Holland Hall: Tulsa, OK

In the late 1960s, Texas architect O’Neil Ford designed a new campus for Holland Hall High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Holland Hall was founded in 1921 as a prep school for the children of oil barons in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the late 1960s the school commissioned Texas architect O'Neil Ford to design a new campus in the growing southern part of the city. The Upper School was the first building to be completed. In 1978, All Saints Chapel (pictured) opened, completing the grouping of buildings that forms the Upper School complex. The chapel was constructed using a grant from the local Episcopal Diocese, with which the school had formed a loose affiliation in 1959. Architects from O'Neil Ford's firm Ford, Powell & Carson worked with Tulsa architects and Holland Hall benefactor Horace Bernard to design the chapel. The buildings at Holland Hall reflect Ford's role in the American Regionalism architecture movement that emerged in the 1920s. Like other creatives from this period, Regionalist architects eschewed European precedents. They favored natural materials, like timber, brick, and stone, crafting designs that reflected the places where they were built.