The College Colonial

 

The Colonial on College has stood steady sentinel for almost one hundred years. The walls have sheltered college professors, an early Tulsa oil man and a real-life Lois Lane. The home has seen hopes and dreams come true, disappointments, sorrows and tragedy, rowdy celebrations and deep family bonds.

But we, of course, must start even before the house was built, when College Avenue was part of assigned lands in Indian Territory.

Mary Jane Perryman

The history of the land on the east side of the Renaissance Neighborhood starts with Mary Jane Perryman.

Dan and Mollie Pilcher

The Pilchers were early Tulsa pioneers who acquired land from Mary Jane Perryman.  They developed the area where the College Colonial would eventually be built. According to their great-granddaughter:

Dan and Mollie Pilcher were my great-grandparents. They moved to Tulsa from Pierce City, Missouri in 1901. I know he dealt in real estate, but don't know the details. One family story, unverified, was that he owned a portion of what is now the University of Tulsa but lost it in The Depression. My great-grandmother was one of the founders of College Presbyterian Church. They had 3 children, Theresa, Vivian, and Ira, all still residing in Tulsa at the time of their deaths.

The 1922 Tulsa Polk Directory shows the Pilchers residing at 3108 E. 11th Street (About where Taco Bell sits today.) It is possible that their home still exists, somewhere in the interior of our neighborhood, as many of the large homes that once lined Eleventh Street were said to have been moved to make way for new development along the busy road.

   

1904:  Dan Pilcher and his son, Ira, with their first load of cotton. 

Tulsa Historical Society & Central Library Archives 

May 1906:  Tulsa Daily World

Sourced from an old scrapbook in the Central Library Archives

The Pilchers helped found College Hill Presbyterian Church

The Pilchers acquired land in what is now the Renaissance Neighborhood that included the area from Eleventh to Thirteenth Street and College to Gary Avenue. They named the addition Pilcher-Summit. Look closely and one can just barely make out their signatures on the document below.

1922 Ad for Lots in the Pilcher Addition

The Fosters

In 1921 Walter and Pearle Foster purchased 1 ½ lots from the Pilchers. Mr. Foster was a Geology professor at the University of Tulsa. They most likely built the stately two-story brick Colonial in about 1923. Originally, four bedrooms with 1 1/2 bathrooms, it was about 2400 square feet. The home also had a small servant’s quarters in the garage, rear service stairwell in addition to the front staircase, a bell system that rang into the second floor, a laundry chute, and a basement incinerator.

The Kimbroughs

In 1925 a new family became owners of the brick colonial. Charles and Annette Kimbrough had two daughters together and Annette had a son from a previous marriage. When they made their home in the Colonial, Haden was 18, Annette was 12 and Mary was 10 years old.

Both the Kimbrough girls were academically minded. After they graduated from the University of Tulsa, they went on to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. Annette pursued Botany and Mary studied journalism. As it happened, both girls were living in Norman when their father, passed away at their home in Tulsa in February of 1936.  He had been in poor health, but was only 56 years old.

The Norman Transcript: February 21, 1936

However, as life would have it, in June of that year, there was a happy occasion.  Annette married Mr. Larry Gould, who went on to pursue medical school at the University of Oklahoma that fall.

The Daily Oklahoman: June 8, 1936

Not too long after this momentous year, the Kimbroughs left their brick colonial for good, and rented the home.  In 1940, Annette, the daughter was embarking on her new married life, while Mary was working as a reporter for Tulsa Tribune earning just $20 per week.  Mary rented an apartment downtown and her mother moved in with her.

Annette and Dr. Larry Gould in 1940

Sadly, tragedy struck the family in 1949, while Annette and her husband, Dr. Larry Gould, were on vacation in Colorado.  Larry died suddenly from a heart attack. He was only 36 years old. They had three children and were living in the Chicago area. Annette went from doctor’s wife to widow in a heartbeat. In the aftermath, Annette and her three children moved back to Tulsa. Annette worked Tulsa Public School for many years teaching science. She never remarried.

Chicago Tribune, August 1949.

Mary Kimbrough became the Lois Lane of her day.  Not only did she write for the Tulsa Tribune, Mary moved to St. Louis and wrote for the St. Louis Star-Time and St. Louis Globe-Democrat.   She  covered topics including equality, women in prison, riding in a cage with a gorilla and having her hair done in an airplane. For many years, she wrote the Globe’s annual “Man of the Year” tribute.  All of her professional and personal papers are archived in the St. Louis Public Library.  She never married and had no children.  

The Cravers

Mr. Charles Steele Craver was a Geologist and Oil Man active with the newly discovered oil pools in the Tulsa area during the nineteen teens.  He was born in Iowa but went to high school in Chicago and attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.  He worked for various oil companies until 1910, when he entered into a partnership called Berry & Craver.   In 1912, he established Craver & Company. In 1916, he established the Black Hawk Petroleum Company with associates.

Charles and Clare Craver had a very prominent social life in Tulsa including membership in the Tulsa Country Club, Elks, Quid Libet Club of Tulsa, University Club of Kansas City, Missouri, and Sigma Chi Fraternity of Boston Tech.  

Charles and Clare Craver owned a very respectable large home in the Maple Ridge Neighborhood of Tulsa at 2160 S. Owasso Avenue. Their two children, Jean and Frank Jr., were raised there. A few candid photographs of the family survived from their time at that grand home.

