Gray Bros. Building

Wm. H. “Harry” Gray, a naturalized Canadian, homesteaded the lot bearing the west half of this building after staking it on April 22, 1889 and immediately relocating his grocery and wholesale business from Udall, Kan. His brother George joined him in buying the corner lot, where they built in 1890 an elaborate brick and sandstone structure that commands the intersection. Gray Bros. continued the grocery business, adding queensware and feed, in a frame building, then razed it and added the west half of the present structure in 1903, distinguishable by slightly different spacing of the cornice “torches” and facade treatment. The west half housed the Gray Bros. store, then F.E. and J.F. Houghton’s Bank Grocery and later various retail establishments, while W.H. Gray kept a second-floor office to manage his extensive holdings. The east half originally housed the Bank of Indian Territory and later the Oklahoma State Bank. Guthrie’s superintendent of schools had second-floor offices there in 1892, and by 1893 the town’s first telephone exchange was also there. The property was leased in 1926 to Jelsma Abstract Co., which continued operating there in 1981, and a barber shop occupied the basement until the mid-1970s. Its Russian capped oriel, beveled corner, elaborate metal cornices, arched windows, and combined use of native sandstone and dark red brick suggest it was a Joseph Foucart design.

Guthrie, Oklahoma · United States