Hard as might be to believe, but just a decade ago Deep Deuce was a no-man’s land where development seemed to be an odd and unlikely prospect. Of course we know today it’s downtown’s most vibrant mixed neighborhood, home to restaurants, offices, a market and plenty of housing. Penny Owen, once one of The Oklahoman’s best feature writers (she left the paper a few months ago), joined me in trying to capture the area’s past and future with this 1998 front page story:

Sentimental Journey Proposals Revive Deep Deuce Memories Deuce

By Steve Lackmeyer, Penny Owen

Staff Writers

Sunday, October 25, 1998

The good times still come easy for James “Doebelly” Brooks.

All the 78-year-old Deep Deuce diehard has to do is close his eyes, raise his face to the ceiling and turn his protruding bottom lip into a smile. The music, he says, flows into his ear, then stops at his heart, long enough to kick in a rhythmic ba-boom, ba-boom. Then his foot starts tapping. Then it all comes back.

Doebelly picked his dance spot from the sounds traveling down NE 2, in the once-flourishing black business district often just called the Deuce.

Doebelly in Deep Deuce, 1991

It just took an earful to know where Don Cherry was blowing his trumpet, where Charlie Christian was jamming or whether Count Basie was in town.

Dancing got Doebelly married once. He stole the show on another night when he urged a not-so-attractive dance partner on the floor.

“There was good times and bad times,” says Doebelly, eyes still shut tight. “The bad times was when I couldn’t get down there.”

Deep Deuce is just a memory now. Only a handful of buildings remain, and they are boarded up and desolate. But at least two competing developers envision a revived Deep Deuce where remaining buildings are restored and a place is created where hundreds of new downtown dwellers can live.

How serious is such interest? Urban Renewal officials have the task over the next few months of deciding who gets to invest at least $15 million to rebuild Deep Deuce. At the same time, some folks fear Deep Deuce will become a commercialized urban playground devoid of its rich past.

“It will come back, but it won’t be the same,” laments Charlie Nicholson, an organizer of Deep Deuce’s annual Charlie Christian Jazz Festival. “Too much of (commercialization) will kill it.”

According to the state Historical Society, Doebelly was the last resident to leave his beloved Deuce, where he propped up a hand-painted sign pointing folks into a chair for a good shoe shine. Doebelly called Deep Deuce home for 65 years before leaving for good in 1995.

Now, he opens his eyes to a cluttered living room several miles away. His shoe shining bench sits on his front porch, next to a Black Chronicle newspaper rack.

He misses the Deuce, where prominent black businessmen, rich in dreams, fought for justice and swapped stories on the sidewalks, in the barber shops and at Ruby’s Grill.

The Deuce was a small, spirited town, though a forced one, where segregation drew the lines where blacks could and could not live.

Doctors, lawyers, dentists and insurance agents mingled at the Slaughter Building at NE 2 and Stiles Avenue. The building’s third floor was an auditorium that featured the likes of Bill “Count” Basie, the Blue Devils, Charlie Christian and Jimmy Rushing.

Strolling the streets regularly was Judge A.B. McDonald, who smoked a fat cigar and carried an old suitcase stuffed with cash.

“He looked something like Howard Hughes, except he was black,” Doebelly said.

Locals would holler, “Hey Judge, whacha got in that case?”

“None o’ yer business,” he’d snap back.

Doebelly recalled how McDonald got the word “Negro” taken off the official ballot. He also used an entire block to grow vegetables along NE 7. Everything and everybody was within walking distance.

Earlyday Deep Deuce

Kids, too, hung around NE 2 – especially on Saturdays, when they’d take in a movie at the Aldridge, Oklahoma City’s first black theater. They might take in an ice cream cone as well at the old Bethel Drug Co. – a place straight out of Norman Rockwell, with glossy wooden floors, ice cream chairs and a soda jerk behind the stretched-out counter.

