Tulsa Street Names

[NCTulsan]

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

quote:Originally posted by NCTulsan

quote:Originally posted by sgrizzle

There is an elwood nebraska...

There's also an Elwood, Utah.

If the street were east of Main, there would be more possible answers.

On a related note, I wrote the "Street Network" section for the "Tulsa" entry on Wikipedia.  I hope I got it right.

Only one small correction to your post on Wikipedia.  Admiral Blvd is actually the dividing line between north and south streets.  Many people mistakenly believe it is Admiral Place because Admiral Place is the more developed street.

Wilbur, thank you for that clarification.  I'll make the correction on Wikipedia.

[RecycleMichael]

quote:Originally posted by MichaelC

quote:Originally posted by Wilbur

The east-west streets north of Admiral used to be numbered, just as the streets south of Admiral.  Then the names were changed to honor pioneer settlers, such as Jeff ARCHER, the BRADY family, .......

Yeah sure.  Next you'll try to tell me that Virgin has nothing to do with the activity of cults.

Did you ever think that they threw the virgins in the volcanoes as an excuse for girls to put out?

[rwarn17588]

Put out what?

(ducking)

[joiei]

Did you know that you can purchase a copy of the original plat map of the city of Tulsa from the Oklahoma Heritage Association over in OKC.  I got one last winter, it lists the east west streets north of the railroad as numbered not named.  The date of the survey is December 1901 in Tulsa, Creek Nation, Indian Territory.  The Map is pretty big and kind of fun.  At that time downtown was only a couple of blocks adjacent to the original railroad depot.  The signature on the survey is Gus Patton.  The only listed piece of property is the St Teresa Institute, what was that?

[joiei]

I made an error,  the plat maps are available from the Oklahoma Historical Society over in OKC not the Heritage group.  My bad.

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by joiei

I made an error,  the plat maps are available from the Oklahoma Historical Society over in OKC not the Heritage group.  My bad.

My street, 19th street, was originally named Tookah street. Have had really hard time finding out why though. There was a Dr. from Tulsa who made one of the first contributions to start the medical school at OU. His daughter was named Tookah.

Anyone know where it comes from?

[booWorld]

quote:Originally posted by joiei

The only listed piece of property is the St Teresa Institute, what was that?

The St Teresa Institute was a Roman Catholic school.  It was on the southeast corner of 3rd & Elgin, facing 3rd.  The Catholic Church was to the east of the school building, also facing 3rd Street.  Both school and church were on block 115, which is now occupied by KOTV Channel 6.  Block 115 did not have an alley -- a rare exception on the Pattons' plat.  The block is also not quite a square, being 320 feet in the north-south direction instead of the standard 300 feet.  I've read that the Pattons wanted to preserve an existing orchard, so they narrowed the right-of-way of 3rd to 60 feet instead of the standard 80 feet, which resulted in a few rectangular blocks on the south side of 3rd east of Cincinnati.

[booWorld]

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

Gus Patton named the streets downtown. He was our first civil engineer. I don't think he is a relative, but I get conflicting family stories.

He walked a hundred paces from the railroad tracks and laid out first street. That is why the downtown streets are slanted to the tracks and not to north, south, east and west.

Main Street was Tulsa's initial, and for awhile, its only street.  Main was laid out perpendicular to the Frisco tracks around 1882.

The Patton brothers surveyed and platted the townsite in 1901.  There was a settlement consisting of several streets and blocks which had developed by that time.  The Pattons did their best to superimpose a regular street grid over the existing development.  They renamed all the streets which existed at that time except for Main Street.  Crowell became Cincinnati.  Lindsey became Boston.  Archer became Boulder.  Spring became Cheyenne.  4th became what is now 1st St; 5th became 2nd; 6th became 3rd; 7th became 4th.

The existing blocks were renumbered.  For example, block 1 became block 61; block 2 became block 60; block 3 became blocks 41, 59, and 73; block 4 became 72; block 5 became 71; block 6 became 70; block 7 became 91; block 8 became 90; block 9 became 89; block 10 became 105; block 11 became 104; block 12 became 103; block 13 became 88; block 14 became 106; block 15 became 118; block 16 became 119.  

