Audioguides Tulsa

Tulsa's Art Deco downtown is one of the finest collections of that style outside Miami or New York: the Philtower Building, the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church (1929, designed largely by a Sunday School teacher named Adah Robinson), the Union Depot, the Mayo Hotel -- all built in the 1920s and 1930s when oil money was flowing faster than anyone knew what to do with. The discovery of oil in the nearby Glenn Pool field in 1905 and at Glenpool again in 1905 made fortunes in months that had previously taken generations, and the buildings these fortunes built have aged into genuine architectural treasures.

Greenwood Avenue north of downtown was once known as 'Black Wall Street' -- a prosperous African American commercial district of hotels, law offices, banks, and theaters built by Tulsa's Black community in the early 20th century.

In May 1921, white mobs attacked and burned Greenwood to the ground over 18 hours, killing an estimated 300 people in one of the worst racial violence events in American history. The Greenwood Cultural Center and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Memorial now stand where the district once was, and the story was suppressed for decades before receiving the acknowledgment it deserves.