This is Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church located in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and this is perhaps one of the earliest buildings I can remember that had an impact on my life. This building was put up in 1927 and built in the architectural style of Spanish Mission Revival; with this building being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Now that’s as much information I could find about the church as it specifically doesn’t have its own website to discuss the building’s main architect, but the feelings I remember as a child from looking up at this building I felt warranted its place of importance in my blog.
I moved a lot as a child between California and Oklahoma and it usually always had something to do with family. And with that sort of disbursement of person one would think I’d have a number of buildings that would elicit some form of admiration, but unfortunately, with the economic status of my parents, I was never in the presence of elaborate structures or grandiose monuments of human design. This is was where the white clayish stone walls Saint Anthony’s church played its part in my life.
In one of the seasons of my life where I lived in Oklahoma this church was always on the way to my friend’s home. I’d ride my bike down the street that led up to this church, and when I saw it I always had to stop, jump off my bike, and hug the fence that blocked off the church’s backyard. I was never catholic but this church was large as a child, and while I never went inside even to this day, the simplistic Spanish beauty of its faded red tile roof and white clay walls always enchanted me. The large wooden doors were guarded by stone-faced saints and the holy mother; this was the entrance to another world if I’d had ever seen one in my early life. If only I could push open those doors I’d find myself in an older world, I use to think. My first memory of beautiful architecture that invoked a sense of wonder and fantasy as if just passing through the threshold would take me someplace new. It’s a shame I never went inside.
