Page Family Contributes to Tulsa Architecture

In 1907, my newlywed grandparents, the C.C. Coles moved into the Robinson Hotel while they were waiting for construction on their first house, a small bungalow, to be finished. Months later, my grandfather hired two men and a horse drawn wagon to move furnishings and belongings into their new home. A year later, the baby grand piano my grandfather had bought his bride (on the installment plan) arrived by train and was delivered to their new house by horse and wagon.

As Tulsa started to boom with help from the Glenn Pool and other oil strikes, moving people and their goods became an important business. In 1910, Page Storage and Van Lines was established as one of Tulsa’s first moving companies. Today, 111 years later, four generations of the Page family have owned and worked in this business. The iconic graphics on Page trucks are a part of Tulsa history.

In 1927, 17 years later, Roy Page, with an optimism common in the 1920’s, decided to build a headquarters/storage building. He went to one of Tulsa’s leading architectural firms, Rush Endicott and Rush whose Tulsa Club/Chamber of Commerce Building was currently under construction. His instructions to them were to design an eye catching cutting edge building. With the help of their staff designer, Bruce Goff, they delivered

The site selected was the south side of 13th Street at 1301 S. Elgin. This allowed furniture to be loaded directly from the adjacent railroad tracks to a dock and from there to a freight elevator at the rear of the structure. The building was five stories and fitted out with art deco bronze and glass light fixtures and operable steel awning windows for natural ventilation. The interior included specialized storage for valuables: a large cold storage room for furs (said to be the largest in the Southwest), a silver vault, a large rug vault and safes for jewelry. Part of the ground floor was reserved for pianos. The entire concrete frame structure was designed for heavy loads. Flaring interior column capitals in a mushroom shape eliminated the need for intermediate beams by shortening spans.
The outer edge of the floor slabs and perimeter columns were exposed to view emphasizing the structure and providing a decorative effect. The exterior pinkish bricks were wire cut and hung on the structural frame with no attempt to hide what held the brick.

At the exterior, two vertical pylons of Bedford Limestone framed and emphasized the main entrance. Although initially resented by the adjacent residents, many came to admire the building and later became good customers.
During World War II, Tulsa was considered a significant enemy target by many because of the location of the war plane manufacturer, McDonald-Douglas, and its related pilot training school and because of oil production centered in Tulsa. Thomas Gilcrease moved his western art collection to the Page Building for safe keeping. The collection remained there until the end of the war in 1945. One wonders where the new temporary storage place will be when the collection is moved again due to the museum rebuilding project.

In 1977, the historic Page Building was demolished to make way for the Broken Arrow Expressway. Despite the efforts and resistance of the Page family, imminent domain prevailed. What government wants; it gets.
An amazing coincidence followed. The Pages found a suitable replacement building which was also designed by Bruce Goff. Located at 2036 E. 11th Street, it was a 1928 product of Rush Endicott and Rush Architecture who were involved in the building of the Boston Avenue Church at the same time.

In the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s, residential washing appliances were very primitive. Many chose to have their laundry picked up and delivered by a commercial company. The Guaranty Laundry Building worked well for adaptive reuse as a Page Building replacement.

This five-story building, which when built, was considered a low-cost industrial structure, has an exterior which is organized horizontally with long bands of steel awning windows with projecting sills and lintels between strips of buff brick. Streamlining of the northwest corner was lost when an art deco cornice was deleted during construction. Originally the main entrance became a focal point by interrupting the exterior patterning. The doorway was set off by diagonal mullions and flanking vertical bands of diamonds which extended to the top strip of windows. Sadly, the entrance has been remodeled in years since and the diagonals eliminated. A good picture of the original entrance can be found on page 77 of the Tulsa Art Deco book published by the Junior League of Tulsa.