“Bruce’s Tulsa” Self-Guided Building Tour
Meet Goff Fest volunteers at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship Archer Studios Annex Gallery facing MLK Jr. Blvd. to start your own tour of Bruce Goff buildings in Tulsa using a digital map or paper printout created for Goff Fest. Each home will have a sign indicating which homes are open to the public and those that are closed. We ask that you respect our Goff building stewards and their property. The Goff building digital map will launch on our website Saturday (6/8).
- Tulsa Artist Fellowship Archer Studios Annex
- 109 N. MLK Jr Blvd., Tulsa, OK
- 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Drag Brunch
Elote Cafe hosts a weekly drag brunch on Saturdays in the heart of downtown Tulsa in the famous Goff-designed Day Building, formerly the home of Nelson’s Buffeteria. Take a trip down memory lane in LIbby Billings’ flagship restaurant and join some of Tulsa’s best drag queens with an architecture all their own, or enjoy brunch on the patio in the heart of Tulsa’s Deco District. There are two seatings for Drag Brunch and both require tickets. Patio seating is first come, first serve.
The Day Building features a rectangular plan, two-story masonry structure with brick walls, and multiple reveals framing openings on the front façade. It was designed as a commercial building for a dentist. Dr. Day sold the building to C.C. Cole of the Boston Avenue Methodist Church Building Committee soon after it was completed. The two-story building is rectangular in plan. The brick facade has stone accents arranged in receding reveal planes, framing each opening. The result is a classic two-part commercial block. The design continues the theme-variation-development of a decorative feature into an organizational framework. According to De Long, this theme of receding reveals was employed in other projects by Goff, and can also be found in the work of the European architects Josef Hoffman, Clemens Holzmeister and Wilhelm Kreis, whose projects were familiar to Goff.
- Elote Cafe (The Day Building)
- 514 S. Boston Ave., Tulsa, OK
- 11:00 a.m. & 1:30 p.m. (Tickets for each seating are linked)
The Drunkard and Olio
Enjoy a truly unique evening of audience participation and theatrical fun in “The Drunkard,” an “old time melodrama!” Boo and hiss the villain, cheer on the hero, sing along to some grand old songs, and enjoy some of the Tulsa area’s finest talent in the “Olio” preceding the play.
Built for Patti Adams Shriner in 1928, this is the only building Bruce Goff created in the International Style, largely because Shriner fashioned herself as a contemporary of the many European musicians and artists of the time. Built as both a home and a studio where Shriner could teach piano and host performances and recitals, the building is now the home to the longest-running theatrical experience in America, the weekly performance of the Drunkard at the Spotlight Theater. In addition to the iconic stucco exterior and flat roof, the building is known for its large glass circular window that faces the Arkansas River. Goff tapped the artist Olinka Hrdy to create murals for the building, inspired by the seven muses. Shriner agreed to work with Hrdy as long as there was no reference to jazz music, which she hated. Hrdy, snuck the letters “J-A-Z-Z” into the design of the murals to only show up in certain light. Another unique post-construction feature of the building is a hand-dug tunnel underneath the building created by the theater in the 1960s to allow actors to move from the front of the auditorium to the back of the stage without having to go outside.
- The Riverside Studio (Spotlight Theater)
- 1381 Riverside Dr., Tulsa, OK
- Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
- Find Tickets Here