Capitol Hill Area

[oudirtypop]

What can people tell me about Capitol Hill area. Like 25th and robinson. I have rarely driven through there, but when i do, its such a cool old part of OKC. There is a Coney Island restaurant that looks pretty good, and also the OK Opry. The buildings were neat and the business's were unique. The odd part is that this is a predominantly latino area, so it stuck out quite a bit.

Anybody know the history behind such a place?

[BailJumper]

Pretty crime ridden area from what I know about it. I rarely go past 25th on Robinson from Downtown, and then only because we have found an excellent Mexican Restaurant on 24th to the West of Rob. I read about it in the Gazette and took some friends. We've been back several times. The beef soft tacos are unbelievable and only $1.50 each. In the summer they have fresh cantalope and other juices by the glass!

[mranderson]

Capitol Hill, especially Commerce, use to be a very nice shopping and office district. However, just like has already been said, it is now a dump.

Believe me. That hurts because my dad was one of the well known business leaders in that area until the late 70's when he moved his company to what is now called the Western Tower building on S. Western.

[Pete]

Here's a good summary from Downtown Guy's blog:

Capitol Hill: Where is Capitol Hill?

And here's a bunch of photos taken recently:

Capitol Hill - a photoset on Flickr

[metro]

yeah, you can read more on downtown guys blog as someone said or do a search for Capitol Hill on this website as their has been numerous discussions and posts on it. I'm sure you'll find them interesting.

[dismayed]

Well, that website seems to be lacking a lot of information.

Let's go back to the Land Run of 1889. Oklahoma Station was a stop along the Santa Fe railroad that went right through the middle of Indian Territory. When the unassigned lands were offered up for settlement, Oklahoma Station quickly became Oklahoma City, IT. Just to the south of what is now downtown/Bricktown what was really a totally separate city began to emerge, South Oklahoma. If you've ever wondered why north and south OKC seem like different cities at times, this is why. At some point around statehood or a bit before, South Oklahoma officially became part of Oklahoma City. The first part of and fastest-growing section of that city was called Capitol Hill. It received the name because of a grass-roots movement to establish the state capitol there on top of a big hill. After statehood, when the state capitol was "stolen away" from Guthrie, the capitol was moved to where it is currently located in North OKC. There are many theories on why this happened, my favorite one (and probably the most accurate) has to do with some back-room dealings of the big builders of that day, Putnam and Nichols, and possibly even the original Gaylords, who were creating the areas first really up-scale housing at the time not far away. A master plan for Heritage Hills and the surrounding neighborhoods emerged, and as you know 23rd kind of bisects that part of town and at the end of 23rd is the state capitol. Unfortunately many years later I-235 was built right down the middle of this and it kind of destroyed the architect's original vision for the area. Anyway, I digress.

In "South Oklahoma," in addition to being a hopeful for the center of state government, Capitol Hill was a flourishing city unto its own. At one point up until the 1970's there were lots of big buildings on what was kind of its own main street, Commerce I believe, that included such things as a John A. Brown's department store, Howard Brother's Florists, various big banks, a meat market, restaurants, and other shopping. Up until a certain point in time you could take a railed streetcar from Capitol Hill to downtown, just as you could take a streetcar from Heritage Hills to downtown. The whole area was linked together. Also, this may blow your mind, but downtown in the old days had a ballpark and a canal. The ballpark was destroyed in a tornado outbreak and the canal was destroyed in a severe flood not long after statehood. Both were basically plowed over. It's interesting that today in a lot of ways we are just simply restoring the original ideas of our founding fathers.

Somewhere around the 60's or 70's, the Gaylord family bought a huge tract of land on the south side of town and had retail developed on it. The area is today known as Crossroads Mall. Probably with the combination of that mall being built, and with the migration of more and more people further to the outskirts of town, eventually all of this caught up with Capitol Hill and it slowly turned into a ghost town.

Probably a decade went by with no development whatsoever in the area, and the place started turning into a real eyesore. But then, almost as was done 100 years earlier, immigrants began moving in and taking advantage of the cheap housing in the area. As time passed, Latino-based businesses began opening up shop and a rebirth of Capitol Hill began emerging. Not long after that, starting in the late 90's and continuing today, road, landscaping, and antique-style lighting improvements began taking place.

I have some vague memories of the area as a boy, when both my Dad and my Grandpa worked for different companies in the area. A lot of this history I have heard from family members, and also I remember a lot of this from books they have on display in the Downtown Library collection.

I'm happy to report that last summer, after leaving Bricktown one afternoon after a lunch date, I decided to drive through Capitol Hill on a whim and show my girlfriend where my family had worked all those years ago. As it turned out, Commerce was blocked off at both ends and an antique/classics car show was going on. We parked and got out and looked around. The area was very pretty, the improvements have really helped. We felt very safe -- several police were "walking the beat" in the area. I was surprised to see that most of the storefronts on Commerce were actually occupied. And I was happy to see that this little old diner that has been there probably 60 years was still there.

I think the area has a lot of potential. I'd be happy to see it emerge as a Latino business district similar to "The Marketplace" in San Antonio. I've suggested this to the city planners on the MAPS 3 website.

[dismayed]

One more thing... my great-grandmother came to Oklahoma in a covered wagon from back east. They chose to settle in the Capitol Hill area because they headed for "a big church" that they could see for miles and miles away on the plains. They decided to park the wagon once they reached the church. As I understand it, that church today is known as Mount Saint Mary's.

[oudirtypop]

Thats great information dismayed.

[dismayed]

Thanks. It's sad that a lot of this really cool information is being lost as time goes by.

[hipsterdoofus]

I used to work in the Capitol Hill Area - the Coney Island is pretty good. I HIGHLY recommend eating at Jamie's Grill on the Hill on Commerce between Hudson & Harvey. Great food, great prices - but it is always pretty busy around lunchtime!

[oudirtypop]

we will have to try that next time we are down there. thanks for the heads up.

[metro]

Don't know if anyone caught it but there is an excellent article in the current issue of the Gazette called Latino Renaissance. It talks about the renaissance and all that's happening in Capitol Hill. I encourage you to pick up a copy before the new one comes out this Wednesday. Here is a link to a brief teaser online. I'm not sure why the Gazette doesn't post the full articles online nor do they let you copy and paste. It's a several page long article in the printed version.

Article | OKG News.com

[HOT ROD]

Yeah ^^, I checked out Capital Hill when I was in OKC in April and thought it looked great. You guys are lucky to actually have a Hispanic Downtown!!!

I would not call Capital Hill a dump - more like a growing Hispanic oriented center of commerce (hence Hispanic Downtown). Very few cities have this - OKC should be proud and celebrate (not condemn).