These Walls: The Federal Reserve building in Oklahoma City

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Sep 22, 2008 by Kelley Chambers

Money used to flow through the Federal Reserve building in Oklahoma City on a constant basis.

Billions, possibly trillions of dollars passed through the halls of the building regularly, but these days one is more likely to find office tenants at The Reserve rather than copious amounts of cash.

In 2006 the Oklahoma City reserve building, at 226 Dean A. McGee Ave., sold to a group of investors with plans to reposition the building as leasable office space.

With scaled-down operations in the city the reserve did not need the entire building, but kept its Oklahoma City offices on the third floor. In the last few years many of the branch's operations were transferred to Dallas.

Prior to the sale the Reserve had always occupied 100 percent of the building.

In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson to create the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City opened in 1914.

On Aug. 2, 1920 the Oklahoma City office opened on the second floor of the Continental Building on the southeast corner of Second Street and Broadway Avenue.

In 1923 the reserve office moved to its current spot in downtown Oklahoma City.

The first portion of the 68,940-square-foot reserve building was constructed in 1922. It is one of three branch offices of the Kansas City Reserve. Other branches are in Omaha and Denver. A second area to the building, which rounded out what is seen today, was added in 1964, and brought it to about 80,000 square feet.

On the outside the three-story building features Indiana limestone with dual pane windows. The lobby has an agglomerate marble floor and barrel vaulted ceilings.

Other features inside the building include a firing range and vaults on the lower level and a 30,000-pound lift and docks for armored cars.

It last underwent a renovation in 1997.

The new owners of the building, Reserve Partners LLC, bought the building from the Federal Reserve for $5.675 million.

The deal included a provision that would keep the Federal Reserve offices on the third floor for its regional, public and community affairs division, and the bank examination and inspection department. The bank examiners at the branch supervise bank holding companies and their non-bank subsidiaries in the state as well as state-chartered banks that are members of the Federal Reserve.

The Reserve is not the first building downtown to find a new use in the past few years. Others include the old downtown library, at 132 Dean A. McGee Ave., which is being repositioned as condo, office and retail space. The former Colcord office building, at 15 N. Robinson, was converted to the Colcord Hotel, and the Park Harvey office building, at 200 N. Harvey Ave., reopened after a renovation as apartments and retail space.

Price Edwards & Co. is handling leasing for the Reserve for clients looking at office space in a historic building and who might also like having access to an indoor firing range and a 30,000- pound lift on site.