In the 1920s, while New York was building the Empire State Building and Miami was painting its seaside hotels in pastel colours, a town in Oklahoma became, almost by accident, one of the continent's most extraordinary laboratories of Art Deco architecture. Few people know this. Those who have been there do not forget it.
To understand why Tulsa is what it is, one has to go back to oil, that of the Glenn Pool reserve. A typical American story: in the early decades of the 20th century, the banks of the Arkansas River concealed colossal reserves of crude oil. Within a few years, the black gold transformed a border town in a boomtown, term for that sudden, golden fortune that descends from above on an urban agglomeration to convert it from forgettable to flourishing. An irresistible lure for entrepreneurs, architects and designers who flocked there from the country's most cosmopolitan metropolises.
These pilgrimages brought with them a taste of the moment. Art Deco, the style that dominated New York and Paris, which translated enthusiasm for modernity into bold geometries, shiny surfaces, and decorations inspired by the classical world and the machine at the same time. If in Manhattan Art Deco was expressed in the sophisticated elegance of skyscrapers as the Chrysler Building e the Empire State, in Miami took on a light and colourful identity designed to attract tourists and lovers of the good life, in Tulsa the movement found a third waymore rooted, more proud, able to mix the international vocabulary of style with local culture and identity.
Buildings that tell the story of a city
The result is still visible today, in a concentration of Art Deco architecture that has few comparisons in the United States. The Will Rogers High School, built in 1939 with federal funds from the Works Progress Administration, is perhaps the most striking example: a public school building, in an ordinary residential neighbourhood, with soaring towers and terracotta sculptures worthy of a government building. The reason, simple and disarming, is that the citizens of Tulsa did not settle for less. A school was an institution and institutions deserved greatness.
The Philcade - office tower commissioned by the oil tycoon Waite Phillips - features gold leaves, characteristic zigzag motifs and gothic gargoyles on the façade. The Tulsa Club, designed by Bruce Goff when he was just 23 years old and completed in 1927, has housed chambers of commerce and exclusive clubs, survived three fires and decades of neglect, and has recently been restored with the preservation of the original terrazzo floors, marble details and chandeliers of the period. Lo Union Depot, completed in 1930 with its sharp geometries inspired by nascent industry, now houses the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.
One of the most unique examples is the Pythian Building, also by Goff, in which the decorative motifs on the floor of the ground floor take up the designs of a traditional Native American blanket. It is Art Deco, but it is also Oklahoma. The movement, in this sense, demonstrated its ductility in Tulsa: capable of absorbing local references without losing its formal coherence.
An Italian echo
Art Deco, after all, is a style that changes face depending on where it takes root. In Italy, it arrived during the years of Fascism and took a different turn, monumental, rhetorical, in the service of power. La Milan Central Station is its emblem, with its marble, its gigantic staircase and the great steel vault over the tracks. An architecture designed to legitimise the regime and impress the citizen.
In Turin, along Via Roma, the style merged with Rationalism, resulting in a more restrained but equally scenic elegance, culminating in the San Federico Gallery. Tulsa, on the other hand, tells of something different, an Art Deco without propaganda, born of the private wealth and civic pride of a community that wanted to exist in the world.
Tulsa King and the city's second life
Those who have followed the series Tulsa King on Paramount+ will have seen those interiors, those boulevards, that special Oklahoma light. The series has helped bring international attention to a city that many in Europe struggle to even place on the map. It is one of the many ways in which popular culture becomes a tool for enhancing heritage, unintentionally or otherwise.
Yet, this exuberant architectural style has inspired works of literature, photography, film, comics. It provides a backdrop, adds bite and character, lends a unique atmosphere to any story, without ever identifying or revealing itself.
In Florence, meanwhile, the 1920s are back on show
For those who cannot get to Oklahoma, but want to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of that era, there is an opportunity close by. From 2 April to 25 August 2026, Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence hosts Florence Déco. Atmospheres of the 1920s, an exhibition that restores to the general public the city's central role in the spread of Art Deco in Italy and Europe, organised by Fondazione MUS.E.
The exhibition route embraces ceramics, glassware, furniture, jewellery, textiles, clothes, posters and costumes, with works ranging from Gio Ponti's contributions for Richard-Ginori to Galileo Chini's creations, to the advertising posters and silks appreciated by D'Annunzio. A rare opportunity to see up close how a style born in Paris crossed the Alps and found, even in Italy, a voice of its own.
From Tulsa to Florence, via New York and Milan: Art Deco is one of those styles that never ceases to tell the story of the century in which it was born.