Even if developers succeed in bringing the neighborhood back to Deep Deuce, Doebelly doesn’t expect them to re-create the camaraderie he still can revive in his mind. “If you was sick, they come to see you. If you couldn’t do your house, they’d come and do it for you.”

Preachers sat around the kitchen tables and prayed with folks. Mostly, people just got together.

“If I came over to your house and I got outta line, I got a whuppin’ there,” Doebelly recalled fondly. “If I had my way, I’d go back down on Second Street.”

Deep Deuce, 1998

Why Did Deuce Die?

Not every building in Deep Deuce is boarded up. Good Baptists still attend church at Calvary Baptist Tabernacle on the corner of NE 2 and Walnut. Patients still visit Dr. G.E. Finley at his building across the street.

Three surviving buildings along NE 2 are listed on the National Historic Register. They’re not architecturally significant – but they’re historical, said Dr. Bob Blackburn, deputy director of the historical society.

Blackburn and others say there is more than one culprit responsible for the area’s demise.

“In the 1960s and even into the ’70s, there was still a thriving business district that had the area’s historic character.”

But like most inner cities, the Deuce fell victim to sprawl.

“The young generation, they went car crazy,” Doebelly said. “People stopped walkin’ the streets.”

Then came Urban Renewal.

Urban planners across the country launched a war against blight that called for demolition of old buildings, often without regard for historical significance. Urban Renewal in the 1970s often replaced old ornate structures in need of repair with lots that remain empty today.

The opening of Interstate 235 cured downtown of traffic snarls that resulted from Broadway Extension turning into a three-lane residential corridor south of NW 36. Highway builders, however, removed dozens of homes and businesses that kept Deep Deuce going.

“The life blood was gone, so the heart died,” Blackburn said.

Music and the Deuce

Deep Second was our fond nickname for the block in which Rushing worked and lived, and where most Negro business and entertainment were found, and before he went to cheer a whiter world, his voice evoked a festive spirit of the place.

Indeed, he was the natural essence of its joy. For Jimmy Rushing was not simply a local entertainer, he expressed a value, an attitude about the world for which our lives afforded no other definition.

We had a Negro church and a segregated school, a few lodges and fraternal organizations, and beyond these there was the great, white world. We were pushed off to what seemed to be the least desirable side of the city, and our system of justice was based upon Texas law, yet there was an optimism within the Negro community and a sense of possibility which, despite our awareness of limitation (dramatized so brutally in the Tulsa riot of 1921), transcended all of this; and it was this rock- bottom sense of reality, coupled with our sense of the possibility of rising above it, which sounded in Rushing’s voice….

We were still too young to attend night dances, but yet old enough to gather beneath the corner street lamp on summer evenings, anyone might halt the conversation to exclaim “Listen, they’re raising hell down at Slaughter’s Hall,” and we’d turn our heads westward to hear Jimmy’s voice soar up the hill and down, as pure and as miraculously unhindered by distance and earthbound things as is the body in youthful dreams of flying.

- Ralph Ellison, from “Shadow and Act,” 1964.

Opinions differ as to how NE 2 and the surrounding area became known as Deep Deuce. Some believe the term alludes to the wild times that could be found among the community’s jazz clubs and beer joints.

Blackburn offers a much more mundane explanation.

“If you travel along Second Street, and you go across the tracks, first you go along a little rise where the Calvary Baptist church is, and then you go down,” Blackburn said.

Despite such explanations, many will forever associate Deep Deuce with jazz, rhythm and blues.

Musicians who journeyed to the Deuce included Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, Fats Domino, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, James Brown, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Ike and Tina Turner.

Benny Goodman wooed hometown favorite Charlie Christian to New York City several times to perform.

Oklahoma City had its own sound.

While jazz in the eastern states sounded closer to New Orleans-style tunes, Oklahoma City jazz had more of a swing to it, said Nicholson, who collects and sells old records in his store along Classen.

“Individuals would come in and just cook it. Everything walked and talked and moved,” Nicholson said of days long gone. “They were on a magical journey.”

