On your left, look up for a tall, pale tower with tight rows of square windows, rising clean and straight against the sky like a giant office-file cabinet that got promoted.
This is First Place Tower, sitting at 15 East Fifth and facing Boston Avenue, even though it shares an address with the neighboring First National Bank Building. The building’s got layers, literally: the shorter midrise portion came first in 1949, twenty stories of postwar confidence, and then Tulsa went bigger. In 1973, the main tower was finished and shot up to forty-one floors, topping out around 516 feet. For downtown, that’s serious height-third tallest in Tulsa, and fourth in the whole state-basically the kind of building that makes your neck do overtime.
Ownership has shifted, too. From 2006 to 2017, it belonged to Maurice Kanbar, a California entrepreneur with a sizable downtown portfolio, before it moved to his operating partner, Stuart Price.
Ready for Mid-Continent Tower? Just head northwest for 0 minutes.
