Thanks to the popularity of HBO’s The Gilded Age, everyone suddenly remembers that America had a phase where money was loud, buildings were gaudy, and the rich didn’t just flaunt their wealth… they built empires with it.
While the show focuses on New York’s elite, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was quietly doing the same thing without the T-Town high society. Built with oil instead of railroads, and opting for skyscrapers instead of sprawling mansions.
Who would have thought?
Tulsa was once the self-proclaimed “Oil Capital of the World.” A place where oil barons commissioned marble-clad banks and hand-laid mosaic lobbies because, well, they could.
The city’s downtown is still dripping in Art Deco elegance, thanks to a building boom in the 1920s and ’30s funded by black gold and Texas tea…