There's so much; I could poke around this town forever. Perhaps locals think I'm nuts. Sorry; it's interesting.

Here’s an old citizen:

		STEWART. 1910.

Around the corner:

Alas.

A civic building of no distinguishing qualities whatsoever.

Ghastly, to be honest. The top two floors look like they're clawing the life out of the bottom floor.

I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that - what is the theater called?

.

Opened in 1948, so thus it always was; no grand ornate facade was stripped to put up that modern brick wall.

Ghost sign and scoured brick to recall a better day.

I mean, this one had to have a better day.

A severe civic building that exudes importance and authority:

I don’t know why it’s lifting its skirt like that on the corner.

A remnant tooth in an otherwise vacant mouth, with an urban-renewal-era building in the back. Reminds me of the Fargo Civic Center.

More urban renewal junk. Seldom used, never loved, showing its age. Brutal and indifferent.

This stuff never worked.

Downtown bunker malls. So many towns tried. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them failed, and left these blunt dull beasts in the middle of downtown.

An old office building, once the Pride Of, with that common odd touch at the top: you know, this has gone so well, let’s add another floor.

It’s the Manhattan Building. Named after . . . a city in Kansas?

Wikipedia says it was "initially intended as the home of the Manhattan Construction Company, reportedly Oklahoma's first incorporated business."

Around the other side, the vista’s a bit less impressive.

Ask yourself: hotel or office building? And why?

Hotel, of course. And why?

The little windows. That’s the bathroom. And it had lots of them. Wikipedia:

After it opened, the Severs Hotel was considered the finest hotel in the Southwestern United States. It had 216 rooms, 146 of which had private bathrooms, rather uncommon at that time. Among its amenities was a chilled water plant that circulated ice water to all of the rooms. The kitchen had an electric refrigeration system, also considered unique at that time and place.

A view unchanged for sixty years, or longer:

The Surety.

Wikipedia:

The Surety Building was constructed in 1910 in downtown Muskogee, at the corner of Broadway and Third Street by the Southern Surety Company. The approximate cost was $325,000. It was the first building in Eastern Oklahoma to be considered a skyscraper.

And today it is . . . well, you know.

Hey, where’s the OUMB? Next week, my friends.