The items below are contained in this March 2008 blog article at
Doug Dawgz Blog: Myriad Gardens and/or in this Okc Postcards article,
Doug Dawgz Blog: OKC Postcards ...
When officially announced in 1972, a June 2
Oklahoma Journal ran this article:
$17 Million People's Park Plan Unveiled
Perhaps the most imaginative dream for a people's park in the heart of a large American city was unveiled Thursday as the plan for Oklahoma City's Myriad Gardens. Local officials say they hope to reach for the stars and have most of the park finished by 1976.
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Everything from a children's zoo to an ice skating pond and including a 30 foot deep canyon, a two-acre lake, botanical gardens, a sports hall of fame, a classic car museum, arts and science centers, a planetarium, a cluster of restaurants and movie houses, museums and a new Main Library for Oklahoma City is included in the Gardens plan.
* * *
A Phase Two plan for the gardens will extend east to Shartel and triple the park's size to a total of 33 acres.
The image which accompanied the article showed the Gardens as looking like this:
Click on images below for larger
As it appeared in
Oklahoma Journal
Of course, it didn't turn out that way. The money wasn't there to do it. But, as you can see, both the Biltmore Hotel (shown as Hotel Oklahoma) and the Tivoli Inn (originally, the Oklahoma Club but renamed by a new owner to match what was earlier thought to become the garden's original name, the Oklahoma Tivoli Gardens) were marked for preservation.
Among other things that didn't happen with the plan, note the location of a new downtown library in the southwest corner.
The Oklahoma Club/Tivoli Inn (if preserved, better it would be were it shorn of its false exterior that the new owner put on it) was also a building worth preserving, in my opinion.
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