REAL-ESTATE

Pathmaker Gala to celebrate history of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County

Richard Mize
Model of I. M. Pei plan for downtown Oklahoma City from east looking west shows central business district. [THE OKLAHOMAN ARCHIVES]

The 30th annual Pathmaker Awards Gala to honor people who have made historic contributions to Oklahoma City and Oklahoma County will be Oct. 25 at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel.

Details still are being worked out, but the seated dinner, cash bar and entertainment will, as usual, provide a fun way to celebrate local history and architecture. Doors will open at 6 p.m., with dinner at 7:30, presentations, then music and dancing until 11 p.m.

The usual disclosure: I am on the Oklahoma City/County Historical Society board of directors, which organizes the gala and selects the people to be honored each year.

Details to come, but the Pathmaker Awards recipients this year are Bill Citty, Gayla Peavy, the Rev. John Reed, and Bill Pritchard. The Distinguished Service Award will go to KFOR-TV.

The I.M Pei exhibit — the late architect's never-realized vision in 1964 of what downtown Oklahoma City might have been in 1989 — again will have a prominent place in our festivities. It will be on exhibit just outside the banquet hall.

The 10-by-12-foot model is one of the Oklahoma City-County Historical Society's most prized possessions. Volunteer experts from Manhattan Construction again will dismantle the display where it remains in the Hart Building on historic Film Row, transport it to the Skirvin and carefully reassemble it, then reverse the process after the gala.

Pei died in May at age 102. He and his model are examples of a reality check of history: History — good, bad, ugly, pleasant, painful, proud or embarrassing — should be recorded, memorialized and periodically reviewed.

Even the history of ideas. Pei's ideas, and the thinking of those who hired him all those decades ago, influence thinking on downtown development to this day. My colleague and friend Steve Lackmeyer reviewed Pei's influence in an article when Pei died:

"Pei's work over a century includes icons around the world, including the Louvre Pyramid and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Oklahoma City leaders commissioned Pei in the early 1960s to draw up a plan for tearing down hundreds of buildings to reinvent the urban core with a mix of new office towers, hotels, a shopping mall, a performance theater and what turned into the Myriad Gardens.

"Pei was in his mid-40s and already earning international accolades when he was hired by city fathers who were seeking to launch an urban renewal program in the early 1960s. From his Manhattan office, Pei and his crew created a model, renderings and plans for a dramatic re-creation of downtown Oklahoma City.

"A $100 million regional shopping 'Galleria' was to be the crown jewel of this new downtown. High-rise hotels and office buildings, a spectacular park and condominium housing would encircle it.

"Contractors hired by Urban Renewal to implement the 'Pei Plan' leveled 447 buildings, and private owners tore out another 75 or so over 220 acres between NW 6 and Interstate 40, from Shartel Avenue to the BNSF Railway.

"The Myriad Gardens, Mummers Theater and a handful of new office towers were built, but the mall and much of the rest of the plan fizzled and large empty blocks were left downtown throughout the 1980s and 1990s, leaving locals largely unhappy over Pei’s legacy. His plan was largely abandoned by the early 1980s.

"Internationally, Pei remained active into his 90s with later projects including a design for the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar in 2008."

So, come see the only-one-of-its-kind Pei model of what-might-have-been Oklahoma City. Join us in remembering history, and its lessons, such as 1960s-70s Urban Renewal, and celebrating history with our award recipients.

Tickets are $125 each (dinner for one, plus a one-year membership in the society); $1,200 for a dinner table of 10 (plus 10 one-year memberships, and name listed in the program; and from there sponsorship opportunities zoom to $2,500, $5,000 and $10,000 with appropriate levels and qualities of gratuities.

To buy tickets, write to okchistoricalsociety@gmail.com.