Mayo Hotel, Tulsa
Near Tulsa, Oklahoma
When brothers Cass and John Mayo opened their hotel in nineteen twenty-five, Tulsa was calling itself the Oil Capital of the World, and they built accordingly. Architect George Winkler gave them an eighteen-story Chicago-style tower in the Sullivanesque Art Deco manner, the tallest building in Oklahoma at the time, with six hundred rooms, ceiling fans in every one, and running ice water, a luxury in the mid-twenties. The lobby attracted oil executives, politicians, and entertainers.
John F. Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin stayed here. When Tulsa's oil economy collapsed in the early nineteen eighties, the Mayo closed.
It sat empty for nearly three decades before reopening in two thousand nine after a forty million dollar restoration. It is still the best address in downtown Tulsa.
