Search this site
Matching entries from BatesLine
McLean, Virginia, resident considers race for Oklahoma senate seat
Politico is reporting that former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating is considering running to fill the unexpired term of U. S. Sen. Tom Coburn, who is resigning at the end of 2014. Property and campaign contribution records indicate, and autobiographical blurbs confirm, that Keating is and has been a resident of...
Chamber-led cabal chokes off downtown development
This sort of thing never happens, right? Never, ever would a secretive group of private business leaders direct the redevelopment decisions of public agencies from behind the scenes. And if they did, well, we just have to trust that these business leaders know far more about urban development than the...
"Born Again": 1977 Oklahoma historic preservation documentary
A 1977 documentary on historic preservation in Oklahoma has been posted online at the I. M. Pei Project website. The half-hour film, entitled "Born Again: Historic Preservation in Oklahoma," is narrated by Norman architect Arn Henderson. It opens with a sequence of demolitions of beautiful and historic office blocks in...
Oklahoma ruins (and Arkansas too)
More linkage, less thinkage, until I get out from under the pile: Abandoned Oklahoma is a website devoted to photography of abandoned places around the state. Homes, industrial sites, parks, schools, churches. Sites include the Labadie Mansion in Copan (north of Bartlesville), the Santa Fe Depot in Cushing, the Page-Woodson...
Google Time Machine
Blair Humphreys has downloaded the latest version of Google Earth, 5.0, and reports a feature that will delight urban historian types: The ability to go back in time to earlier images. The coolest new feature of the program is that it allows you to search historical aerials. With Oklahoma City,...
Applying imagiNATIVE thinking
Last September, the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce won approval under that city's downtown design guidelines for a new headquarters building at 4th and Gaylord, where Gaylord jogs left to connect to Broadway. Approval was controversial, because of the suburban site plan -- the building sits back from the street,...
The megalomaniacal madness of urban renewal
Doug Loudenback has a post from a month or so ago featuring beautiful vintage postcards of Oklahoma City. Mixed into the pastel tinted images of Prairie Commercial, Sullivanesque, and Art Deco buildings was a fact that should make you gasp: [The Kingkade Hotel] survived until the 1960s-1970s Urban Renewal era...
Oklahoma City, the second time around
Once upon a time, there was a famous architect of Asian descent who produced a plan that radically altered the center of a major Oklahoma city. No, not Bing Thom and Tulsa, but I. M. Pei, whose plan to redevelop Oklahoma City resulted in the demolition of most of its...
Vintage downtown OKC
Oklahoma City's Downtown Guy links to Doug Loudenback's web collection of photos, postcards, and maps of downtown Oklahoma City from the beginnings in 1889 up to the beginning of urban renewal in the 1970s. Much of OKC's commercial district was razed at the recommendation of architect I. M. Pei (MIT-educated,...
Watery business
This evening the Council will once again consider the Mayor's reappointment of Jim Cameron and Lou Reynolds to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority, the quango that controls Tulsa's water. It's been amazing to see how much anger has been directed at the Council majority for refusing to approve the reappointment,...
Feed Subscription
If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to a feed of all future entries matching 'I. M. Pei'. [What is this?]
