Districts in the National Register of Historic Places
Carlton Place Historic District
Significance
On September 13, 1909, the Carlton Place Addition plat was filed at the Tulsa County Courthouse by the Magee Investment Company. As president of the development company and namesake of the addition, Carl C. Magee was the apparent primary in the development of the Carlton Place Addition. In his business transactions, Magee preferred to use “Carl” rather than his full given name of “Carlton.” Magee had previously placed at least the 1907 Owen Addition, located northwest of the original townsite, on the Tulsa real estate market.
Born in Iowa in 1873, Magee moved to Tulsa in about 1903. He remained in the community until 1919 when his wife’s health required a move to New Mexico. Magee then became a newspaper man, an occupation he maintained for several years and which was responsible for his first rise to national prominence. Magee returned to Oklahoma, this time Oklahoma City, in 1927 and became editor of The Oklahoma News.
In about 1933, Magee began work on a solution to the parking problem in Oklahoma City which he had been studying as chairman of the traffic committee of the Chamber of Commerce. With technical assistance provided by the engineering department at Oklahoma State University, the first parking meter was invented with Magee being given inventor status. The first meter was installed in Oklahoma City in July 1935 and quickly spread nationwide. Returning to the newspaper business for various periods, Magee was also president of both the Dual Parking Meter Company and Magee-Hale Park-O-Meter Company from 1935 to 1946. Magee died at the end of January 1946 at the age of 73.
As a small addition of less than ten acres, the opening of the Carlton Place Addition did not merit noticeable attention in the Tulsa newspapers. The Magee Investment Company, however, did place small advertisements in the 1910 city directory for both the firm and addition. The ad for the addition read “Carlton Place is the choice residence district. Ask C.W. Singleton.” Singleton was a real estate man located in the Alexander Building. The advertisements did not appear in any of the subsequent city directories. The addition, however, proved immediately popular with three of the extant houses being constructed by 1910. The following year, an additional four existing houses were occupied with four more being built in 1912. Nineteen-thirteen proved to a banner year for the addition’s development with eleven of the remaining homes being constructed.
The district is dominated by the Prairie School style of architecture. Of the thirty-nine buildings in the district, twenty are classified as Prairie School style. The Prairie School style was nationally popular from about 1900 to 1920. The style is typified in the Carlton Place Historic District by simple, two-story, square plans topped by low-pitched, hipped roofs with broad, overhanging eaves. Also representing a major architectural style in the district are the ten Bungalow/Craftsman style houses. This style of home, extremely compatible with the Prairie School style, flourished nationally from about 1905 to 1930.
The dominant street in the district is the north-south South Carson Avenue. Notably, Carson Avenue begins only at 11th Street; as such, unlike the majority of surrounding streets, it does not continue north into downtown Tulsa. Originally, the other north-south street in the district, Carthage Avenue, was named Perryman Avenue, after the Perryman family that owned much of the surrounding land prior to its development as part of the city of Tulsa. The name of the street was changed in about 1930 to Carthage Avenue.
The Carlton Place Historic District is significant as an excellent example of a small, upper middle class neighborhood that developed during an important period in Tulsa’s history. Tulsa’s development during the first half of the twentieth century relied on the nearby discovery of oil and the location of many oil-related industries and businesses in the community. Although Carlton Place does not contain any of the mansions of the oil barons, it is an excellent example of the close-in upper middle class neighborhoods that developed in response to the booming economic conditions in Tulsa during the 1910s.