say “torn off” or “demolished.”
The neighborhood I live in, the South Shore area of Alameda, CA, has plenty of mid-century modern and googie architecture still standing, and even a little Polynesian Pop as well. The 1950s South Shore Shopping Center is presently being remodeled to look faux-Mediterranean, so the future of the rest of the mid-century buildings in the neighborhood is uncertain. I decided to take a walk on a recent sunny day and document as much of it as I could.
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