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PrintLunch With - Chair, Modern Tulsa committee, Tulsa Foundation for Architecture
Shane Hood
Time: 11:30 a.m.
Date: March 8
Place: Boulder Grill
Shane Hood’s enthusiasm for Tulsa’s modern architecture can quickly make you an advocate for his cause, even if your personal style is more old colonial.
Hood, a partner in Tepera-Hood design firm, chairs the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture’s Modern Tulsa committee. Its task: to increase awareness and appreciation of the period, and to assure we don’t pull down important examples of a style that helped define the mid-20th century.
Among them: the Lortondale housing addition at East 26th Street and South Yale Avenue, where Hood and his wife live; the Oral Roberts University campus; and downtown buildings such as the old downtown YMCA, Central Library, Civic Center Complex, Petroleum Club, the “most modern” First National Autobank, University Club tower and revamped Holiday Inn, where we are enjoying our lunch (and where, wisely, he says, remodelers kept to the spirit of the structure).
He says “modern” can be defined different ways but generally means using the latest technology, materials and methods. It emphasizes “qualities that would affect humans — the space, the light, the things that would affect their lives in buildings and houses,” Hood says.
He “got stoked” on the style when he attended architecture school at Drury University in Springfield, Mo. He and his wife, Heather, moved to Tulsa following a Drury friend who lived here and showed them the city. He left; they stayed.
Modern has become a “hot spot the last couple of years for the preservation world,” he tells me. (He points out that the ORU campus was the most popular stop when the National Trust for Historic Preservation met here in October 2008.)
“It’s coming of age, but a lot of people don’t see the value in it, so there’s been a big push to find what was important about it,” Hood says.
His committee has begun creating awareness events, both for the general public and for real estate agents, who can tour the “Mod of the Month” home to better understand modern’s components when showing houses. Agents have influence with buyers, he notes, and can point out the authentic elements, such as terrazzo floors and mahogany paneling, that give the homes value — and shouldn’t be hidden with carpet or paint.
Lortondale is probably the city’s most extensive modern housing development, but such homes dot the streets of Sungate, Ranch Acres, Park Plaza, Wedgewood, Southern Gardens, Patrick Henry and Dollie-Mac, located near the airport, he says.
“I see the work we do with Modern Tulsa (the committee) as raising an awareness of and preserving precedents for good, progressive future design,” he adds, noting later, “I believe our city leadership has an obligation for smart, progressive development and planning and the way we embrace being a 21st century city.
“I’m just really passionate about it. I think Tulsa has an untapped tourist market because of its architecture. We have the art deco. We also have all the oil mansions. We have the mid-century modern international style and we can really do something similar to what L.A. and Chicago do. They call them archi-tours.”
Good idea. Let’s get started.
Editor’s note: To learn more about Tulsa’s modern architecture, visit www.moderntulsa.net.
