UPDATE: 2011 - The Historical Society no longer occupies this building. It is now the Oklahoma Judicial Center and home of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
The STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY BUILDING (open 8:30-5 Mon.-Fri., 8-12 Sat.), Lincoln Blvd., S. and E. of the capitol, is a three-story
neoclassic structure, with massive facade pillars, designed by Layton, Hicks, and Forsyth, of Oklahoma City. Completed in 1930 at a cost of $500,000, it has a Georgia granite base and Indiana limestone superstructure. The building houses the society's museum and library, and quarters of veterans' organizations.
The interior arrangement is simple, affording appropriate background
for many exhibits. The corridor walls are decorated with life-size figure paintings of Indian dances by Steve Mopope and Monroe Tsa-to-ke, Kiowa Indian artists.
The Oklahoma Historical Society was organized at Kingfisher, in 1893,
and was housed in a tiny room of the courthouse. Later it was moved to the state university at Norman, and then to the basement of the Capitol Building, where it remained until 1930. Membership in the society is open to anyone upon the payment of one dollar a year. Money for the salaries of employees and the upkeep of the building and museum is appropriated by the legislature; there are no endowments.
The museum has many valuable and interesting relics not only of Oklahoma and the Southwest, but of Indians elsewhere—for example, the pipe used by the Delawares when they made their treaty with William Penn in 1683. There are also many large pictures of famous Indian leaders, including all modern chiefs of the Choctaw Nation, Pleasant Porter of the Creeks, Bacon Rind of the Osages, and John Ross of the Cherokees, Greenwood LeFlore, Quanah Parker, Pawhuska, and Mrs. Alice Davis, who served as chief of the Seminoles.
In the museum's cases are objects illustrating life among the Indians
who were removed from various sections of the United States to the territory that became Oklahoma: Chief Joseph's war bonnet, worn when that great Nez Perce leader was forced to leave his Oregon home and remain for a time as prisoner in Oklahoma; highly decorative headdresses of Cheyennes, Kiowas, lowas, Osages, Delawares, and others; a collection of ceremonial and everyday fans made from the feathers of the eagle, hawk, magpie, turkey, and (rarest) the scissorbill bird used in the peyote ceremony; a Choctaw version of the Lord's Prayer worked in needlepoint; an Apache pictograph
representing the Devil's Dance; a Cheyenne ceremonial shirt decorated with long wisps of hair from enemy scalps; a Kiowa child's chest; Kickapoo and Potawatomi rugs made of dyed reeds and cattails; the land grant to the Choctaws and Chickasaws in 1842 signed by President Tyler.
There are mortars and pestles used in crushing corn; and two millstones, given to the Choctaws by Andrew Jackson before the removal of the tribe to Indian Territory; a stagecoach used in Oklahoma in the early days; a covered wagon, minus the wagon sheet, used in the Run of 1889 and the Cherokee Strip Opening of 1893; and a one-cylinder Cadillac of the vintage of 1900, one of the first cars in Oklahoma.
In the museum are also several Lincoln mementos; a desk used in his
Illinois law office, a bedspread that he used as a shawl on a trip from Springfield to Decatur, Illinois, and a number of letters in his handwriting.
The Laura A. Clubb Fan Collection of 86 fans includes one of handmade
lace and mother-of-pearl, inlaid with gold, once owned by Sarah
Bernhardt; another presented by Queen Victoria to Jenny Lind; a seventeenth century carved opera glass fan; and a "kingfisher" fan used by an emperor of Japan.
The Newspaper Files in the basement contain nearly 20,000 bound
volumes of newspapers, some more than 100 years old, and many dating
from, and carrying accounts of, the first attempts to open Oklahoma Territory to settlement. Bound volumes of every newspaper in the state published in a town of 1,500 or more are in this room. A Guide to the Sooner State, 1941
This building still stands to the southeast of the State Capitol building, on the east side of Lincoln Blvd. Inscribed above the columns is "OKLAHOMA HISTORICAL SOCIETY" but the Society offices and museum no longer reside here.
In 2005, the large, Oklahoma History Center opened, northeast of the Capitol, and the Oklahoma Historical Society moved its offices and exhibits to the new building.
At the time of posting, the building is vacant. The grounds were being bulldozed in preparation for landscaping changes. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.