North-south avenues east of Main Street were named for cities east of Tulsa.  The Pattons named Greenwood after their hometown in Arkansas.  There was a Jackson Avenue east of Main in the original plat.  It ran for about one block north of the Frisco tracks to what is now Archer Street between blocks 50 and 51.

The Pattons did not indicate a cemetery at 2nd and Frisco on their plat, which leads me to believe that they might have overlooked an old burial ground while they were surveying the townsite from August until December 1901.  Human bones were unearthed in that vicinity from time to time for many years and as recently as 2005 when site work began for the BOK Center arena.  If anyone has additional information on that cemetery (or burial ground), please post it.  I suspect that the most recent Tulsa World articles (from 2005) about the origins of that cemetery are incorrect.

[Steve]

Whatever the original rhyme or reason for Tulsa street naming conventions are, I think it makes Tulsa a very easy city to navigate, especially the alphabetical order of named streets in the older parts of town.  That was a brilliant idea; I don't know why more cities Tulsa's age and younger did not do the same.

I have lived here all of my 50+ years and the street naming system is ingrained in my brain, but I know people that move here from other areas and they also have said that the naming/numbering system, once learned, makes perfect sense and makes for easy navigation and location of addresses.

[Gaspar]

quote:Originally posted by Steve

Whatever the original rhyme or reason for Tulsa street naming conventions are, I think it makes Tulsa a very easy city to navigate, specially the alphatabetical order of named streets in the older parts of town.  That was a brilliant idea; I don't know why more cities Tulsa's age and younger did not do the same.
I have lived here all of my 50+ years and the street naming system is ingrained in my brain, but I know people that move here from other areas and they also have said that the naming/numbering system, once learned, makes perfect sense and makes for easy navigation and location of addresses.

Agree.  I hate it when have to drive into Broken Arrow and suddenly become clueless as to what street i'm "actually" on.

[Hoss]

The biggest culture shock to me was the year I moved to Houston (1991).  Talk about no rhyme or reason to the streets.  All over the place, names changed after intersections, with directions, and if you didn't have a Key Map you were a goner (this is before the days of TomTom).

I used to tell people that if you gave me two addresses in Tulsa, I could tell you the quickest way to get between the two without a map.  I think I can still do it.

[Steve]

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

I used to tell people that if you gave me two addresses in Tulsa, I could tell you the quickest way to get between the two without a map.  I think I can still do it.

Exactly Hoss.  If I have an address in Tulsa today, within the Tulsa city limits, I can pinpoint the location in my head, without having to resort to maps or anything else.  Tulsa's early street planners knew exactly what they were doing, and made it easy for we future generations.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Steve

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

I used to tell people that if you gave me two addresses in Tulsa, I could tell you the quickest way to get between the two without a map.  I think I can still do it.

Exactly Hoss.  If I have an address in Tulsa today, within the Tulsa city limits, I can pinpoint the location in my head, without having to resort to maps or anything else.  Tulsa's early street planners knew exactly what they were doing, and made it easy for we future generations.

And you have to give props to the later city planners who decided not to break an already foolproof system.  When they ran out of cities, just start naming the streets by numbers, and in some cases, just name the majors with a name.  I can always remember 65 - Sheridan, 81 - Memorial, 97 - Mingo, 113 - Garnett.  The only place I can get screwed up is west of the river where Southwest Blvd just does a number to me if I'm trying to find out where something is.

[MichaelBates]

quote:Originally posted by booWorld

The Pattons did not indicate a cemetery at 2nd and Frisco on their plat, which leads me to believe that they might have overlooked an old burial ground while they were surveying the townsite from August until December 1901.  Human bones were unearthed in that vicinity from time to time for many years and as recently as 2005 when site work began for the BOK Center arena.  If anyone has additional information on that cemetery (or burial ground), please post it.  I suspect that the most recent Tulsa World articles (from 2005) about the origins of that cemetery are incorrect.

The cemetery is marked on the 1915 Sanborn Fire Maps, Sheets 11, 17, 43, and 44. (Sheet 44 also shows the location of the Sand Springs Bottling Co. Pop Factory, the Tulsa Street Railway barn, and a "Bluff Line" just a bit west of the cemetery. 2nd wasn't open west of Guthrie, evidently because of the terrain, and it was a dead end between Guthrie and the cemetery.)

[FOTD]

Every street in Tulsa is Shakedown Street.....just gotta swerve around [}:)]