Bridging the past

Andrew stone

Sitting down with Andrew Stone feels the way you wish college classes could have felt: passionate, conversational, and totally intriguing. Granted, we got to hold this interview in the cozy back room of The Beany Bar, a renovated caretaker’s cottage originally built in 1925, walking distance from White Dog, a country club-turned-restaurant overlooking the town of Clinton, Oklahoma. You’d be hard-pressed to find another place better suited to enjoy an Oklahoma sunset, and we certainly did.

As we settle into the couch and rocking chair prettily situated around a big window in this backroom, we get a look into Andrew’s gift for creating community in these towns he frequents. He was chatting ardently with the bartender and a patron by the time we made it in from our cars. Then, he was stopped by one of the owners of White Dog, Michelle, to see how his projects were coming along. We all chat long enough to realize she and I have connections on both sides of my family, to Tillman and Kiowa counties, before she’s on her way.

Our interview doesn’t really have an official beginning. We’ve been talking in-depth all afternoon about our collective passion for this beautiful state we get to be from and Andrew’s take on architecture defining Oklahoma’s identity. I press “record” and try to capture some of the plethora of his insight.

“How’s Mike?” He asks, referring to my dad. He’s good and we fill Michael in on how Andrew met my family in the first place. Andrew knew well about the abandoned Joyce house, a beautiful, funky design, and had driven by as a kid with his parents, peering up the hill to see what we all called “the glass house” growing up. I always thought it was a weird, fascinating structure, and everyone in the surrounding area seems to have a story of sneaking up to see it at some point in their lives. Andrew had a similar idea in mind, coming by for his second time a few summers ago. This time, though, it wasn’t looking so abandoned. Construction was happening on a few of the houses on the property and there was a man on a riding lawn mower (that’s Mike) when he decided to pull up and see what the fuss was about. He learned that Mike was renovating one of the homes to live in, my grandparents were spearheading renovations on the neighboring “grandma’s house”, and my Uncle David and Aunt Allison were pouring into a beautiful restoration of The Joyce House. From that, he was connected to the rest of us.

As Andrew says, “When I was a student, I could not believe I was seeing this building in Snyder. It validated something in western Oklahoma, you know? It represented western Oklahoma being truly accounted for from an architectural standpoint.”

As Andrew shares more about his love story with architecture, I realize how appropriate it is that this home, the Joyce House, introduced his way of thinking to me. He loves this state and is passionate about the effect architecture has on Oklahomans’ pride in their home. And that doesn't mean a copy-paste style that feels like a giant metal tube, or neutral, lifeless apartment buildings, or something that’s trying to be a copy of a European country’s idea of beautiful.

Andrew was raised by an American father and Italian mother, splitting his time between Thomas, Oklahoma, and Italy’s Adriatic Coast.

“I got a chance to always be somewhat of an outsider, you know, in a healthy way. I had a duality constantly. I got to always have this thing, outside looking in, but then very much be a part of the culture.”

Andrew describes feeling a greater appreciation for his American identity while in Europe and the same for his European identity in the States, noting how the identity of a place profoundly shapes the people who live there.

Much of the contrast he notes seems to come back to economic impact. Like many places in Oklahoma, “Thomas is impoverished. I saw friends with parents that had meth addiction, that had serious challenges that translated to emotional chaos. They faced sheer insecurity given their lower economic status, and I built an empathy very quickly towards that. You know, how they were not being supported. There was a sadness.

"There was an extreme sadness that gave me… just an empathy and a need to understand.”

Oklahoma has a complex history to say the least. When the rest of the country was decided to no longer belong to its Native people by the people who claimed to discover it, Oklahoma was soon declared “no man’s land”. We’re an amalgamation of outcasts. A scrapbook of the Native people forced here, of poor and starving Europeans persuaded over with much less than the full truth about the “free” land waiting for them, of Black Americans searching for the opportunity to build communities where they could create their own way of life, and, shortly after, of Mexican Americans finding a new start in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.

Roughly a generation later, in 1926, Route 66 was introduced to Oklahoma, changing the small town landscape drastically, leading the way to the development of newly necessary businesses like gas stations and diners to roadside entertainment like snakepits, roadside attractions featuring snakes, monkeys, alligators, exotic birds, and big cats, pulled together on shoestring budgets and the pursuit of a shock factor.

Though the Mother Road was introduced in the 1920s and was used regularly by people relocating west in the 1930s, it wasn’t until the post-WWII economic boom that Oklahoma saw our biggest change along Route 66 yet. People now had more money, affording cars and the ability to travel for leisure. Oklahoma towns like Stroud, Chandler, Arcadia, and Elk City became major hubs for passers-by. This boom was ultimately short-lived as President Eisenhower approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act, leading to the creation of our modern-day interstate system. By the 1970s, the traffic on Route 66 through many Oklahoma towns was being re-routed, taking much of the commerce with them.

