Biltmore Hotel

The story

Oklahoma City civic leaders, led by Charles F. Colcord, built the Biltmore at the southeast corner of Grand and Harvey during the Great Depression. The Hawk and Parr design was 33 stories tall, which made it the tallest building in the state when it was finished in 1932. It had 619 rooms and was counted among the finest hotels of the post-oil-boom era.

Money trouble followed it for most of its life. A renovation of about $3 million in the mid-1960s renamed it the Sheraton-Oklahoma Hotel, but it closed in June 1973. I.M. Pei's plan had meant to keep it, with a tower overlooking a garden, yet by 1973 the Urban Renewal authority judged that it had outlived its useful life. On October 16, 1977, demolition crews used hundreds of small explosives so the tower collapsed inward onto a footprint barely larger than its foundation. Thousands watched, and many were visibly moved.

What's There Now

The site was cleared for the Myriad Botanical Gardens project.

Everything that was here

• 1932–1973

  Biltmore HotelHotel

  At 33 stories it was the tallest building in Oklahoma, and it was brought down with explosives in 1977, four years after it closed.

  See the map in 1933 →

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Nearby history