Midtown 1969 vs 2013

[Pete]

This is fun to look at...

The top image is from 1969 and surprisingly, there is still a lot of density: few vacant lots, parking lots full.

Now compare to the present and even with the amazing amount of new construction and renovation, there are still big gaps everywhere. That is changing, and rapidly, but it's interested to see that most of the clearing happened long after the big urban renewal projects in the CBD.

[HangryHippo]

Pretty remarkable.

[Pete]

I would have thought a lot of that clearing started happening in the 60's, but obviously not.

It does underscore how bad things were in central OKC up through the early 90's because most the small structures in that 1969 picture were simply torn down because they had become abandoned and relatively worthless, while only a couple of decades previous had they all been full and thriving.

People talk about how bad urban renewal was for the CBD, but all around it natural market forces exerted a much bigger toll on the building stock.

[pedmond]

I worked in Midtown from 1970-1981 and it was a thriving part of the city during most of the seventies. Homes, office buildings and shopping centers started to be built further away from Midtown and the CBD and overtime Midtown declined until just within the last decade or so.

I used to eat lunch nearly everyday in the Midtown area(Smokehouse BBQ, Blvd cafeteria, Sieber Hotel, Delgados or get a blue-plate special at a hole in the wall on 9th and Robinson). All the doctors, car dealers, hardware stores, discount stores and gas stations I used were in the Midtown area. I've got a lot of fond memories of Midtown and it's exciting to see it revitalized.

[Pete]

I know by the mid-80's Midtown was a wasteland.

Shows how fast it dropped off.

[musg8411]

Looks like most the buildings that were razed were houses and most the commercial structures managed to be saved. It is interesting too see all the vacant lots and the trees that disappeared in the process.

[Pete]

Yes, and most places where there had been houses will now be multi-family or commercial.

There are really only a few blocks of homes left in all of Midtown.

[mkjeeves]

I recognize that oil bust. <shudder>

[pedmond]

I know by the mid-80's Midtown was a wasteland.

Shows how fast it dropped off.

As we both experienced, all of OKC was a wasteland by the mid-80's. and pretty much stayed that way until the early nineties. As I recall, Midtown started noticeably slipping in the late seventies after Mercy moved out and office building starting popping up outside the center of town. Then the oil bust hit in the early eighties and all of OKC went into a deep freeze.