Andrew’s love for Oklahoma, specifically its small communities, makes Route 66 an obvious focus of his passion and talents. He started OCRA Projects as an answer to the declining places Oklahoma harbors, breathing life back into long-abandoned spaces. The Hydro Bridge Monument, recently approved for a state grant, is repurposing a historic Route 66 bridge and turning it into an interactive artifact and walking experience at the entrance of the town of Hydro. As described in the project proposal, the monument invites visitors “to engage with the bridge not just as a relic of the past, but as a living part of their present experience.”

Earlier that day, before we sat down at the Beany Bar for the recorded part of our interview, we met Andrew just off of the highway like you’re headed into Hydro. He was parked in an empty grass lot next to what we would soon learn was once a peanut processing plant. “I need to run talk to Allen”, he says as he pulls up next to my Wrangler. He says he’ll be right back and I’m glad to have another few minutes out of the sharp cold air. Even though I was raised in it, I don’t know that I’ll ever be used to the winter wind in Southwest Oklahoma.

Andrew makes it back to us and we begin our tour. The lot we’re standing on is the future site of the bridge monument. We walk the length of the someday structure with Andrew gesturing up and around and over, giving us the idea. He’s particularly passionate about the interactive part of the monument. He wants people to feel the nearly 100-year-old steel, notice the dent on the interior side where Ms. Regina Prince was fatally wounded, and have an opportunity to appreciate the construction of this piece of history up close. In every way this structure is being created to honor the community it will welcome Mother Road travelers into.

Just as my fingers are losing feeling, we ask how the town is receiving the project. He says the response has been strong and positive and he offers to show us where the proposal to the community has been living. It’s there on poster boards, tucked behind the bread aisle and a couple freezers in Deer Creek Market & Variety, a downtown grocery store housed a building clearly influenced by the Czech settlers that were so prominent in the area. As Andrew continues to point and give context, I find myself getting excited for what this project could be the start of. This bridge’s homecoming celebration is going to be a beautiful addition to the Main Street of America.

This Hydro Bridge project, alongside a proposed design to create interactive roadside signage on Route 66 entering Clinton, are two ways he’s hoping to execute that intention. When asked what his hope is for the future of The Mother Road he says, “That it becomes Main Street again, but it is, like I said, a rhizomatic network. He explains that the current philosophy is losing because of the lack of a unified experience and narrative. “So I think it's an absolute resonating factor that needs to be reimagined. It's a very re-imaginable template. More than nostalgia for the past, I think Route 66 is an absolute, timeless thoroughfare of of the future. It connects regions. It leaves you anticipating. It actually distorts an urban rule binary to where all of our understanding of culture is usually associated with metropolitanism and cosmopolitanism. It's now our job to transcend it out of nostalgia into meaningful futures that connect with broader, regional narratives that really tell an audience the tantalizing history of Western America.

"It kind of transcends our ability to comprehend what the future could be.”

Andrew’s initiatives have a strong support system, continuing to spark imaginations and pull on heartstrings – an important foundation. However, Oklahoma as a whole doesn’t quite seem ready to dive in. Developers are eagerly moving forward on new builds in our growing cities, evidenced by resorts, housing divisions, and one very, very large proposed skyscraper. But what’s needed to kick-start the future Andrew is dreaming about for Route 66?

“What lacks is a greater regional narrative that we can all follow."

I think if towns can get together for event planning, if we can create cultural corridors in-between that unify places, that can harness all the homecoming parades and town pride, [it will be] a truly unifying factor that will resonate with a visitor experience as well as a local experience.”

Many of Oklahoma’s small towns are declining rapidly. The highest concentration of Oklahoma counties with net migration losses? Rural counties in Western Oklahoma. Being raised in a small, southwestern Oklahoma town, I have a heart for these places, and specifically the people in these places. I drive through towns that, even as recently as my childhood, were, if not thriving, at least standing upright, proud, and are now largely dilapidated.

There's something about those small towns that garner community and support you can’t find elsewhere. While there are no doubt deep-seated issues that arise because of the same factors, a conviction to take care of one another forms that I just haven’t experienced in larger communities. There's an ownership and passion shared by the people in rural Oklahoman towns. One of my highlights of this unique experience came through the support my high school basketball team had on our road to the state championship. We might as well have had the Friday Night Lights billboard installed as a reminder: “Last person out, turn off the lights”. We had a bigger, more dedicated crowd than schools five times our size.

There’s so much worth saving.