Oklahoma Station and Oklahoma City In Pictures



Overholser Opera House
Built 1903

When the Overholser opened in 1903 it had three shallow balconies, and four tiers of box seats, with a total seating capacity of 2400. It was located at 217 W. Grand and such notables as Sarah Bernhardt and Lillian Russell performed there.  John Eberson's 1920 Adamesque remodel for Kieth Albee replaced the three balconies with one long, steeply sloped, cantilever balcony which reduced seating to 2200. Warner Brothers gained control in 1928 and installed new, wider chairs, and expanded leg room between seats, which caused a reduction of 200 chairs. Cinerama installation resulted in an even further reduced capacity.  New owners acquired the building in 1917 and rebuilt it to become the Orpheum Theatre, seating 1,040. The Orpheum opened in 1921 and was destroyed in the mid-1960s.

date of picure unknown, but should abt 1900


Pictured above is the Old County Courthouse

Pictured above is the Hotel Bristol

Delmar Gardens, one of the earliest Oklahoma examples, enriched life in Oklahoma City from 1902 until 1910. John Sinopoulo and Joseph Marre, who trained at Delmar Gardens in St. Louis, opened the park on land owned by Charles Colcord. The amenities included a theater, race track, baseball field, swimming pool, railway, beer garden, hotel, restaurant, and swimming pool. Located on 140 acres near the North Canadian River, the Gardens enjoyed a large clientele and attracted entertainers like Lon Chaney, boxers John L. Sullivan and Jack Dempsey, and Dan Patch, a legendary race horse. Unfortunately, swarms of mosquitoes that accompanied the river's annual flooding contributed to Delmar Gardens's demise, and the advent of prohibition was the death blow.

Springlake Amusement Park
pictured above

In 1924, after his spring-fed pond in northeast Oklahoma City had been open to swimming and picnicking for six years, Roy Staton built a swimming pool there. Later expanding his park, he bought many of the rides from the defunct Belle Isle Park, built a ballroom, and in 1929 added the Big Dipper roller coaster, a fixture in the park for almost fifty years. The height of Springlake's popularity extended from the 1950s into the 1960s, and the park attracted top entertainers of the era including Johnny Cash, the Righteous Brothers, Roy Acuff, and Conway Twitty. A large riot that erupted in 1971 in the park, between whites and blacks, frightened away potential customers and hastened Springlake's demise. A change of ownership, poor maintenance, and fire led to the park's 1981 sale to the Oklahoma City Vo-Tech Board, which closed Springlake for good.

Wedgewood Village Amusement Park operated in northwest Oklahoma City in the late 1950s and 1960s. Wedgewood, opened in 1958, had a fine carousel, swimming, boating, a roller coaster, and all the standard amenities before closing in 1969.

Frontier City, owned at the beginning of the twenty-first century by the Oklahoma City-based Six Flags, Inc., one of the largest amusement companies in the nation, began operation in 1958 on the heavily traveled Route 66 and I-35 in northeast Oklahoma City. Using a western theme and moving an entire western town from the Oklahoma State Fair, the new park attracted 1.2 million visitors in the first year. Although Frontier City had lean years, the theme park continued to entertain the region into the twenty-first century by providing nationally recognized entertainment and an ever-growing selection of thrill rides.

Pictured is the Epworth University in 1911.

In the early 1900’s, Epworth University was the first college in Oklahoma City, built on the location of the current Epworth United Methodist Church. It was founded as a federated organization supported by two major denominations of the Methodist church: the Methodist Episcopal Church (also known as the "north" branch), and the Methodist Episcopal Church South. These denominations had split over slavery in 1844 and re-merged in 1939. Reconciliation found a home at Epworth in the early part of the century, as it did at the end of the same century.  In 1907 Epworth University (now Oklahoma City University), a Methodist institution of higher learning, established the first law school in Oklahoma. Unlike many at the time, Epworth required three years for completion of the degree program. Charles B. Ames was named dean. The faculty consisted of three full-time members, with other courses being taught by attorneys. Classes began in the fall of 1907 with an enrollment of fifteen students.

.

Pictured above is the old Oklahoma City High School



Pictured above is Roosevelt Jr. High School



Pictured above: Top left: Lincoln Top right: Washington
Pictured above: Bottom left: Emmerson, Bottom right: Irving


When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, there were many TV shows locally produced. Ho Ho, Miss Fran, and Foreman Scotty were all favorites of mine

Mr. Ed Birchall (Ho Ho the Clown)  was born on July 16, 1923 of Irish heritage in Colchester, Connecticut and served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. A lover of the circus, he performed as a freelance clown before being hired as an entertainer by KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City. There, he starred in a local children's television show named after him, which typically featured an array of firefighters, police officers, zoo animals, visiting circus clowns, and other guests, as well as Pokey the Puppet, played by Bill Howard, the station's long-time stage manager wearing a sock-puppet on his arm. HoHo was all over the TV schedule, for much of the 1960s he was on six days a week. Various titles were "HoHo's Showboat", "Lunch With HoHo", "Good Morning HoHo", and "HoHo's Showplace". The show survived for 29 years, long after the station was acquired by Gannett, airing in its last years without commercials to fulfill the station's public service requirements. He was a frequent visitor to children's wards at local hospitals, providing a kind of medicine the doctors could not. He also appeared at restaurants, charity events, parades, and children's parties, from which he derived most of his income. Mr. Birchall was a diminutive and slightly round man of cheerful spirit and hippie inclinations. Friends remember him as behaving much the same in real life as on his show. He lived in Bethany, Oklahoma for most of his life, and suffered declining health leading to his death in the hospital at age 64 from a heart attack while undergoing treatment for cancer. His popularity was so great that it took three funeral services to accommodate all of his well-wishers, the first of which was attended by an honor guard of professional clown friends and carried live by KOCO-TV

Fran Morris Friedel was known from March of 1958 until 1966 as Miss Fran from Storyland which aired on Channel 9 five days a week at 7:30a.m.  It was a show designed for preschoolers.  She was recoginized with several awards while the show aired, such as the TV/Radio Mirror's Gold Medal Award, and the Gold Mike award.  She resigned from the show to become a spokeswoman on children's mental health.  She attended high school in Oklahoma City and graduated from Oklahoma City College.

Steve Powell aired five days a week with about 25 children for fourteen years on "The Foreman Scotty Show."  This show was strickly for kids, and one child was chosen on each show to sit on "Woody the Horse," most usually it was a birthday child.  There was always a clown on the show.  Danny Williams joined the cast and played all of the villain parts as well as "Xavier T. Willard."  Wilson Hurst played the part of "Cannonball."  The magic lasso would float around the children's faces who appeared on the show, and the one chosen by lasso always got something neat.  Alot of school groups such as Brownie troops, Girl Scout Troops, Boy Scout Troops and Camp Fire and Bluebird groups often appeared in their uniforms.