DISTRICT: Meadow Gold District is a reflection of Tulsa’s, past future

Streets of GOLD

COURTESY, BERYL FORD COLLECTION, ROTARY CLUB OF TULSA Tulsa’s Meadow Gold sign stands at 11th Street and Lewis Avenue, where it stood from the 1930s until 2004, when it was moved into storage.

Meadow Gold District brings together Tulsa’s past, present and future

JAMES D. WATTS JR. Tulsa World Magazine

Take a stroll along 11th Street, from Peoria Avenue to Utica Avenue, and you’ll catch a glimpse of Tulsa’s past, present and future.

The present is immediately visible in the array of businesses operating along this stretch of

Route 66. They range from art galleries and tattoo studios to restaurants, mini-museums, boutique retailers and dog trainers.

But the city’s past is equally visible — most obviously in the gigantic, neon-fueled sign that gives the Meadow Gold District its name. Built in the 1930s, this porcelain-and-metal advertisement had stood at the corner of 11th Street and Lewis Avenue until 2004, when it was dismantled and stored away as a collection of nonprofit organizations determined to preserve and promote Tulsa’s history and close connection to Route 66 raised the funds and find the place to provide this Tulsa icon with a new home.

It would take five years and fundraising efforts from the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, a grant from the National Park Service and funds from the city’s Vision 2025 campaign to relocate the Meadow Gold sign atop a new plaza at 1324 E. 11th St.

“It was just one of those icons — of Tulsa and of Route 66 — that a lot of people didn’t want to be lost to history,” said Ken Busby, president and CEO of the Route 66 Alliance.

But the past is also present in places such as Ike’s Chili, the city’s oldest restaurant, which has been in continuous operation since 1908. Once a downtown landmark, Ike’s set up shop at 1503 E. 11th St. in 2014, just up the road from El Rancho Grande, 1629 E. 11th St. This bastion of Tex-Mex in Tulsa hasn’t been around quite as long as Ike’s — it opened in 1953 — but it has managed to stay in one place throughout all the years of boom and bust that what is now the Meadow Gold District has seen.

One can even visit a bit of Tulsa’s past at one of the newest tenants of the district. Decopolis, 1401 E. 11th St., is a cabinet of curiosities that contains a space devoted to images of Tulsa’s Art Deco architecture; if you want to go back even farther in time, an over-sized and surprisingly life-like dinosaur occupies one of the main areas.

STEPHEN PINGRY, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE Michelle Firment Reid stands in her studio Atelier MFR on 11th Street in the Meadow Gold District in Tulsa.

Actress Lea Thompson takes a selfie in front of Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios on 66 while in Tulsa.

COURTESY, LEA THOMPSON

The Sky Gallery on Route 66 is part of the revitalization of the Meadow Gold area of Tulsa. Janet Benton runs The Sky Gallery with her husband, Michael.

STEPHEN PINGRY, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE

Jenkins & Co. is part of the Meadow Gold District.

STEPHEN PINGRY, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE

STEPHEN PINGRY, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE Bobby Oertel opened Bobby O’s Slices + Pies in 2018 at 1502 E. 11th St. in the Meadow Gold District.

And just across the street, Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios, 1347 E. 11th St., is a fond throwback to the sort of roadside attractions that once dominated the Mother Road in its heyday, with its 21-foot-tall space cowboy namesake gazing watchfully at the tourists who regularly crowd around his booted feet.

As for the future, that’s evident in a relatively recent influx of new businesses into the area, and the revitalization of the neighborhood adjacent to it, that points to Meadow Gold District as one of Tulsa’s burgeoning destination locations, for locals as well as outof-towners.

Aaron Meek has been working at creating a new future for this part of Tulsa for more than a decade. It’s a place he knows well — he grew up in this neighborhood, where his family-owned Meek’s Furniture occupied a corner at 11th Street and Peoria Avenue until the mid-1980s.

“It was almost a self-contained neighborhood,” he said. “There were all kinds of shops at street level, and upstairs would be the people like your dentist. I remember there being a Kip’s Big Boy where you could get lunch and dinner.”

But the neighborhood that Meek remembers was already beginning to go downhill when he was a youngster, and by the late 1970s, it had transformed into one of

TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE Bins of albums await vinyl shoppers at Josey Records in the Meadow Gold District.

Tulsa’s most nefarious areas, a place through which everyday people wouldn’t think to drive, much less stroll the sidewalks, especially after dark.

Kimberly Norman had decided to go into real estate “as a lark” about 16 years ago, after she retired from a career in the health care field, and her first purchase was two buildings near 12th Street and Quincy Avenue that she bought sight unseen.

“And it turned out I bought what was basically a drug dealer’s drive-through,” Norman said. “I had signed the huge mortgage and realized I had to do something to try to fix this because I really couldn’t fail.”

Norman helped to establish the Forest Orchard neighborhood association, which encompasses the residential areas just south of 11th Street and which began slowly to transform the area from a place where most of the buildings were owned by investors to a true neighborhood, occupied by people who owned the places where they lived.

That, along with entrepreneurs such as Meek working to buy up abandoned buildings and working to bring in new businesses, has turned the Meadow Gold District from a red-light area to ... well, a golden one.

And that golden glow — literal and metaphorical — continues to attract people to the district.

Tulsa artist Michelle Firment Reid recently opened Atelier MFR, which serves as her personal studio, as well as a place for her to conduct classes and workshops.

“I wanted to have a storefront location, something with north light,” Reid said. “I considered 15th Street, but I really wanted to be on 11th Street because I saw all these things happening here. There is a real cool vibe to the neighborhood, and it’s a very friendly place. There’s a good mix of the upscale and the funky.”

Reid opened her establishment in April 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and when 11th Street was still undergoing construction.

“I figured if I can survive Tulsa road construction and a pandemic, I can face anything,” she said, laughing.

Anchoring the 11th Street and Peoria Avenue intersection is the new Meadow Gold Shops and Lofts, one of Meek’s projects. The upper level of the building, which once housed the Corner Cafe, has been turned into luxury efficiency apartments.

The lower level is being shaped into a range of businesses, including the storefront of chefs Joel Bein’s and Amanda Simcoe’s The Meat and Cheese Show; a new location for Angry Axe, the Tulsa business that lets people entertain themselves by throwing axes at targets; and a new restaurant, the Wildflower Cafe, which is set to open in late March.

Owner Heather Linville said she was initially uncertain about the location, as “it’s such a busy corner, and this is my first shot at opening a place of my own. But after meeting with Aaron (Meek and Group M Investments team), I knew this was the spot.

“I hope Wildflower Cafe brings a little more brightness into this already amazing and historic Meadow Gold District,” Linville said.

Busby said the idea that prompted the relocation of the Meadow Gold sign — that it could help jumpstart the revitalization of this area of town — has proven to be a worthy one.

“But the truth is,” Busby said, “the great things that are happening in this area isn’t because of the sign. The sign certainly helped because restoring it and placing it here was a way of saying this neighborhood is a place of value. And that was the catalyst for all the visionaries who are making the Meadow Gold District into a true Tulsa destination.”

STEPHEN PINGRY, TULSA WORLD MAGAZINE FILE Mary Beth Babcock owns Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios in the Meadow Gold District.