Downtown Muskogee's most distinctive feature is a tight cluster of early-1910s commercial buildings the National Register collectively designates the Pre-Depression Muskogee Skyscrapers. None taller than ten stories but all handsomely detailed, they include the Manhattan Building (1911), the Surety Building (1910), the Severs Hotel (1910), the Baltimore Hotel (1912), and the Railway Exchange Building (1912). A walk of about fifteen minutes covers all five. Some are restored, others vacant; the Severs in particular is in need of a tenant.
Pre-Depression Skyscrapers Walk
A story
Five high-rises were built within a few blocks of each other between 1910 and 1912, when Muskogee's oil-fuelled boom briefly made it the largest city in Oklahoma. After the oil pulled out and the Depression hit, no skyscraper was built in Muskogee for the next 60 years — leaving the cluster preserved almost as it was on the day construction stopped.