Gatewood Historic District

Did You Know?

by Charles Cheatham

Reprinted from the January/February Gatewood Newsletter 2004

During the decade from 1900 to 1910, Oklahoma City had been the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. At the 1910 census, Oklahoma City’s population was 64,205. Among other factors that stimulated growth, Oklahoma’s statehood in 1907 strongly contributed to an economic boom that lasted until 1911. However, business activity finally slowed in the years leading up to, and during World War I.

Original developers of the eastern half of the Gatewood Neighborhood donated about 20 blocks of land in 1902 to convince Epworth University to build a university campus here. This area ran from N.W. 17th to N.W. 21st Street, between Classen Boulevard and McKinley Avenue. But the university went broke in 1911, and its land was sold.

Anton Classen bought part of the defunct Epworth University’s land at auction, and donated two of the blocks to the Oklahoma City Public Schools, which constructed what was originally a junior high school building. Soon afterward this building was significantly expanded, and became Classen High School in 1920.

Replacing the university was a high school and demonstrated the real estate developers “never give up” attitude. The original plan was to have a prestigious university as the “centerpiece” of the housing addition, so that people would want to buy lots and build nice homes in the immediately surrounding blocks. When the university dissolved, the plan shifted to developing blocks of apartments and nice homes around a nice, large high school.

The original plats of University Place and Nichols University Place Additions (both of which were formed from the university’s grounds), did not allow four-plexes. However, in response to strong housing demand, the provision governing these lots were amended to permit four-plexes and eight-plexes in the blocks immediately to the east and west of Classen High School, and continuing west along the north side of N.W. 17th Street to McKinley Avenue.

The apartment buildings located on N.W. 17th and N.W. 18th in Gatewood were mostly built in 1921 and 1922. Population in Oklahoma City was increasing rapidly after World War I, and the suppy of attractive, modern apartments could not keep up with demand.

Home-building also was enjoying a boom. The houses in the first block west of Classen Boulevard on N.W. 19th, N.W. 20th, and the south side of N.W. 21st Streets, were almost all built in the 1921-1922 period, as were most of the houses two blocks west of Classen Boulevard.

It’s no accident that the area just west of Classen, between N.W. 19th and N.W. 21st, had nice homes. The plat restrictions for the first two blocks west of Classen required all homes to be two-story, with a minimum construction price that ensured large size and quality of design. On N.W. 19th and N.W. 20th Street, homes had to be of masonry construction, but the south side of N.W. 21st Street was permitted to have wood-frame homes to match existing homes on the north side of that street.

The trolley car line running on Classen Boulevard had an important influence on what was built in the blocks immediately west of Classen. Before reasonably priced automobiles became generally available in the 1920’s, the value of real estate in Oklahoma City was significantly determined by the walking distance from one’s residence to the nearest street car line. People paid more for homes and apartments within one block of the street car line. This was the “high rent district.” Residences several blocks away tended to scale down to something more modest, costing less.

On a wall inside the Berry & Van Meter law office at 1923 N. Classen is an enlarged photograph with a panoramic view that shows the original University Station trolley stop at N.W. 17th and Classen, some houses on the south side of 17th Street, the university campus and the Weather Station (now the law office).

The trolley station building serving the university was located on the triangular piece of land immediately north of what is now Braum’s, at 17th and Classen. Both sides of Classen Boulevard between N.W. 16th and N.W. 19th were developed commercially because of the trolley car line’s convenient stop there.

In the 1920’s the trolley line not only took people downtown, but also brought people from other parts of the city to the developing neighborhood and the area’s new commercial shops. My wife’ mother and aunt were excited to ride the trolley from south Oklahoma City to attend the 1939 premiere of “Gone with the Wind” at the Victoria Theater, N.W. 18th and Classen.

The trolley system was discontinued in the late 1940’s, its usefulness replaced by buses and cars. The trolley station at 17th and Classen was torn down, and Classen was widened and re-aligned to cut through part of the land on which the former station stood. Many long-time Gatewood residents have fond memories of this trolley stop.