Daniel Webster High School, located right off Route 66 in southwest Tulsa, recently was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The National Park Service, which runs the National Register program, confirmed the designation during a weekly email Friday. The listing was effective Thursday.
According to a story last fall in the Tulsa World, the Tulsa Preservation Commission recommended the designation to the Tulsa mayor’s office.
Designed by John Duncan Forsyth and three other architects, Webster opened in 1938 at 1919 W. 40th St. The high school’s Art Deco architecture is one of the primary reasons for its recent nomination.
The other major contributing factor is Webster’s status as the first public high school in Tulsa — and one of the first in Oklahoma — to adopt integration in 1955 after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. […]
Being added to the National Register of Historic Places would provide Webster with extra protection from excessive changes. Any kind of renovations would need to meet a certain threshold and preserve the overall integrity of the building.
More details from the Living New Deal:
“The Daniel Webster High School is a two-story and basement structure which contains 15 classrooms, a library, 2 cafeterias, a lecture room, corrective gymnasium, girls’ gymnasium, auditorium seating 400, domestic-science department, 2 manual training rooms, 3 laboratories, offices, swimming pool, dressing rooms. Another adjacent building houses shops, boys’ gymnasium, and lockers. Both structures are fireproof. Exterior walls are brick with stone trim. Both buildings were completed in July 1938 at a construction cost of $662,855 and a project cost of $768,257.”
Webster High School, located at 1919 W. 40th St., also has boasted a number of notable graduates over the decades, including singer Patti Page and Maj. Gen. John Admire.
(Image of Daniel Webster High School in the 1940s from its website)