Early during the growth of Oklahoma City there was a trend across several states called the City Beautiful Movement. At the turn of the century in the 1900s, urban areas were exploring the benefits of keeping a clean city and investing in planning and design that incorporated green spaces.
Inspired by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, there was the thought that aesthetics of a city was important to those who lived there and that the city was “no longer a symbol of economic development and industrialization …,” according to the New York Preservation Archive Project.
The City Beautiful Movement endured longer in Oklahoma than in some states, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society’s “Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.”…