Oklahoma City Credit Bureau

[Jamesbaub]

Anyone know if the Oklahoma City Credit Bureau was ever located at NW 23rd & Portland, on the northwest corner? They were downtown for a long time and then moved, I thought, to this location…

[Brett]

I always thought the NW corner of Portland & NW 23rd St was an ATT / SW Belll substation but I could be wrong.

[Pete]

They are now located on the NW corner of NW 23rd and Villa.

[Mississippi Blues]

I always thought the NW corner of Portland & NW 23rd St was an ATT / SW Belll substation but I could be wrong.

It is as far as I know. I’ve stopped paying attention to it because I live a few blocks from the intersection, so I pass it almost daily and might’ve missed something. The building has always intrigued me though because it’s clearly an old building and it’s always made me curious what the area looked like many moons ago.

[mugofbeer]

Old AT&T building on 23rd and Portland looks pretty much as it did 60 years ago.

OKC Credit bureau building near 23rd and Villa was the old Villa Theater. Went to many movies there as a kid.

[Dob Hooligan]

my memory is kinda fuzzy, but there might be a building next door west of SW Bell building that is what OP is referring to? I worked a half mile west of there from 1978-82 and recall that might have been the credit bureau there/then.

The Sw Bell building was built as a switching station. Best I can recall from what my dad told me the phone system back before the transistor age used mechanical hard switches to route calls. So when you dialed a number it went to a switching station that decoded the numbers and switched it to a different exchange.

[Pete]

Looking at aerials and the Criss-Cross directory from 1969, the phone company facility was on the NW corner of NW 23rd & Portland.

Then, moving westward along the north side of 23rd, there was a beauty shop, dentist and a Kinney Shoe Store. After that it was all homes.

[mugofbeer]

Kinney Shoes was on the south side of 23rd.

[Irishman23]

Perhaps the Oklahoma Credit Bureau occupies part of the old Villa theatre near the intersection of 23rd and Villa but a client of ours called Credit Service Inc. has been in that building for decades.

[mugofbeer]

Perhaps the Oklahoma Credit Bureau occupies part of the old Villa theatre near the intersection of 23rd and Villa but a client of ours called Credit Service Inc. has been in that building for decades.

This is correct. The Villa closed decades ago and the building renovated.

[okix]

The TransUnion Credit Bureau was located on 23rd & villa. It compromised of the entire first floor and upstairs was used by Ron Brown of CSI. I spent a lot of my youth playing in the hallways of that office due to my father being VP there and Vic Petito was President. I was sad to see that they tore down the old building to put in a shopping center. Just a part of moving forward and progressing I suppose.