Along came Zelia Breaux, the so-called “godmother of music,” who taught jazz to the likes of Jimmy Rushing and Charlie Christian at Douglass High School.

“She was one of those gifted teachers who could motivate students,” Blackburn said. “She created this culture of music.”

Deuce nightclubs and beer joints vibrated with a creativity and wholesomeness that was a whole lot of fun – but not very lucrative.

Musicians who had any aspirations, or who simply needed to fill their wallets, were forced to leave Oklahoma City behind for their careers, Nicholson said. They headed for bands in other jazz-rich cities – like Memphis and Chicago.

A Future

Officials with the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority promise none of the remaining buildings will be destroyed to make room for the new Deuce. Development proposals pitched last week offer different visions for saving what’s left of the area.

Nicholson wonders if the original spirit of Deep Deuce jazz and the district’s character can survive such commercialization.

“How’re you gonna let ‘em vent if you got ‘em all stiffed up, charging $3 a head?” he wondered. To really bring jazz back will mean bringing the black people back into the district and all the emotion.

“You can’t go back and do what was done,” Nicholson said. “But if the jazz is good, people will come.”

Tyler and Lane Peyton during happier times at the Deep Deuce Grill

I finally reached Lane Peyton, who along with his brother Tyler operated the Deep Deuce Grill until midnight Wednesday. If there is one thing Peyton and building owner/landlord/restaurant founder Craig Brown agree on, it’s that there were “differences.”

“It was definitely not friendly,’ Peyton said. “There may be more to come.”

Peyton said he was negotiating in good faith to renew the lease for the restaurant and was surprised when Brown shut it down and locked the doors. Peyton said it took him five days to recover all of his assets.

One asset may yet to be disputed: the name.

I’m not sure how this all works, but apparently even though Brown named the restaurant and opened it before signing  a lease with the Peytons a few years later, Lane Peyton says he has a trademark on the name.

Will the restaurant reopen? Brown says yes, and with new operators. Peyton says there is “debate as to who has the right to do it.”

I don’t know what to make of all this other than to give you both sides, which I have done, and note that an overwelming majority of readers at www.okccentral.com and www.okctalk.com have indicated they were none too happy with the Peytons’ operation during the final year or so.

The Deep Deuce Grill - doors closed for now.

That’s a promise by Craig Brown, who started the restaurant seven years ago on what was really a pretty big leap of faith. For the past couple of years Brown has had an uneasy relationship with the operators of the restaurant and on Oct. 1, with him reporting their lease expiring, he shut the restaurant down. (*I have placed a call to the number I have for the operator, but have yet to hear back)

Craig Brown. back in control of the Deep Deuce Grill

Anyone who visits www.okctalk.com knows Craig isn’t alone in his dissatisfaction with the previous operators. Just days before the restaurant closed, the restaurant was getting hit with pretty harsh criticism:

Horrible experience.

Just walked out of Deep Deuce. I was with a group of 5 friends. We took a table on the patio – only one other table occupied. Sat there for 20 minutes and were never so much as greeted, much less given the opportunity to order. Server even came out and helped a table of ten right next to us (it took quite an effort to work that table without turning to see us). Another group of 6 came in behind us and was equally ignored. When we left, I made a point to walk in to the bar and told the staff we were leaving after having been sitting outside for 20 minutes with no service. The smartass said “you’re welcome.”

They weren’t busy at all – maybe one table inside, 4 to 6 people inside at the bar. Pathetic. We were probably good for a hundred dollar or better tab, and a healthy gratuity. Instead, none of us will be back, and I’ll go out of my way to share my experience.

Incidentally, when I first suggested my group go in to the Deuce, the first comment was “they have horrible service.” Should have listened.

And this:

I used to love Deep Deuce. But the last few times I’ve been there the service has been pretty slow. On one occasion a friend and I sat there for 10 or 15 minutes without ever being served, so we rolled out. It was a Sunday afternoon, not that busy either.

