1913 - 122-126 Caddo St NE - Ardmore, OK
N 34° 10.481 W 097° 07.531
14S E 672760 N 3783113
Constructed in 1913, the building at 122-126 Caddo St NE is a contributing building to the Ardmore Historic Commercial District. Today, it is home to Café Alley, a restaurant and bar.
Waymark Code: WM11Q3C
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 11/30/2019
Views: 1
While the National Register's Registration Form lists this and other properties at A St NE, today, the street is noted as "Caddo St NE" on signs. The
Registration Form dates this commercial style building to about 1915 -- "1913" is on the parapet -- and provides some background:
This one-story, painted brick, flat-roofed building has three storefronts. The southernmost storefront has three, large, fixed, metal, opaque, display windows under a flat metal awning. The transom area remains above the awning. The middle storefront has a centrally located, glazed, paneled, overhead, garage door with a single, wood, glazed, paneled door to the north. A small transom area remains over a possibly bricked-in opening to the south of the overhead door. The transom above the door is a non-original decorative window with small panes of stained glass. The awnings from the adjacent storefronts extend over the southern bricked area and the northern door. The northernmost storefront is larger than the other two with a single, non-original, wood door on the far south and triple, fixed, display, opaque windows filling the remainder of the storefront. The storefront is topped by a flat awning and the transom area above remains visible. The upper wall of the building is ornamented with painted brick tables above each storefront. Centrally located above the southern two storefronts is a projected stone nameplate which is not readily readable.
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It's hard to make out from a Google Street View from 2008, when the building was painted black, but that stone nameplate looks to have gotten a good cleaning since then. The awnings and stained glass are long gone, as is the wooden door from the storefront at the north end.
As to the name, "Byrne", it's likely that this was C.L. Byrne, an Arkansan who was a fairly prominent businessman in Ardmore in the early 20th century, having been appointed postmaster in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson. He operated a lumber business in Ardmore since the mid-1890s, was involved with an electric railway (Ardmore Traction Company, which ran from Ardmore to a park five miles north), and opened a hotel just east of here, across the railroad tracks, after the Ardmore Gas Explosion of 1915. Presumably, his money helped to rebuild the area around the train station after the disaster.