Stop 1: Philtower Building, 427 South Boston
The lobby of this building is carved travertine from Bagni di Tivoli in Italy. These stones were carved in Italy and were numbered before being shipped to the U.S. The workman used these numbers to assemble the travertine pieces, and these numbers are still visible from the elevator vault.
The grey, green, and black stones on the floors of the outside doorways are slate. The dark green rock with lighter green veins on the exterior below the windows is verd antique, a serpentinite. The dark green mineral is probably lizardite. This rock is an altered ultramafic and probably was at one time part of the earth's mantle.
The Philtower Building was completed in 1927. It was built by Waite Phillips, brother of Frank Phillips of Phillips Petroleum. Philtower was given to the Boy Scouts in 1942, and income from this building supported the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. In 1977 the Scouts sold the building to private investors.
Stop 2: Mid-Continent Tower, Fourth and Boston
The west part of this building was the old Cosden Building built in 1918 by Josh Cosden, one of Tulsa's early oil millionaires. An interesting history of the building is told on the east wall of the foyer of the old building's north entrance. In the 1980's Reading and Bates added a cantilevered extension above and to the east of the old building. The original building and the new additions contain some of the most beautiful building stones in downtown Tulsa.
The walls adjacent to the elevators are an Italian marble called calacatta vagli rosato. The floors are an Ordovician marble from Friendsville, Tennessee; note the stylolites. Much of the old building interior is Jurassic verd antique from Valle D'Aosta, Italy.
If possible, explore the tunnel system that begins in the basement of the Mid-Continent Tower. Take the escalator down and go through the long hall with the pictures of Tulsa's past. The tunnel goes north to the Kennedy Building (321 South Boston). The first part of the Kennedy Building was constructed in 1915 by S. Gallais, a St. Louis real estate developer. The original building was purchased by Dr. Samuel G. Kennedy in 1917, and he expanded it to the current building in 1919. Kennedy had moved to Tulsa after completing medical school in Kansas City. He and his brother arrived in Tulsa on September 20, 1891, and on their first day in town they caused quite a stir. The day before their arrival a train had been robbed at the Pryor Creek Station. At the time Tulsa's population was only about three or four hundred people, so the two strangers carrying suspicious bags were quickly noticed. Could they be the robbers? Could those bags contain the loot? Things were soon straightened out, and Kennedy became a successful physician, oil investor, and prominent citizen.
From the basement of the Kennedy Building, follow the tunnel west under Boston to the huge bank vault in the 320 South Boston Building. The first part of this building was constructed to house the Exchange National Bank in 1917. The building was enlarged to its current 28 stories in 1928, just in time for the Crash of 1929. The Exchange National Bank was reorganized as the National Bank of Tulsa during the Depression, and about 40 years later this became the Bank of Oklahoma. The 320 South Boston Building has beautiful verde antique, brecciated marble, and travertine.
If you can find the continuation of the tunnel system at the north end of the 320 South Boston Building, you can go all the way to the Bank of Oklahoma lobby in the Williams Tower without going outside.
Stop 3: Sooner Federal Building, 20 East Fifth (Fifth and and Boston)
This Precambrian granite is from Porrino, Mos, Pontevedra, Galicia in Spain. The large pink crystals are potassium feldspar. Quartz and biotite are also common. Some of the black minerals might be hornblende.
Stop 4: Vandever Building, 16 East Fifth
This white granite is from Oppdal, Norway, and is Precambrian. Compare this granite with the granite in the Sinclair Building next door. Common minerals in the Oppdal granite are muscovite and plagioclase, but this granite has little quartz and little potassium feldspar. Some garnets are also present. The magma that formed this granite had much aluminum but little potassium.
Stop 5: Sinclair Building, 6 East Fifth (Fifth and Main)
This Precambrian granite is from Rockville in central Minnesota. The large pink potassium feldspar crystals formed early in the cooling of this rock. See if you can find some of the zoned potassium feldspar crystals; look for concentric hexagons within the pink crystals. Some biotite crystals are also present.
Stop 6: Mayo Building, 420 South Main
Two varieties of granite were used in this building's exterior. The reddish-brown granite is from Milbank, South Dakota, and is the same stone used in the ONEOK Building. The more red granite is from Wausau, Wisconsin. Both granites are Precambrian.
The original Mayo Building was constructed in 1910 by John and Cass Mayo. The building was enlarged in 1917.
Stop 7: Pythian Building, 423 South Boulder (northeast corner of Fifth and Boulder)
The banded rock along the base of the building is called 'rainbow granite" in the building stones trade, but the rock is actually a metamorphic rock called gneiss. This gneiss is from Morton in southwestern Minnesota. The Morton gneiss is 3.6 billion years old and is one of the oldest rocks known on earth. (Morton gneiss was also used in the old ONG building on the northwest corner of Seventh and Boston.)
The Pythian Building was completed in 1929.
Stop 8: ONEOK Building, 100 West Fifth
This reddish-brown Precambrian granite is from Milbank, South Dakota. Note the veins, which were probably caused by water moving through the rock as it cooled. The clear mineral is quartz, and the milky white mineral is plagioclase
Stop 9: Occidental Petroleum Building, 110 West Seventh
White marble on exterior is from Carrara, Italy, and is Jurassic. This stone is weathering and rubbing your hand across it leaves a white powder on your hand.
Stop 10: Holy Family Cathedral, Eighth and Boulder
Limestone exterior blocks are Mississippian Salem Limestone, a limestone quarried in Monroe and Lawrence counties in southern Indiana. This is a common building stone in Tulsa, and has been quarried in Indiana since the early 1800's.
Many stylolites are present in these blocks. See if you can find fossil brachiopods and trilobites. A large specimen of the spiral bryozoan Archimedes is in a block at the northeast corner of the school. The granular texture of the Salem Limstone rock has been described as oolitic, however the small grains are not oolites but small foraminifers.
Stop 11: First Christian Church, 913 South Boulder
This church has granite and Salem Limestone in its exterior.
Stop 12: First United Methodist Church, 1115 South Boulder
The congregation of First Methodist began using this building when its basement was finished in 1921. Construction the main cathedral began in 1924 and was completed in 1928.
Limestone exterior blocks contain fossil brachiopods in a micrite matrix. The limestone was quarried near Garnett. Although we think of Garnett as a road today, at the time this cathedral was built Garnett was a small community along the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad and located a mile and a half east of what is now Garnett Road between Pine and Apache. Quarries are still present in this area today.
The Garnett quarries contain outcrops of what is generally called the Oologah Limestone (upper middle Pennsylvanian) which has been subdivided into several formations and members. The Garnett quarries are near the southern end of a large limestone bank that extends northward into Kansas. This limestone bank continues southward to just south of South 41st Street and 129th East Avenue, but south of this area the limestone has been replaced by a shale facies.
Stop 13: AMOCO Building, 521 South Boston
The pentane model near the front doors is made of many different rocks: Atoka sandstone, Chester limestone, Green River Shale, Paluxy Conglomerate, "Wilcox sandstone" (Simpson Group) (not the Eocene Wilcox of the Texas Gulf Coast), Kansas City-Lansing limestone, "Oswego Limestone" (Fort Scott Limestone) (not the Ordovician Oswego Formation of New York), Simpson limestone, Osage limestone, Arbuckle limestone, and a Pennsylvanian limestone. See the key mounted on the wall to the left of the model.