Tulsa service station nominated to National Register

Cities Service Station No. 8 in Tulsa has been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, according to a recent print edition of the Tulsa County News.

The nomination for long-closed station, at 1648 Southwest Blvd. (aka Route 66), was unanimously approved by the Tulsa Preservation Commission and also approved by the state.

The newspaper story quoted Jim Adelman, property manager for the building.

“The most challenging thing was the porcelain panels along the outside of the structure. […] They originally were made at Southwest Porcelain on Charles Page Boulevard. But that has been gone a long time. Each piece had to be carefully taken down and numbered. Then each was sandblasted and a powder coating applied before they went back up. Some pieces had to be repaired in a body shop and a few we had to be built to replace the unsalvageable.

“This Historic Preservation requirements are very exact and specific. For example, the molding around the building had to be just so. […] This isn’t something you can just go out and buy, but has to be acquired — about 1,000 pounds of it. Luckily, we found a building being torn down that had some of that work.”

Whether the station goes into the National Register should be known by late February to early March. Once nominated by a state, National Register listings are seldom rejected.

The station was built about 1940. The station received a $30,000 cost-share grant from the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program in 2009 to help refurbish it. You can see what the station looked like just a few years ago here. Tulsa attorney James Frasier is a co-owner of the building, and has it up for lease now.