Citizens State Bank

About this property

The Gold Dome, a geodesic dome in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a landmark on Route 66. It was built in 1958 and is located at the intersection of NW 23rd Street and North Classen Boulevard. It was declared eligible to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. In 1958, the Citizens State Bank began construction. The Gold Dome building was the fifth geodesic dome constructed in the world and the first to be used as a bank. It was described as “one of the nation’s most revolutionary bank designs.” Using the geodesic dome design created by futurist and architect Buckminster Fuller, the architects for the Citizens State Bank, Bailey, Bozalis, Dickinson, and Roloff of Oklahoma City created this unusual Oklahoma City landmark. The dome is constructed of 625 panels, ranging in size from 7.5 to 11.5 feet (3.5 m) in length, 60 – 70 pounds in weight each, and spanning a diameter of 145 feet (44 m). The interior covers about 27,000 square feet.1 The Gold Dome bank was an approximately $1 million investment. In 1998, the Oklahoma City Government pursued a new zoning area along NW 23rd Street, including the area where the Gold Dome is located in order to preserve the unique architecture and “commercial nature” of NW 23rd Street, the former path of Route 66 through central Oklahoma City. Twenty-third Street is located between the urban conservation districts of the Paseo and Jefferson Park to the north, and the historic preservation districts of Mesta Park and Heritage Hills to the south. The new zoning area would require property owners to gain permission from a design review board before demolishing or modifying buildings in this area. In July 2001 Bank One, which owned the Gold Dome building, applied to the Urban Design Commission (the result of 1998 efforts) for permission to demolish the building. The bank stated that the structure was too large to serve as a bank and refurbishing it would be too costly (Bank One estimated it would cost roughly $1.7 million). The bank intended to sell the property to Walgreens, which would place the new pharmacy across the street from its competitor, Eckerd. A group organized to save the Gold Dome, "Citizens for the Golden Dome", appealed to the Bank One president, urging him not only to save the building in deference to its unique history and contribution to the "urban character" of OKC, but to also apply for landmark zoning from the OKC Historic Preservation and Landmark Commission, and apply for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. In August 2001, the Bank One president offered different alternatives to demolition of the building, including constructing a smaller building on a portion of the property to serve as the Bank One location next door to the gold dome building. The president left a sixty-day window for prospective buyers interested in saving the building to come forward, but did not state what would happen if no one offered to buy the building.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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