Blank Walls
The model and renderings for the new Devon Energy tower drew rave reviews this week. But Tulsa blogger Michael Bates wonders how it will tie into life on the street.
Sad, but true, when Devon Energy announced plans to build a skyscraper that will not just be the tallest in the state, but one of the tallest in the surrounding region (bigger than anything in Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas, Fort Worth, New Orleans and Austin), I expected Tulsa’s online community to react with bitterness and resentment.It’s weird, really. You rarely see the OKC online community trashing Tulsa – there’s a lot of admiration for downtown
Tulsa’s Art Deco skyline and enthusiasm for any efforts to revive the area. And there is admiration for the design of BOK Arena, and shared celebration over the renovation of the Mayo Hotel.But in Tulsa, pretty much any good news about downtown OKC is greeted with a mix of cheap shots, cliché insults and vows of “it will never happen.”But there are exceptions. I’ve long been a fan of www.batesline.com because its author, Michael Bates (also a columnist at Urban Tulsa), isn’t afraid to ask the unpopular questions. And his latest post may cause some discomfort for Tulsans and Oklahoma Citians alike when it comes to the new Devon tower:
Over at TulsaNow’s public forum, some participants are feeling tower envy, wishing for some deep-pockets oil company to build some new skyscrapers in downtown, but we have to recall that Oklahoma City took a pass, for the most part, on the building frenzy of the late ’70s, early ’80s oil boom. While OKC’s tallest building is of that era, the next tallest is from the ’30s. From the late ’60s to the early ’80s, Tulsa built five new skyscrapers: Fourth National Bank (now Bank of America), Cities Service Building (now 110 W. 7th), 1st National Bank (now
First Plaza), the BOk Tower, and the Mid-Continent Tower — the addition that stands beside and is cantilevered over the original Cosden Building at 4th and Boston.There are rumors of even more tall towers in Oklahoma City, and some OKCers are giddy at the thought of “filling the gaps in the skyline.” The thing about filling those gaps is that the new skyscrapers have to touch the ground at some point, and how these towers meet the street is what matters most to downtown’s vitality. It may look beautiful from five miles away, it may have a great view from the top story, but how does it look to someone walking by on the street?
Bates may very well be onto something here, and it’s a thought that Jack Money and I contemplated in our 2006 book “OKC Second Time Around.” We discovered the writings of William H. Whyte in files maintained by late Bricktown developer Neal Horton. It was easy to see why Whyte’s writings attracted Horton, who was trying to reinvent the old warehouse district as an old towne district that would bring life back to downtown streets:
“As Horton and his partners raced ahead with their grand plans, they followed other downtown renovations like those on Dallas’ West End, Pitsburgh’s South Side, and New York City’s South Street Seaport with great interest. They also took notice of comments made in a 1983 Time article by William Whyte, a renowned critic of modern city planning who had visited Oklahoma City in the early 1980s. “The Blank Wall is on its way to becoming the dominant feature of many United States downtowns,” Whyte complained. “Without the windows or adornment to relieve their monotony, the walls are built of concrete, brick, granite, metal veneer, opaque glass and mirrors … designed out of fear – fear of the untidy hustle and bustle of city streets and undesirables – the walls spread fear.”
- OKC Second Time Around
In his book “City,” Whyte included this study of how the shopfront for Saks Fifth Avenue created a vibrant urban corner in New York City.
In our book Jack and I then noted the obvious – that in Oklahoma City’s rush to improve, it had also built an ample supply of “blank walls” The towers built during the Urban Renewal era fit perfectly into the very sort of design criticized by Whyte. Even older buildings like the historic Pioneer Telephone Building had their old storefronts sealed with brick and marble.
Quoting Whyte again:
“By eliminating the hospitable jumble of shop fronts, restaurant entrances and newsstands, the walls deaden the very city the buildings claim to revitalize.”
Bates’ questions might just apply as well to the proposed new headquarters for the Oklahoma City Greater Chamber. Or drive down Automobile Alley and look at how Steve Mason has brought life back to the1000 block of N Broadway.
Leadership Square – one of downtown’s most admired Urban Renewal era office buildings. But does it have the sort of street-frontage that brings life back to the street?
Pioneer Telephone Building – a marble fortress?
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Comments
Well, before just dismissing what MIchael has to say, let’s look at the top photo. Wouldn’t it be possible to have a retail presence along the first floor of the podium, opening out into the park? Imagine a restaurant in part of that space, with patio dining (in good weather, obviously) looking into the new Devon park. Maybe there could be florist, or drug store, or convenience store, or a card shop….or all of the above. In such a massive building, would it be that difficult to have that sort of activity fronting the park and creating a livelier place? Maybe the city could even add some curbside parking spots along that stretch of Sheridan. All things to think about now, rather than later, don’t you think?
Let me just add, for all we know, this might just be part of the plan. But it’s not something I’ve heard or seen so far.
I also wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what Michael is trying to articulate. I believe the key word in his post is “vitality.” You can have a great building, which brings people to work downtown, but if you do not provide for a properly designed interface at the street level, the building and the potential vitality all those workers bring to an area can be nullified.
