The Milk Bottle Building in Oklahoma City soon will become the office of an architect after a boutique store there went bust after less than a year.
Prairie Gothic shuttered its business in the Milk Bottle Building and its original store in Guthrie, Oklahoma, in early December, reported The Oklahoman.
In a Facebook post, Prairie Gothic’s administrator didn’t elaborate on the closures, except saying it “had some of the highest highs and the lowest lows.” It also said one of the principals will concentrate on graphic design instead.
Prairie Gothic opened the second location in May after the building’s owner finished renovations on the triangular, 350-square-foot building. Work included new windows, 1930s tile floors and a 1930 toilet.
The Milk Bottle Building won’t sit empty long. Landscape architect Brent Wall will move in his LAUD Studio next month.
The small size of milk bottle building, as well as its history and location attracted Wall to the property, he said.
“If it didn’t have the milk bottle on top, I don’t know if it would be as beloved, but having that there is interesting and people from around the world traveling Route 66 stop and take pictures,” Wall said.
“The building is right there in the middle of this vibrant urban fabric, and that is what our business tries to do is to create spaces like that,” he said.
Built in 1930, the Milk Bottle Building sits at a former streetcar stop. The 11-foot-tall milk bottle of sheet metal capped the building in 1948. The bottle advertised Townley’s Dairy from the 1950s to the 1980s, then Braum’s ice cream.
The building served as a cleaning service, real-estate office, fruit market, barbecue restaurant, Vietnamese sandwich shop and grocery. The Milk Bottle Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
The building sits on Classen Boulevard, an original alignment of Route 66. Other Route 66 alignments of Western Avenue and Northwest 23rd Street lie a short distance away.
(Image of the renovated Milk Bottle Building in March 2015 by Justin Waits via Flickr)
Note that your thumbnail and the larger picture have one huge difference: The ugly pedestrian crossing sign which was installed in 2010 is gone. Thank goodness. What an eyesore that was. I’m not sure when it was removed, but I believe it was between fall 2014 and spring 2015.