Historic Hotels & Inns in Oklahoma

Ways in

Themes in Oklahoma

Oklahoma City’s early towers

W.B. Skirvin, who made his money in oil exploration in Texas and Oklahoma, opened his hotel in 1911 across from the Rock Island depot; it is now The Skirvin Hilton. A year earlier, Charles F. Colcord completed the Colcord Building, called the city’s first skyscraper and now the Colcord Hotel. The First National Bank and Trust Company’s Art Deco tower followed in 1931 and reopened in 2022 as The National. Of the six stays in Oklahoma City, only the Skirvin was built as a hotel.

Tulsa’s Deco District and the history of Greenwood

In the 1920s oil money paid for downtown Tulsa’s Art Deco buildings, and four of our stays sit inside the Oil Capital Historic District, among them The Mayo Hotel of 1925, a segregated hotel, and the 1927 Tulsa Club Hotel. Greenwood, the Black business district popularly known as Black Wall Street, was looted and burned by thousands of armed whites in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. No historic hotel survives to stay in on Greenwood, and none of our Tulsa stays has a Greenwood link. Greenwood Rising, opened in 2021, tells the story.

Route 66

Route 66 moved onto Tulsa’s 11th Street in 1932, past Max Campbell’s 1927 Casa Loma Hotel, now The Campbell Hotel. The downtown leg runs through the Cathedral District, home to the Ambassador Hotel Tulsa, past the Vickery Phillips 66 Station. We don’t list a stay on the highway in western Oklahoma yet.

Pawhuska and the Osage Nation

Pawhuska’s two stays are both in its downtown historic district. The Frontier Hotel Pawhuska fills the Triangle Building, a five-story flatiron of 1913. The site was a town-square park with a two-story bandstand, and the National Register nomination for downtown Pawhuska says Osage headright oil royalty payments were dispensed from it. The Boarding House is Ree and Ladd Drummond’s hotel, opened in 2018 in a three-story commercial building near their Pioneer Woman Mercantile.

Road trip

Oklahoma City to Pawhuska, hotel to hotel

Oklahoma City

Start in City Center at the Skirvin, the Colcord or The National, and leave time for the National Memorial. Our Oklahoma City guide has all six stays.

Stillwater

Stop at The Atherton Hotel, opened in 1950 inside Oklahoma State University’s Student Union.

Tulsa

Stay in the Deco District, visit Greenwood Rising and drive East 11th Street, which is Route 66. Our Tulsa guide has all eight stays.

Pawhuska

Finish at the Frontier Hotel Pawhuska or The Boarding House, both in Pawhuska’s downtown historic district.

Context

History and architecture

Oklahoma’s old buildings stand on land with a longer history. The Lochapoka band of Muscogee (Creek) people reached Indian Territory after a forced march from Alabama, and their settlement became Tulsa. The Land Run of April 22, 1889 opened nearly 2 million acres formerly held by the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole Nations, and Oklahoma City began that day. Oklahoma became the 46th state on November 16, 1907, and W.B. Skirvin opened his hotel in Oklahoma City in 1911. In 1921 thousands of armed whites looted and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood district in the Tulsa Race Massacre. Oil money paid for downtown Tulsa’s Art Deco buildings in the 1920s, the Mayo brothers opened their segregated hotel there in 1925, and Route 66 moved onto Tulsa’s 11th Street in 1932. Most of the stays we list began as something else: an office tower, a bank, a medical building, a Ford assembly plant, a club or a city hall.