To provide vitality and activity at the street level you need four basic elements: buildings placed at the edge of the street with active uses at the ground floor, physical (entryways) and visual (transparency) access directly onto the sidewalk (not into the building or parking structure), on-street parking for convenient access to those uses, and a properly designed pedestrian zones with wide sidewalks and pedestrian oriented design elements (street trees, lights, furniture). These basic elements alone generate pedestrian activity at the street level. It also helps if the first floor architecture incorporates human scaled design.
No matter how exciting a project is for an area, if you do not pay attention to activity, uses, and design at the street level, you can effectively kill the excitement and vitality of an area, even on one block. We’ve all been to places in successful downtowns where one block can be filled with diners enjoying lunch at a street cafe and the next block is dead because the building does not respond to the street.
The Devon project will set the standard for renovations and new projects in downtown OKC and it is important that they introduce life at the street level rather than just providing for a beautiful repository of workers who drive into the building and never leave their car.
Didn’t I read that they wanted to put restaurants and stuff in the atrium? That would mean there has to be some retail space. I would like to see stuff like that along the base of the podium. Surely out of 1,9 million square feet we could have a few thousand square feet of retail. And I think Nichols truly understands that.
Even in MidAmerica tower, which isn’t that great, Devon has kept the landscaping so beautiful that I feel their building has a great street presence walking by. There are always people using the benches and stuff out there too. The park will be a great gathering place, and even better with retail in the podium.
As to your reply (#2), yes, I’m pretty sure that Jon Pickard said as much, which is part of why I said what I did in the 1st part of (b), above. The remainder of that part of (b) (I should have added a (c) was that, even if (b) didn’t have the “street presence” that Michael argues for, it’s still a great development, regardless, in my opinion.
Hey Steve,
Really great thoughts – and well worth asking. I hope those on the Urban renewal authority are thinking through these aspects of our street life as well. Have you seen James Kunstler’s speech on the tragedy of suburbia?
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html
It’s well worth checking out and ties in, I think, to the discussion.
My two cents – cities worked great for thousands of years when people live, worked, and played in an area where everything was mixed together. It wasn’t until post war America that the traditional idea of cities were abandoned – we separated out all the pieces, grew out and not up through the Interstate highway system and overall built places that were antiseptic and not worth caring about. Robert Moses tried to do this to New York and succeeded in many ways (except for in Greenwich Village, of course). Anyway, I have high hopes for the Devon Tower, and how it ties into the Myriad and C2S.
Cheers,
Michael
There’s no doubt that Devon is planning retail and restaurants. But will they be mostly within the building, similiar to Leadership Square, or will they face out onto the street?
It seems to me that the retail on the ground floor, unlike w/ Leadership Square, will at least be visible through the glass front of the podium. They show seating indoors and outdoors along there as well, so it should bring people in and out. Also, unlike Leadership’s setup, this could be left open beyond corporate business hours, because of its separation from the actual tower.
[...] The NYC architectural firm Rogers Marvel Architects are big followers of urban planner William Whyte and say they’re well aware of past mistakes made downtown where towers were built with large [...]
[...] We’ve discussed the ideas of William Whyte before, most recently in August following the release of designs for the new Devon Energy tower. [...]
Well, I don’t think that Michael was taking cheap shots at OKC by what he wrote (though the same cannot be said for several in the TulsaNow forum. Michael was just articulating the importance of “how the project fares on the streets,” as I think you noted.
In the best of all possible worlds, I’d probably agree with those observations, but, in context, I don’t see the Devon project as needing to fit into the model he articulates. (a) In the 1st place, the unabashed primary purpose of this project is to give Devon’s employee’s a great place to work. (b) In the 2nd place, it seems to me that there are plenty of “public use” aspects of Devon’s proposal which works well with people who do and want to come downtown, but, in the 3rd, I cannot but see that the “value added” features of this project to downtown in what it inspires nearby, as well as in Core to Shore, would not be sufficient “pluses” even if (b) were not so “public” at all.
Only once in a blue moon (if ever) does such a catalyst present itself to a city, Oklahoma City included. This is it and I’m darned proud of Devon and Larry Nichols for making it happen. I will not be around to write a retrospective like I earlier did on “1st National Center, 75 years later.” While I may be wrong, I think the person who would write a similar article about the Devon Tower, 75 years later, will be darned glad to write it because I think that both its impact, and its beauty, will endure.
My 2 cents! I’ve added a follow-up article this morning trying to put “size” into perspective, as in Jon Pickard’s remark, “Height is fleeting. Beauty is not.” I was interested to discover (at least according to the research I did) that when the 1st National and Ramsey Towers done in 1931 at 33 stories, the tallest buildings in Los Angeles (for example) appeared to have been 15 stories! Even if I missed something, I suspect that our 1931 ancestors felt much like we do today, at that time. Of course, the Great Depression likely chilled that enthusiasm.
Good post, Steve!