User pfox has extensive knowledge of the Gunboat Park area, perhaps more than anyone else on this forum.
If you haven't already, see the
2005 Tracy Park + Gunboat Park Master Plan and the
2006 Gunboat Park Master Plan.
I imagine that area used to be a lot bigger until the highways came through and TCC/churches tore down most of the other small buildings for parking.
It's a shame it's so isolated.
The area wasn't much bigger than it is now, but it had better connections to the south and the west. The Midland Valley Railroad wrapped around the east side of the Gunboat Park area, and there were never good connections to the east between 11th and 13th, as far as I know.
If you could transport that area close to the Brady or Blue Dome it would be really, really cool.
Gunboat Park is not far from the Blue Dome District -- only seven blocks, or about half a mile (or a ten minute walk, as dsjeffries might say).
I'm guessing that some of the houses in the Gunboat Park area (such as
the pair at 1238 and 1228 South Elgin) were "transported" there from the rapidly developing downtown, probably in the mid to late '20s. I don't know whether those two houses on Elgin were moved in from somewhere else, but many houses were moved in Tulsa, especially in the booming 1920s. It's not common to see houses moved these days, but it can be done, if there are not too many obstacles (such as highway overpasses) in the way.
I imagine that's what Greenwood was like before it got urban renewaled for the OSU-Tulsa campus that was never built.
Greenwood, at least in terms of the core of Black Wall Street between Archer and Easton, was more urbanized than the Gunboat Park area ever was.
Even as far north as Haskell, Greenwood was more urban than Gunboat Park. Here's an example looking north from Greenwood and Haskell, showing the flatiron Del Rio Hotel apartment building:
Source: The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society
I'm not sure what you mean by the comment about Greenwood "before it got urban renewaled for the OSU-Tulsa campus that was never built." The
Helmerich Research Center was built on the OSU-Tulsa campus, east of Detroit.
Tulsa's primarily black Greenwood neighborhood didn't extend west beyond Detroit there.
Standpipe Hill, where OSU-Tulsa built a million dollar signage tower, wasn't part of Greenwood.
Anyway, lots of potential in that site ~30 years from now if the east side of downtown keeps developing.
A limiting factor to potential development in the Gunboat Park area is the risk of stormwater flooding, but there is potential.
There are some interesting apartment buildings in the Gunboat Park area.
Two of my favorites are on the west side of Elgin. Those were designed by Kansas City architect Matt O'Connell in the early 1920s. O'Connell was also the designer of the
Chalfonte in Kansas City.
The Page Warehouse designed by Bruce Goff wasn't in Gunboat Park, but a few feet away, across 13th Street, to the south:
That Art Deco gem was imploded in the late 1970s (see the implosion beginning at
time mark 1:07 in Jack Frank's YouTube video), and
the cleared land remains vacant today.
Sad part is that the east side of the IDL isn't really needed at all.
No, it isn't "needed." But it's desirable for many people who would rather roar by the east side of Tulsa's core than slow down for a few blocks.
That's true of many highways cut through many cities.