Gargoyles dying off in Oklahoma City, but the University of Oklahoma campus is crawling with them - Norman, OK - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

Look up and you can spot several gargoyles, grotesques and griffins on the University of Oklahoma Campus. Photo gallery shows some of these creatures on the Bizzell Memorial Library.

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It's a gargoyle graveyard.

That's no garish, ghoulish gag to enhance a happy Halloween.

Just look up downtown, where more gargoyles have perished than survive in out-of-the-way places on tall buildings.

Blame another architectural tragedy on 1960s-1970s urban renewal. When hundreds of vintage buildings came down, God only knows how many gargoyles came down with them.

God would know, presumably, since gargoyles traditionally have two main purposes: to function as water spouts to get rainwater off of buildings, and to ward off evil.

Finding them anywhere in Oklahoma City isn't easy.

"Urban renewal took all that out," said Lynda Ozan, architecture historian with the Oklahoma Historical Society's State Historic Preservation Office.

Most of the long-dead edifices downtown went up when gargoyles, grotesques and chimeras might grace a place in homage to Gothic style if not with demons and monsters and such in mind.

On the other hand, Gothic revival style wasn't that prominent in still-young Oklahoma City, born overnight in 1889, even as some builders soon embraced Spanish Colonial, Classical and other revival styles, Ozan said.

"We weren't trying to scare off the evil. That's not what was happening in Oklahoma City. The times were different," she said.

By the (wicked) way, lest their ghosts be stirred, a gargoyle is, or was, one thing, and a grotesque or chimera another.

No water spout, no gargoyle — it's just something ugly.

A chimera, a depiction of a human-animal hybrid a la Doctor Moreau or an animal hybrid such as a griffin (lion-eagle) or centaur (human-horse), can be a grotesque.

A grotesque is just gross.

A few lurk here and there in Oklahoma City, sometimes in the oddest places.

A grotesque stares down at attorneys in the state Corporation Commission's general counsel's office in the Jim Thorpe Building — not original, clearly. Attorney Jeff W. Kline calls it "super random."

Interesting, twisted but seemingly benign faces beam down from columns in the lobby of the historic Skirvin Hilton Hotel downtown.

One is said to resemble Oklahoma favorite son Will Rogers and another is said to look like W.B. Skirvin himself — maybe if someone suggests it to you before you look.

One is definitely meant to be Bacchus, god of wine, complete with grapevines and party hat — er, jester's hood with mock donkey's ears.

Griffins atop the state Capitol? Chimeras, not gargoyles, not without a spout. Same for the ugly faces on some old city school buildings. Same for a few other old buildings downtown with interesting vintage ornamentation with eyes.

If Oklahoma City is all but bereft of beastly brutes and brutish beings aloft, just south in Norman the University of Oklahoma is positively crawling with them, clinging everywhere, most prominently on Bizzell Memorial Library. They're real gargoyles, too.

Used in Collegiate Gothic

Bizzell was built in 1929 as an especially elaborate example of Collegiate Gothic architecture, and there is the explanation for the bug-eyed mugs on buildings at OU. Just as gargoyles must spout runoff rainwater, Collegiate Gothic style must have gargoyles.

It's not all trapped in the misty architectural past.

“There are campuses that continue to build in that style,” said Catherine Montgomery, a historic preservation architect who owns Preservation and Design Studio in Oklahoma City.

Collegiate Gothic isn't all scary. She said it also includes steep roofs, red brick contrasting with stone and other Gothic features.

Function aside, evil aside, why would an architect or designer tuck a grotesque up on a building — or in a hotel lobby, or a state capitol, or an attorney's office inside a garden-variety government office building?

“You'd have to be inside that designer's head to know,” Montgomery said.

Oklahoma City architect Bruce Bockus has an idea about that.

“I think sense of humor had to play into it,” said Bockus, president of Bockus Payne Associates Architects.

Yes, gargoyles channeled water away from structures to protect exterior masonry walls from damage, he said, and the images on medieval buildings graphically warned about the consequences of evil.

It must work on both counts, Bockus said.

“As far as I can tell they have been effective at my alma mater OU, because I have not heard of any evil spirits causing trouble in the library, although I did hear that a flash dance did break out several years ago,” he said.

Richard Mize

Type of publication: Newspaper When was the article reported?: 10/31/2015 Publication: The Oklahoman Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: local News Category: Arts/Culture

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