All of this is sad considering that the Deep Deuce Grill was, for years, the place for power players and also a great neighborhood hangout. And it was also an expression of Craig Brown’s own personality, who bought up the area back when no one cared. Craig initially got interested in the area when he was hired to tear down some of the more dillapidated structures. But once at work, it was Craig who decided to buy up what few old structures remained. And it was Craig who toiled away at renovating his first building on NE 1 (now home to a law firm, and then moved on to doing a deal with First Worthing to build the Deep Deuce Apartments. Craig meanwhile put his heart into renovating the one-time home of Charlie Christian and turning it into an idealized neighborhood bar and grill. To understand what sort of a risk Craig was taking, one must remember what Deep Deuce looked like just a decade ago….

Deep Deuce, 1998.

The Deuce, like the neighborhood a decade ago, ain’t dead yet. Craig is doing a major overhaul that includes repaving of the crumbling parking lot, a top to bottom cleaning of the entire restaurant, an overhaul of the menu, re-introduction of the restaurant as a neighborhood hang-out and as a venue for jazz.

During a visit Friday, I saw evidence that this isn’t just talk – that Craig is dedicated to bringing the Deuce back to life, better than ever. The clean-up is underway, and it looks like Craig may have some impressive candidates to take over the restaurant operation and make it the place, once again, for downtown residents and the city’s power crowd.

Candidates for Demolition? Not under Urban Renewal.

The same buildings today - home to the Deep Deuce apartments clubhouse.

The Littlepage Building - boarded up and ugly, right? Once again, the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority chose a new course of direction and required developers to build around the blight.

The Littlepage Building today - home to Sage Cafe and Gourmet Market, a corporate furnishings store and apartments upstairs.

Another building that needed a savior and could have been torn down in the name of progress.

All of these buildings could have been declared dead and targeted for the wrecking ball under the very same logic that apparently is being applied to Core to Shore. Now that we’ve seen what happened with the infusion of new development and a decision not to tear down old structures, let’s take another look at what’s left in Core to Shore.

Maybe it's easy to write this building off - the north facade's windows are broken and covered with graffiti as city officials have turned their backs on building maintenance in the area.

The same building in its heyday - once home to the Oklahoma City branch of International Harvester.

Another building that doesn't appear in any Core to Shore plans.

Yet another building not shown in Core to Shore plans.

Definitely not shown in Core to Shore plans. Once the original Film Exchange building.

For a city that claims to have learned from the demolition spree of the 1970s, it amazes me that there appears to be no discussion of this area bounded by I-40 and Shields Boulevard. These buildings could remain standing – if the city were to decide to build a convention center south of Lower Bricktown as proposed by former Mayor Kirk Humphreys.

To date the only explanation I’ve heard for building a new convention center south of Ford Center, and thus eliminating most or all of these buildings, is that the site south of Lower Bricktown might be too expensive and that “something must be done” as one City Hall source told me, with all the land that will be opened up by replacement of the elevated highway with an at-grade boulevard.

We also now know, thanks to a regular reader of this site, that the planning report on Core to Shore had this to say about the above buildings:

While no other buildings have the architectural significance of Little Flower Church and Union Station, several notable older buildings, such as the Latino Community Development Agency building, contribute to the character of the area and could be incorporated into development projects if economically feasible.”

Ah yes, so the experts have spoken. Of course, their forefathers also deemed the Criterion Theater, the Baum Building, Hales Building and many more not to be significant either. My hero, the late Mary Jo Nelson, wrote many a story challenging those experts. I think I’ll just let the photos and the history speak for themselves.

But let’s pretend city leaders were pursuing a different path for redevelopment of Core to Shore – one that left these buildings standing. Here’s the question folks – do you believe placing a boulevard through this area and sandwiching it between Bricktown, a new convention center and a central park will or will not spur the sort of private redevelopment and restoration work that took place with the addition of apartments in Deep Deuce?

(This post is dedicated to the memory of Mary Jo Nelson)

Kevin and Charifa Smith hosted a grand opening party tonight at Sage in Deep Deuce and had a good showing that included a lot of familiar downtown residents. Yes, a community really is emerging here.

