Today’s then and now includes a newer photo I took – the one Dennis took was already pretty outdated – and that’s a good thing.
The three-story building at 1015 N Broadway was built in 1908 and was originally home to a Pierce-Arrow dealership. By the 1980s the building was in serious disrepair and was already boarded up when it was extensively damaged by the 1995 bombing of the nearby Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Automobile Alley developer Steve Mason, owner of Cardinal Engineering and Earl’s Rib Palace, bought the building knowing the task of bringing it back to life had overwhelmed previous owners. The building’s first floor was briefly home to Habitat for Humanity’s Renovation Station after the bombing. Attorneys had completed architectural renderings and gone through the city’s urban design committee with their own plan to convert the building into offices before they sold it to Mason.
Mason at first thought the building’s major upgrades would just include a new stairway, mechanical systems and an elevator.
Instead, his architects – not the city – decided to condemn 60 percent of the building. With the assistance of historic tax credits, Mason virtually created a new building within the old shell but respected the building’s history by recreating wood floors similar to those that would have been found when the upper floor was an ice skating rink. He also retained a stairway on the building’s southe entrance. In 2009 the building is fully leased with a coffee shop and bicycle store on the first floor.
