Pioneer Building

[Pete]

[category=]Office Buildings[/category]
[category=]Historical[/category]
[category=]Central Business District[/category]


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Address: 111 Dean McGee Built: 1905 Demolished: no Floors: 7 Sq. Feet: 40,656 Acreage: Architect: William Wells

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The expansion of Oklahoma City during the 1920s was reflected in the growth of the telephone company. As more people arrived in the booming city, more telephones were installed, new equipment was purchased, and new employees were hired. To house the expanded operations, Southwestern Bell constructed the sixteen story Telephone Building just north of the Pioneer Building. Designed by Solomon Layton, the buff-brick structure included set-backs, a tower, and ornate terra cotta. (Blackburn, Henderson and Thurman 72)

The telephone came to Oklahoma City in 1893 with the arrival of the Missouri-Kansas Telephone Company. For about ten years this firm held a monopoly, but then came competition: Pioneer Telephone Company, a new and energetic organization which in a few short years had swallowed up a number of the small town exchanges, and now was challenging Missouri-Kansas for the city's telephone business. For a time it was necessary for citizens to subscribe to the services of both companies if they wanted to insure communication links with all other residents and businesses in town, but in 1905 this inconvenience was eliminated when Pioneer bought out Missouri-Kansas. Three years later the surviving company moved into this new headquarters building at Northwest Third and Broadway.(Edwards and Ottaway, Vanished Splendor 85)
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County Assessor Record
Doug Loudenback Article
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