Sand Springs Cultural & Historical Museum
9 East Broadway Street
Sand Springs, OK 74063
(918) 246-2509

HOURS
CLOSED Sunday - Monday
Tuesday - Friday
1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturday
10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

The Sand Springs Museum is housed in the former Page Memorial Library building in the heart of the downtown Triangle District. The building was built in 1929 to honor city patriarch Charles Page and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

Millionaire philanthropist, entrepreneur, and humanitarian Charles Page passed away from influenza on December 26, 1926. His wife, Lucile, began plans for the memorial library in early 1927 and contacted the Chicago studio of renowned sculptor Lorado Taft for assistance.

Taft came to Sand Springs to survey the downtown Triangle in preparation for his sculpture of Page. It was his suggestion that the empty lots to the north be filled with buildings that would keep with the monumental size and modern style of the anticipated statue. Charles Page had previously donated one of the four vacant lots to the City for a future library. The new building would come to take up four lots.

Ground was broken in late summer 1929 and the building took six months to complete. A dedicatory ceremony was held on February 27, 1930 with a band performance and a thousand local citizens in attendance. Lucile Page covered the building’s $100,000 construction cost, including all of the ornate fixtures and custom-designed furniture. She also personally planned the landscaping and arranged for an underground sprinkling system to care for it. Finally, she gave books and provided a small annuity for building maintenance.

The Sand Springs Museum is a self-contained, detached, one and one-half story building. The building faces southward toward the Page Triangle Park, where the library’s namesake is memorialized with a larger-than-life statue. Large concrete steps lead to the main entrance, while the northern entrance contains an elevator and paved parking lot.

The building was designed in 1926 by Otis Floyd Johnson, a Chicago architect from Lorado Taft Studios. It is 78 feet east-west by 55 feet north-south. The outer walls are constructed of Haydenite and the porch entrance is constructed of sandstone flagstones. The main entrance doors are made of bronze and there are bronze lanterns throughout the building. There is a large bronze window on the southern side, known as the “Page Memorial Window.”

The Sand Springs Cultural Museum is an example of the modernistic Art Deco architectural style of the streamline variety. Characteristics of the Art Deco, popular in America from 1920 to 1940, include a flat roof; smooth, stuccoed wall surfaces; and decoration with stylized, usually geometric, motifs. Usually, these decorative elements are placed at the tops of the walls, towers, or other vertical projections to emphasize verticality and break up the usual strong horizontal massing. Among the common geometric motifs are the chevron and the sunrise patterns. Curved or chamfered corners are often used, giving a streamlined appearance. Tall, narrow windows are also common, again using their height to add vertical interest. The Page Memorial Library exhibits all of these characteristics, in an understated way.

As with many Art Deco examples, the building’s dominant visual characteristics are its massiveness and its fenestration. Windows designed and placed in strongly vertical manner counterbalance the building’s horizontal thrust. Very tall steel-casement windows with multiple lights are placed regularly in each elevation. On the south, or man, facade, there are three bays. The central bay is the main entrance. It projects slightly from the wall. It is marked by the main entryway, which is recessed in a series of reveals. The entryway is filled with two bronze doors with glass lights that are separated by vertical bands with geometric/floral motifs. Flanking the door are tall narrow slide lights in 2x5 pattern. Above the doors, the water table is decorated with two chevron motifs flanking a stylized shield, and above this is the Page Memorial Window. Its frame is also bronze (the other windows in the building are steel framed). This Memorial Window has seven horizontal rows of lights with nine lights in each row (7x9; this window illuminates the entrance area and the lobby). The window is otherwise undecorated and is undraped and always lighted at night, as per Mrs. Page’s instructions.

Art Deco detailing is represented in the finely crafted details of the bronze main entry doors and bronze and glass lighting fixtures. The lantern-like lighting fixtures were designed by craftsmen at a local firm, Empire Chandelier Company, an establishment brought to town by Charles Page in earlier years. The fixtures are in three sections that step downward in size. The doors and Memorial Window were designed by Ralph Watkins, a Chicago craftsman who may have been associated with Lorado Taft or with Otis Floyd Johnson. he doors exhibit vertical bands of small lights set into bronze mullions in geometric motif, interspersed between rows of small rectangular lights. Other exterior decoration is also minimal. Above the front entrance, at the lintel, is a carved bar and leaf design, and above the main entrance doors, on the water table, are carvings of two chevron motifs flanking a stylized shield. Above this, the Page Memorial Window is undecorated. Above the window, there is also a strip of geometric motifs and two squares with buildings and clouds. On the south, east, and west, the cap on the parapet has a geometric motif of zigzags. The parapet cap is painted a terra cotta color. In the balustrade that wraps the front porch, the balusters are a stepped-down chevron motif as well. Above the Page Memorial Window are the words “PAGE MEMORIAL LIBRARY” created in huge capital letters made of bronze, now with a light green patina.

