City Place Tower

The City Place Tower is an Art-deco skyscraper designed in 1930 by Walter W. Ahlschlager, in association with Clair Drury, and built between 1931 and 1931, for a reported $3.00 million dollars, in Oklahoma City, OK.

City Place Tower is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Ramsey Tower between 1931 and 1943.
• APCO Tower between 1943 and 1952.
• Liberty National Bank Building between 1952 and 1971.

Its precise street address is 204 North Robinson Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK. You can also find it on the map here.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1980 and 2010.

Walter W. Ahlschlager was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Clair Drury.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the City Place Tower a reality:

• Starrett Corporation as the Main Contractor
• Walter Ramsey as the Main Developer

The City Place Tower can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The City Place Tower was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The City Place Tower uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing modular, or panelized system. This type of facade can function as either a window wall or a curtain wall, depending on the design. Unlike traditional glass curtain walls or window walls though, the modular facade is not primarily composed of glass. Instead, it often features more opaque panels that mimic masonry or stone-clad finishes, with smaller windows cut into the panels.

This type of facade allows the building to benefit from the modern qualities of a curtain wall while giving the design team flexibility to achieve visual aesthetics beyond the all-glass modern skyscraper.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features

mostly light-colored brick masonry. At street level, however, it is clad in black granite, transitioning to light-colored limestone on the second and third floors, before continuing upward in brick masonry.

The main entrance is framed with Art Deco beading made of aluminum.