Milk Bottle Grocery in Oklahoma
City is the type of historic Route 66 establishment that you can miss
only if your eyes are closed. Constructed in 1930, the tiny, 350-square
foot triangular commercial building of red brick is located on a speck
of real estate smack in the right-of-way of a busy urban thoroughfare.
It sits at an old streetcar stop along a line that ran diagonally across
Classen Boulevard, which served as a segment of Route 66’s original
Oklahoma City alignment. Subsequent realignments of the highway, first
along Western Avenue and then on 23rd Street, remained only a stone’s
throw from the site.
If conducting business in a tiny brick store in the middle of a city
street is not remarkable enough, the towering milk bottle perched on
the store’s flat roof confirms that the Milk Bottle Grocery is a Mother
Road must see. Built of sheet metal around 1948, the eye catching milk
bottle was, and still is, a funky advertising gimmick for the dairy
industry. The building’s tight spatial restrictions--hemmed in on all
sides by roadway--no doubt determined the milk bottle’s rooftop locale.
With only inches to spare beyond its walls, the only place left to go
was up.
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