Oklahoma's endangered historic places

By Audrey Esther and Darren Brown, News9.com INsite Team

They might look like old abandoned buildings, but to preservationists they are significant keys to Oklahoma's past. The INsite team takes a closer look at this year's most endangered historic places and found several in the metro. To watch the full video report please click on the featured video link to the right

"We're not just talking about old buildings. We're talking about things that are of historical intrest in Oklahoama," Mark Beutler Preservation Oklahoma public relations coordinator said.

This is the 15th year Preservation Oklahoma has listed the state's most endangered historic places.

"There are thousands upon thousands of landmarks all across Oklahoma that are in need of attention, deterioating, and really need some help," Beutler said.

Many of these sites are one hundred years old, or older.

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Statewide endangered places include, small towns, places of worship and archeological sites. Regionally, Midtown Tulsa and Route 66 motels from Sayre to Miami are endangered and locally the Fairchild Wine Vault in northeast Oklahoma City and an art deco apartment building in Crown Heights are also on the list.  

Beutler says placement on the state's most endangered list does not ensure protection of the historical site or even funding but it does raise awareness. Once endangered historic sites, like the Skirvin hotel and the Gold Dome Bank building are no longer endangered. This is in part due to awareness raised by the annual list.

Georgie Rasco with The Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma said when an endangered historic location is in a neighborhood it's even more important.

 "When you think about engangered places it's not always only the big beautiful buildings but sometimes it's the smaller buildings that mean a lot to us and perserve something in history," Rasco said.  

For more information about this year's list and about this story please click on the additional information provided on this page.