However, things changed, and something caused them to leave their fine home on Owasso Avenue.  Perhaps downsizing or in the aftermath of hard times during the depression, 1940 found the Cravers, with their young adult children, renting the College Colonial for $65 per month.  It is not known exactly how long they lived in the home, but it was sold to a new family in 1948.  

1940 US Census Data

1940’s & 1950’s

As the years went by, the most famous road in America was only a few steps away from the Colonial.  Route 66, aka, Eleventh Street saw more and more traffic roll through, reaching a peak in the 1960’s.  A few images of the intersection of Eleventh and College from the 1940-1950’s era can be seen here:

The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.

Present Day: Some Details of the Colonial

Eyebrow Window Above Front Door

Original Fireplace Mantle  

Dining room Chandelier

Stained Glass Piece signed by a former owner of the home

A (relatively) new stained glass skylight in the ceiling above the front stair case.

Time Burnished Newel Post

This image shows the chimney of the incinerator in the basement

One of the most valuable ways to learn about the history of our homes is through oral history. The bits and pieces passed down from owner to owner, or by neighbors who share recollections. As it happens, someone strolling by the College Colonial stopped to chat with the current owners. According to the passer by, the house had been known as the ‘party house’ in the 1970’s. Teenagers held raucous parties in the home and yard and practically destroyed the pool. Yes. There was a pool. A small kidney shaped pool in the backyard. Something about cinder blocks being thrown into it and who knows what else.

Writer’s note:  The 1970’s is too recent to go telling on people, but I have a suspicion about who this family was.  I will say, the head of the family who owned the home in the early 1970’s passed away and his will was included in the property abstract.  He bequeathed 2/3 of his estate to his wife, 1/3 to his young adult daughter and nothing to his 22-year-old son.  Consequences for the pool damage?

In more recent years, much of the pool had been filled in and it is now converted to a water garden and fish pond.

Look closely to see the kidney shape of the old pool.

The water garden in the back yard was once a small kidney shaped pool. 

Current owners also found some whimsical murals painted on the walls of a bedroom and a former owner was a graphic artist.  

"Pauline or Darlene (?) and Uncle Ace"

Unlabeled

The owners found some pictures in the attic that have not been definitively identified.  Do you recognize anyone? 

*****

Dan, Mollie and many more Pilchers are buried in a family section at Rose Hill Cemetery, Tulsa.

All the Kimbroughs I have written about are buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa.

Frank and Clare Craver are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Tulsa.

******

Let’s end with a memory shared by Mary Kimbrough.    

Mary said “There’s a story in everything” -- even a park bench.” Her niece explained,  “When Mary was a little girl, there was a bench on the University of Tulsa campus where her father worked, where she’d sit and wait for him and wonder what that bench would have to say about all the people who had gone back and forth past it and sat on it. That’s when, she said, she got the idea she wanted to be a writer.”

This leads me to believe that Mary would appreciate our interest in her family home and everything the years to come will unfurl for the College Colonial. 

_________________________________________________________________________

November 2024 Update:

This fall on one of our scheduled walking history tours, the group stopped at this house.  A woman piped up, "My grandfather built this house!"  Later, we met for tea and shared the following:

Robert W. Walker was born in Arkansas in 1873.  He married Ada O. Holland in 1896 and they made their way to Stillwell, Oklahoma.  Together they would have nine children in 21 years, although not all would survive to adulthood.  Pictures of Walker over the years below.  

Walker ran a lumber yard in Stillwell.  In 1920, the family made their way to Tulsa, just in time for the population boom related to the oil and gas business.  Neighborhoods were popping up east of downtown and the newly named University of Tulsa (formerly Kendall College and McFarlin College) was bustling.  Walker started building houses.   While many of the houses that he built likely still exist,  there addresses are lost to history.  However, Walker's family distinctly recalls that he built College Avenue because the two families, the Kimbrough's and the Walkers, became friends.   

In fact, Mrs. Kimbrough played the piano and Annette played the violin at Mr. Walker's daughter's wedding in 1927.  The families kept in touch even after the Kimbrough's moved out of the home.  

When Mrs. Kimbrough died in 1950- a new couple who lived in the Colonial- had a reception after the funeral service for family and friends of the Kimbrough's.  

Additionally, Walker's family recalls that he built a large distinctive brick Tudor at 1301 S. Yale Avenue, called the Crowel House which was featured in a 1995 Tulsa World Weekend Living article.  

Editing by P. Casey Morgan, RNA President.  One last tidbit.  Casey's grade school science teacher at Holmes Elementary at 45th and Peoria was Mrs. Annette Gould. 

  

References

Ancestry.com for family tree information about the Pilchers, Kimbroughs and Cravers. 

Personal Communication with Craver, Pilcher and Kimbrough family members.

https://www.stltoday.com/news/mary-kimbrough-longtime-newspaperwoman-author-public-relations-director-wrote-for-three-papers-here/article_5bb72c8f-5028-5819-8c0f-ed4570a59ea5.html

Mary Kimbroughs Papers: https://www.slpl.org/mary-kimbrough-papers/

Pictures undated of intersection of Eleventh St and College Ave:

The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society. Sourced here: https://digitalcollections.tulsalibrary.org/digital/collection/p15020coll1/id/8465/rec/40

https://digitalcollections.tulsalibrary.org/digital/collection/p15020coll1/id/8466/rec/41

Property Abstract