The Mayo Building at the northwest corner of West Fifth Street and South Main St. in

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

was built in 1910. It had five stories. It was expanded by a duplicate building to the north in 1914, and further expanded by addition of 5 more stories in 1917. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

(NRHP) in 2008. According to its NRHP nomination, the building "is one of Tulsa's earliest business/office buildings". and The Tulsa Preservation Commission has stated that it is "...the oldest of Tulsa’s existing oil business buildings."

History

The Mayo Brothers, who had established a thriving furniture business in 1904, had already moved to a larger rented building on Main Street in 1906, then decided they needed still more space, which they began constructing at 420 South Main in 1909. They used half the space for their own business and rented the rest of the building as offices for oil companies. As the demand for office space increased, the Mayos built an identical five story building at 418 South Main in 1914. In 1917, they added five more stories to each structure, and operated them as one building. Profits from the Mayo Building financed later additions to the Mayo real estate empire: the

Petroleum Building The Petroleum Building is a 50-meter/10-floor building at 420 South Boulder in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was built in 1921, and is a steel and reinforced concrete structure faced with buff brick. The name was given because most of the early tenants we ...

in 1921, the Mayo Hotel in 1925 and the Mayo Motor Inn in 1950. On October 24, 1917, a fire at the building claimed the lives of two firefighters from the Tulsa Fire Department. Ross Shepard, 29 years old and Ben Hanes, 27 years old, were taken to their death when a stairway they were fighting fire from collapsed. They were the first two deaths in the line of duty from the department and remain, to this day, the only two to have been killed in a structure fire since the department was founded in 1905. The building has now been converted to loft apartment use. It was identified as one of the supporting structures during the creation of the Oil Capital Historic District.National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Oil Capital Historic District.
Retrieved November 26, 2014.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Oklahoma Neoclassical architecture in Oklahoma Commercial buildings completed in 1910 Buildings and structures in Tulsa, Oklahoma National Register of Historic Places in Tulsa, Oklahoma