The 320 South Boston Building, formerly known as the National Bank of Tulsa Building, is a 22-story highrise building located in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was originally constructed at the corner of Third Street and Boston Avenue as a ten-story headquarters building for the Exchange National Bank of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1917, and expanded to its present dimensions in 1929. The addition brought the building's height to 400 feet (122 m), making it the tallest building in Oklahoma. It lost this distinction in 1931, but remained the tallest building in Tulsa until Fourth National Bank (today Bank of America Center) was completed in 1967.
In 1933, Exchange National Bank reorganized and renamed itself as the National Bank of Tulsa. Thereafter, the building was known as the National Bank of Tulsa Building (or NBT Building), until the bank renamed itself as Bank of Oklahoma (BOK). The BOK moved to its newly-constructed BOK Tower in 1977. The NBT Building reverted to its former 320 South Boston Building name and became a general office building.
Like the Empire State Building, the pinnacle of 320 South Boston was designed as a Zeppelin mooring. This was used at least once when a U.S. Navy Zeppelin moored there in the 1930s. The top of the building was illuminated for weather alerts, with flashing red lights in the event of an approaching storm.
The architect was George Winkler, who also designed the Mayo Hotel.
Famous quotes containing the words south, boston and/or building:
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“To get time for civic work, for exercise, for neighborhood projects, reading or meditation, or just plain time to themselves, mothers need to hold out against the fairly recent but surprisingly entrenched myth that “good mothers” are constantly with their children. They will have to speak out at last about the demoralizing effect of spending day after day with small children, no matter how much they love them.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“Our civilization is characterized by the word “progress.” Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)