this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2025
253 points (96.3% liked)

Today I Learned

24043 readers
460 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

BOK Tower (originally One Williams Center) was constructed in 1976 for The Williams Companies Inc. a petroleum producer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. John Williams, the CEO at the time, liked the look of the recently completed World Trade Center so much that he hired the original architect to build essentially a half-scale version of WTC Tower 1.

The lobby even has marble walls and wall hanginga similar to the old World Trade Center.

all 39 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] PleaseLetMeOut@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Homepage

Wikipedia Page

This is actually really cool. I would check it out next time I'm out traveling. But I can't seem to find whether they're open to the public or do tours or not. No observatory or restaurant on the top floor either, that I can find.

Guess it's time to start "looking at office space" in the Tulsa area :P

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

your username should be PleaseLetMeIn instead

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Also, downtown Tulsa is super cool. Sweet Art Deco everywhere (we had oil money when the Depression was raging). Wasn't any nightlife when I was a teen, but it's lit now!

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Worked there a bit in '98! It was sweet then, can't imagine how cool it is now.

It's open to the public, AFAIK, always was. Everything above the 3rd floor or so is just typical office space, though I'll bet there's some cool one's in there now.

[–] PleaseLetMeOut@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Dude, hell yes, thank you for this! The place is definitely going on the list for my next road trip now. I usually run a big loop and I've been to Texas more than enough, so I've been looking for other things to check out on my way through the south western states.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Get out anywhere in downtown Tulsa, have a walk! One of the coolest metro areas I've seen. Sweet Art Deco buildings, Echo Point, Greenwood and the Tulsa Race Massacre site, lots to see and do. Lord only knows what they've added since, but downtown seems to get cooler every year.

I know the massacre site sounds depressing, but it's American history you need to experience. It was worse than merely depressing when I was a teen. No monuments, no bullshit, just a couple of acres of mown grass, concrete basement and sidewalk and street outlines. Nothing else. "Jesus. This was a thriving community?" Most eerie experience of my life puling up there in '89.

Anyway, don't miss Echo Point on the bridge! You can stand in an 18" concrete circle and hear your voice echo back at you. No one outside that circle hears it!

[–] Bubs12@lemmy.cafe 23 points 1 week ago

There is only one of them so I’m going have to call this one quarter-scale.

[–] pruwybn@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 week ago

The ceilings must be really low.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago
[–] gmtom@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Imagine looking at that ugly as grey block of a building and being like "this is peak architecture and i must pay massive sums of money to recreate this for myself"

[–] turtlesareneat@discuss.online 14 points 1 week ago

You have to keep the timing and context in place. It was the mid-50s, the economy was roaring, and they finally invented a way to hang walls and windows off of the structure itself, the curtain wall. This gave way to the International Style, which actually has some interesting and lovely buildings, but many of them look like gross sterile cubes, and they loved that at the time. Ornate buildings like the gothic skyscrapers (we adore so much today) were suddenly seen as old and dirty and dilapidated, giant sheets of glass were "the future," sterile and gleaming and just unlike anything else, at such a massive scale. And of course so much cheaper than masonry buildings with complex upper floors and decorations, and faster, you could throw them up very quickly.

Of course after 70 years of this we've got a lot different impression. If I were old-money wealthy I'd definitely have a penthouse in one of the old gothic towers, with the outdoor gardens under archways. I don't even care what city.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe they look better on the inside, I don't know much about them (and 2 of the 3 I can't exactly visit now). But yeah, I hate ugly buildings. I feel like architects have somewhat of a moral imperative to make sky scrapers beautiful and free of advertisements and company logos. If you wanna slap some tacky logo on your building at ground level, I'm more okay with it (or at least not radically opposed) but skylines should be beautiful.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

It's way cool on the first couple of levels! The rest is typical office space. Worked there for a brief Y2K stint in '98.

Given all the sweet Art Deco buildings downtown, they about had no choice but to make it classy.

[–] black0ut@pawb.social 11 points 1 week ago

There's an even smaller scale tower, also built by the same architect, and also using the same design as the WTC. It's in Madrid, Spain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_Picasso

[–] OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Kid named paraglider

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

No love for the third building?