After reading today’s story about Sage (with excellent photos by Bryan Terry), you might be interested in learning more about Deep Deuce. Doug Loudenback has an incredible web site, and he has what I agree is the definitive online history of the area.

This bar was bought from Architectural Antiques and it reportedly was removed from a downtown hotel before it was razed in the 1970s.

A closer look: the only identifying marks on the bar is this old ad for Camel cigarettes.

Here are more glimpses of Sage’s market and kitchen:

The Sage kitchen will be visible to both people shopping in the adjoining market and to passersby outside.

The Sage organic market will include vintage-style and antique display cases offering fruits, vegetables and other organic offerings.

Ok, it’s time for me to fess up; when I first met Kevin and Charifa Smith, their effort to open a cafe and market in Deep Deuce seemed to good to be true. After all, they are among the nicest people I’ve met over these many years covering downtown (and I’ve met a lot of nice people). Their vision of a combined organic market and upscale cafe in the heart of Deep Deuce, is the sort of thing downtown residents have been clamoring for. Their story is both sad and yet a perfect display of taking a tragedy (the death of their first child) and finding a way to turn that grief into something good.

Like any significant downtown venture, delays were to be expected, and they did occur. And yet construction is well underway, and now the couple are giving a full view of what’s to come at their new website, www.sageokc.com.

With the Wedge and the Deep Deuce Grill already drawing in customers and a furnishings store for corporate relocations already operating in the district, Deep Deuce is rapidly transforming into what can truly be considered downtown’s first truly mixed-use neighborhood.

Forgive me for the delay in posting this information on The Leslie – the next housing project planned by Ron and Jason Bradshaw. Jason noticed questions at OKC Talk about the Leslie renderings and pricing information and he asked if I could help them by posting all of this at OKC Central.

So, without further delay…

Leslie South
Unit # Number of Bedrooms Levels Square Footage (MOL) Sales Price

BUILDING A

101-A 1 1 560 $99,900
102-A 1 1 560 $99,900
201-A 2 1 1153 $230,000
202-A 2 1 1153 $230,000
301-A 2 1 1153 $232,000
302-A 2/1 2 1330 $266,000

BUILDING B

101-B 1 1 560 $99,900
102-B 1 1 560 $99,900
201-B 2 1 1153 $230,000
202-B 2 1 1153 $230,000
301-B 2 1 1153 $232,000
302-B 2/1 2 1330 $266,000

BUILDING C

101-C 1 1 560 $99,900
102-C 1 1 560 $99,900
201-C 2 1 1153 $230,000
202-C 2 1 1153 $230,000
301-C 2 1 1153 $232,000
302-C 2/1 2 1330 $266,000

BUILDING D

101-D SOLD 1 1 560 SOLD
102-D SOLD 1 1 560 SOLD
201-D 2 1 1153 $230,000
202-D 2 1 1153 $230,000
301-D 2 1 1153 $232,000
302-D 2/1 2 1330 $266,000

Have fun and spot the downtown players … my spottings included Greg Banta visiting with Mickey Clagg (now that’s a discussion I’d like to listen in on), Bert Belanger, who was accompanied by a Houston apartment developer (just visiting, I’m sure), Chris and Meg Salyer, who I’ll bet are simply bewildered by the idea that Steve Mason has taken properties on the verge of collapse and spent millions to bring them back to life (this inside joke is a test on how much you know about the history of Automobile Alley), architect Rand Elliott and his wife Jeanette (still waiting to see what Kerr Park will look like), MidTown’s Arturo Chavez (quit following me!), the usual gang from Downtown Oklahoma City Inc., Skirvin Hilton General Manager John Williams, that crazy river guy Pat Downes, and many more.

Final note: Ah… free food and drink. Sure fire way to get a reporter in the room. This issue of Oklahoma Today is really impressive – it’s a nice recap of what’s going on downtown and throughout the city.