Education Building, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Bartlesville

It is interesting sometimes the buildings that get included on tours during an Art Deco World Congress.

The trip to Bartlesville during the Tulsa World Congress in 2001 included a quick stop at the Redeemer Lutheran Church to see the Education Building dating from 1959 and designed by Bruce Goff.

I wouldn't call it deco but I did find the combination of chunks of glass interspersed with the irregular blocks of stone forming the rest of the wall.

Even the windows are set in the wall as diamonds as if to further enhance the crystaline feeling to the building.

At the corners of the building the glass takes over from the stone creating these point. I can't decide if they are futuristic or prehistoric. It is certainly very organic.

Bartlesville High School, Oklahoma

Bartlesville High School was designed by architect John Duncan Forsyth and it was build in 1939. That year is displayed above the central door of the main entrance with BHS above the doors to the left and the right. Just to the right of the entrance there is a large tower with a flagpole on the near corner. The flagpole is connected to the bulk of the tower with seven short horizontal bands which wrap around the square corner.

Further to the right is the auditorium marks by the three tall columns horizontal windows. Inside the auditorium has nice clean lines and simple decoration including bands of green and white on the lower part of the walls and a geometric deco design on the sides of the rows of seats. The door plates on many of the doors inside also have a stepped deco design.

To the left of the main entrance the building continues with large horizontal window on ground level that wrap around the corner as the next part of the building is stepped back. The second storey windows consist of five vertical columns contrasting the windows below and complementing the vertical windows which make up most of the next part of the building.

That part of the school has thin columns of windows reaching almost the full height of the wall giving way to a graceful curved wall at the end of the main block with three horizontal windows and Senior High School spelt out above. The rest of the building stretching around the corner is again made up of thin vertical columns of windows.

Bartlesville High School is a fantastic streamline Art Deco building. It’s a shame it was such a rainy day when I got to this part of Oklahoma. It would have been nice to capture the white school against a beautiful blue sky.