Completed in 1931 as the headquarters of the First National Bank of Oklahoma, the First National Center is one of the most spectacular Art Deco banking temples in the American south — its 33-story Gothic limestone tower housing a grand banking hall whose ornate polychrome ceiling and bronze fixtures survived decades of institutional use before a major restoration brought the building back to life in 2021.
At a glance
Standing at the corner of Robinson Avenue and Park Avenue in downtown Oklahoma City, the First National Center was designed by the Chicago firm Weary & Alford and completed in 1931 for the First National Bank of Oklahoma. At 33 stories, it was the tallest building in Oklahoma from its opening until 1971. The building’s Gothic ornamental vocabulary — applied to a steel-frame tower with limestone cladding, vertical window piers, and an elaborate upper-floor crown — makes it a major example of the American commercial Gothic style that flourished between 1928 and 1934. The banking hall interior, with its barrel-vaulted polychrome ceiling and original bronze fixtures, is among the finest surviving spaces of its type in the central United States. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and reopened in 2021 after a major renovation as a mixed-use complex with hotel, retail, and office components.
Key facts
- Completed: 1931
- Architects: Weary & Alford Company (Chicago)
- Style: Gothic Art Deco
- Address: 120 N Robinson Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73102
- Height: 33 stories, 446 ft (136 m)
- NRHP: Listed 1984
- Current use: Mixed-use hotel/retail/office (reopened 2021 after major renovation)
- Signature feature: Grand banking hall with polychrome barrel-vaulted ceiling and original bronze ornament
History
The First National Bank of Oklahoma commissioned its skyscraper headquarters in the late 1920s, at the peak of Oklahoma City’s oil-fuelled prosperity. The bank engaged Weary & Alford, a Chicago firm with experience in large commercial tower projects, to design a building that would anchor the city’s financial district and signal the permanence of the institution. The result was a 33-story Gothic Art Deco tower in Indiana limestone, with a programme of Gothic ornament at the crown and at street level — pointed arches, carved foliage, and tracery panels — that framed one of the most ambitious banking hall interiors in the south-central United States.
The banking hall, entered from Robinson Avenue through bronze-framed Gothic doorways, featured a barrel-vaulted ceiling of polychrome tile and plasterwork, marble walls, and bronze fixtures throughout. It was the most lavish banking interior in Oklahoma at the time of its opening and remained in continuous use as a financial institution for decades. During the oil bust of the 1980s, the bank collapsed and the building changed hands several times, passing through a period of partial vacancy and institutional neglect. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, it remained one of Oklahoma City’s most architecturally significant — and most underused — buildings through the 1990s and 2000s.
A major renovation and adaptive reuse project, completed in 2021, transformed the building into a mixed-use complex incorporating a hotel, restaurant, retail, and office space. The banking hall was restored to near-original condition, its polychrome ceiling cleaned and repaired, its bronze fixtures conserved, and the space opened to the public as a grand interior civic room. The 2021 reopening was widely celebrated as one of the most successful historic preservation projects in Oklahoma history.
What you see
The First National Center’s Robinson Avenue facade is a limestone composition of great vertical authority: the tower rises from a three-story base of polished stone through a shaft of vertical piers and Gothic-detailed spandrel panels to an elaborate crown at the upper floors. The Gothic ornamental programme — pointed arches at the entrance level, carved gargoyles at the setback zone, tracery panels and pinnacles at the crown — is applied to a building whose fundamental structure and massing is unambiguously Art Deco; the Gothic is surface inflection rather than structural logic, deployed for the symbolic weight it carried in the cultural imagination of the 1930s.
The banking hall interior is the building’s architectural masterpiece. Entered from Robinson Avenue, it is a rectangular hall of approximately 60 by 120 feet, covered by a barrel-vaulted ceiling of polychrome tilework in terracotta, rust, and gold tones. The side walls are clad in veined marble; the original bronze teller counters, door frames, and light fixtures survive in restored condition. The hall is lit by large windows on the south wall and by the indirect glow of the ceiling ornament; in the evening, the polychrome vault reads as a luminous canopy over the marble floor. This is one of the most extraordinary interior spaces in Oklahoma City and one of the finest Art Deco banking interiors in the country.
Practical information
- Banking hall: Open during hotel/restaurant hours; accessible to non-hotel guests
- Best time: Morning light on Robinson Ave facade; evening for banking hall lighting
- Time needed: 45 minutes banking hall + exterior
- GPS: 35.4683° N, 97.5161° W
- Nearest transit: Oklahoma City Streetcar Park Avenue/Robinson stop
Getting there
The First National Center stands at 120 N Robinson Avenue in downtown Oklahoma City, one block from the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall and 3 minutes’ walk from the Oklahoma City Streetcar. Will Rogers World Airport is approximately 10 miles (16 km) south-west; taxi or rideshare to downtown takes 15–20 minutes.
Nearby
- Civic Center Music Hall (1937) — PWA Moderne performing arts complex at 201 N Walker Ave, 3 minutes west
- Oklahoma City National Memorial — memorial to the 1995 bombing, Symbolic Memorial Pool and Field of Empty Chairs, 5 minutes east
- Myriad Botanical Gardens — downtown park, 5 minutes south-west
Sources
- National Register of Historic Places, First National Center nomination (1984) — nps.gov
- Oklahoma Historical Society, First National Bank of Oklahoma records — okhistory.org
- Oklahoma Gazette: First National Center renovation coverage, 2019–2021
- Preservation Oklahoma, advocacy documentation — preservationok.org
- Wikidata, First National Center Q5453420 — wikidata.org
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