![]() ![]() ![]() Adhering to clients’ needs and conservative trends of the time, the young team was adept at traditional design in the firm’s early years, as evidenced by the Crown Heights Christian Church (Oklahoma City) and the Student Union Building and Library at OSU, but they also embraced a more modern aesthetic with their Streamline designs for the Carpenter Paper Company (Oklahoma City) and the concrete block municipal building in Stillwater.Īfter the war, a second generation of family members rounded out the firm when recent OSU graduates, Tom Sorey, Jr., his cousin, Neil Hill, and his brother and OU graduate, Stewart Sorey, came aboard (Stewart later left the firm and moved to Denver). Founded in 1931 by University of Oklahoma graduate Tom Sorey, Sr., the firm initially included his brother-in-law, Alfred Hill and cousin, Lee Sorey. ![]() White, opted to construct a building on NW 5 th and Robinson that they would never outgrow and hired local firm, Sorey, Hill & Sorey to come up with the design. This time, the YMCA, led by general secretary, J.B. The red brick building served its patrons well through the boom times of the ‘20s and the Great Depression of the ‘30s, but by the end of World War II and the beginning of the burgeoning baby boom, it was evident that the YMCA had again outgrown its space, and fund raising efforts began once more to construct an even larger headquarters.Īll of the stunning vertical and horizontal lines of the downtown YMCA can be seen in this linen postcard from the ’50s. Finally, after almost 40 years as tenants, the YMCA had a building to call home … and a place to exercise as loudly as members wanted. With funds in hand, construction began on a traditional, six-story building at 125 NW 2 nd and was completed just months before the war ended in November of 1918. Years of stalled fund-raising efforts kicked into high gear as young men from the surrounding countryside and other urban areas moved to Oklahoma City for jobs or passed through on their way to other ports of call. It was World War I and the great need for temporary housing that finally got the YMCA a building of its very own. So, the YMCA continued to rent and tolerate frustrating landlords, one of whom refused to let the organization use the exercise equipment they had installed in a second-floor space because the noise of men using it bothered the other tenants. With all of this moving, it was quite clear that the YMCA needed its own building, but several fund raising efforts failed to produce enough money to buy a piece of valuable downtown land and construct their quarters. Over the next decade and a half, membership continued to grow as rapidly as the city itself, which resulted in the Y moving from smaller rented spaces to increasingly larger ones every few years. The Oklahoma City YMCA goes back to the Land Run days when a small group of men gathered at the post office in May 1889 to form a new chapter, one that quickly numbered over 100 by the end of the year. But the failure to save one building galvanized the community to work fiercely to save another just a few months later. With its unusual-but-harmonious blend of horizontal and vertical lines, the stark white concrete YMCA was surely one of the Capitol city’s most exceptional pieces of mid-century architecture … and one that many fought valiantly, if unsuccessfully, to save when new owners wanted to demolish it. Little do they know that they’ve parked on the site of one of Timothy McVeigh’s last victims, the downtown YMCA building. Tourists visiting the Oklahoma City National Memorial, site of the horrific 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, often park in a lot conveniently located across the street at NW 5 th and Robinson. ![]()
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