Abandoned Tulsa

In reply to my introduction to the historical photo blog Lost Tulsa, reader Adam Kupetsky writes to let me know of a photo blog focusing on abandoned and soon-to-be-demolished buildings in Tulsa.

The Abandoned Tulsa Project is the work of Alison Zarrow. There are photos of the Tulsa Auto Hotel (a 1920s multilevel garage, which is being demolished by Trinity Episcopal Church for -- you guessed it -- a surface parking lot), Lowell Elementary School on North Peoria, the Camelot Inn, the Drexel Building (where the race riot began), the original Temple Israel synagogue near 14th and Cheyenne, the recently-closed Rose Bowl, and Oral Roberts' first building -- the Abundant Life Building near 16th and Boulder. For most of the buildings there are photos of the interior as well as the exterior.

(The demolition of the Tulsa Auto Hotel appears to be part of an ongoing project to demolish all historic Tulsa buildings prior to the 2008 National Preservation Conference.)

It's great that there are two bloggers trying to document some of the fascinating pieces of Tulsa's built environment while it's still here to be seen.

I should mention, because I haven't for a while, Tulsa TV Memories, where webmaster Mike Ransom collects tidbits of Tulsa's pop culture via the site's guestbook (where you'll find comments from Tulsa broadcast media veterans like Lee Woodward and Carl "Uncle Zeb" Bartholomew), then organizes them by topic.

The more the merrier -- there's plenty of undocumented Tulsa history to go around.