Warehouse Market

Warehouse Market. 10th Street and Elgin Street. The corner of 10th Street and Elgin Avenue was originally the site of McNulty Park, home of the early local baseball team, the Tulsa Oilers. In 1929, an Oklahoma City man named John Harden worked with architect B. Gaylord Noftsger to build The Public Market Building, more popularly known as the Warehouse Market Building. This Art Deco landmark was a place where over 100 farmers gathered to sell fresh produce and other wares to the citizens of Tulsa. If you look closely at the terra cotta ornamentation, you can see elements of these early years as well as tributes to Tulsa's history with the oil industry. , At one time, this 50,000 square foot market held several grocery stores, a bakery, drug store, café, and soda fountain. When the Great Depression took hold of the city, the public market closed and the building spent a few years as Club Lido, which hosted performers such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington., In 1938, Oklahoman Clint Cox returned the building to its original purpose and opened the first Warehouse Market grocery store. The setup was basic: many products were displayed in the boxes they arrived in, pickles were sold out of barrels, and if you needed vinegar you brought your own jug and filled it yourself. The Warehouse Market stayed in business here until the late 1970s; by then, the company had expanded to over a dozen other stores in and around Tulsa., When Home Depot purchased the Warehouse Market and surrounding property in 1993, Tulsa Foundation for Architecture and the Tulsa Historical Society advocated to save this historic Route 66 icon. Only 12,000 square feet of the original building including the facade and tower were salvageable. Working with the City of Tulsa and Home Depot, who were committed to saving the structure, the footprint of the original building was reduced to allow for future retail tenants and the colorful façade and 175-tower were restored.