Art Deco Capital of the World — Black Wall Street, Route 66, and the Gathering Place
Tulsa has more surviving Art Deco architecture per capita than almost any city in the United States — 71 buildings designated in a compact downtown built on the wealth of the 1920s oil boom. The Greenwood District, once home to America's wealthiest Black community, was rebuilt after the 1921 race massacre and is now commemorated at the Greenwood Cultural Center and the 1921 Race Massacre Commission memorial. The Gathering Place, an 11-hectare riverside park on the Arkansas River, opened in 2018 as one of the largest privately funded public parks in American history. Route 66 passes through Tu…
Tulsa was Creek Nation land when oil was discovered at nearby Red Fork in 1901, and the city's transformation from Indian Territory trading post to boomtown happened within a generation. By 1921 Greenwood, the city's prosperous Black neighbourhood, had earned the nickname 'Black Wall Street' — and was destroyed in the deadliest act of racial violence in American history, with up to 300 people killed and 1,200 homes burned. The survivors rebuilt, and the oil wealth that funded Tulsa's extraordinary Art Deco skyline in the 1920s and 30s is still legible today in every ornate facade downtown.