In plan the Page Memorial Library is shaped like a truncated T, with the stem of the T on the north side. On the basement level is a small entrance lobby, from which stairways lead up to the main lobby. In the small entrance lobby a centrally placed doorway leads into the basement rooms. These originally included a lecture room, a librarian’s room, a book repair room, and a furnace room, divided by frame partition walls. A hallway led to a rear entrance. In 1986-1987 the north part of the lower-level plan was changed slightly with the addition of handicapped restrooms and a ramp leading to the elevator. On the upper or mezzanine level are the library’s three main areas: a centrally placed lobby, with a stacks room to its north; and on either side of the lobby, a large reading room. In a 1986-1987 construction project, a wood-and-glass, three-sided divider was placed behind the checkout desk, to provide a work area.

The Page Memorial Library’s public rooms reflect quality in design, materials, and workmanship. The small entrance lobby has two lantern light fixtures that reflect the style of the fixtures outside the door. The entrance lobby floor and the stair treads leading up to the library proper are of highly polished, pink Tennessee marble. The walls of the small lobby and the stairwells, and the baseboards in the main lobby are of polished grey Italian marble. Art Deco detailing marks the public areas. The bronze stair balustrade, designed by Ralph Watkins, has a simply zigzag motif.

The lobby is the most decorated of the three rooms. It exhibits shallow, stepped pilasters, two behind the desk, and four on each side of the room. At the wall-ceiling junction, the pilasters link with a pan ceiling. Atop each pilaster is a highly decorated capital that retains the original painted and geometric motif of zigzags, Greek keys, and chevrons. A carved, painted crown molding is decorated with zigzags and stylized leaves. Ten wall sconces and a centrally placed hanging light fixture are made of bronze and glass, in the same stepped down fashion as the exterior lanterns. The motifs are stylized sunrises, leaves, and zigzags. The lobby’s checkout desk, an original fixture, was created in 1930 by local folk artist Nathan Ed Galloway, who taught furniture-making for Charles Page at the Sand Springs Home. The massive, c-shaped, wraparound oak desk is decorated with inlaid strips of wood in geometric motifs of stars, squares, zigzags, and slanted lines. Behind the desk, in the wall, is an original plaque, designed by Ralph Watkins, having the words “Charles Page / Memorial Library / Donated by Lucile Page / 1930.” There was originally a time capsule in the wall behind the plaque. The lobby floor has the original cork tile installed in 1930. On the east and west sides of the lobby are three squared arches that lead to the reading rooms. The inside of the arches have stepped panels that make these doorways resemble ziggurats. The southernmost archway on each side is presently and was historically infilled with a bookcase, which was removed in 1963 to create additional access to the reading rooms.

The reading rooms are similarly, but less elaborately, decorated. In each room are six hanging fixtures of glass, in the three-part, stepped-down design. An elaborate painted and carved crown molding is decorated with zigzags, sunrises, and stylized leaves. Original oak book cases line the walls in each reading room. The chairs and tables are original, having been made by Galloway, but the tables were resurfaced with Formica in 1963. The original cork tile floors were replaced with new tile at that time, and in 1986-1987 the rooms were carpeted.

In 1963 and 1986-1987, the Library Board and the Tulsa City-County Library allocated funds to improve the building, but, other than painting the exterior stucco in 1963 and adding an elevator shaft in 1986, these expenditures were primarily dedicated to making the the interior more comfortable and accessible. In 1963 a bronze railing was added in the center of the steps at the main entrance. Also in 1963 two lower east and west windows received a ventilator and a book drop. In 1986-1987 an elevator was added to the building, requiring the addition of a two-story elevator shaft where the north stacks section joins the north wall of the building. The building’s new rear entrance (originally there was no rear door) now lies in the north wall, just east of the chamfered northwest corner, in a one-story, 9 foot by 13 foot covered entryway. The wood stile-and-rail, single-light door is new, having been added in 1986-1987. This covered entryway accesses the elevator. In the process of adding the elevator to the exterior, two upper level windows in the north wall were covered; these were left intact and still visible in the west reading room. Two of the recessed panels in the northwest wall were also infilled. These are the building’s only exterior alterations, and as they are on a tertiary elevation, seen from the rear, they do not detract significantly from the building’s integrity.

A few interior alterations came in 1963, when the Tulsa City-County Library System took over operation of the Page Memorial Library. In that year the lobby desk received a formica top surface, and a wood and glass work area was constructed in the lobby behind the desk. Two interior archways in the lobby were opened up by removing original library shelving. Also in 1963 a new HVAC system was added (with registers placed in the ceilings), original ceiling fans were removed, and new tile was laid in the reading room.

Other interior changes were made in 1986-1987. In the basement, a concrete ramp was built from the central hall and across the north part of the building wall to the elevator and rear entrance. An elevator shaft was placed adjacent to the rear door, and the elevator rises to the mezzanine level at the west side of the original stacks room, north of the lobby. A basement room was converted into handicapped-accessible restrooms. The original windows were sealed on the inside by energy-efficient metal-framed, two-light, fixed panels. Carpeting was laid over the original cork-tile in both of the reading rooms.

The Sand Springs Museum is the only example of the Art Deco architectural style in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.