0042 UNITED STATES (Oklahoma) - Oklahoma City downtown skyscrapers

Utah, the first state in the USA from which I received a postcard, was the 45th admitted in the Union, and the coincidence makes that the second to be Oklahoma, the 46th entered, with exactly 104 years ago, on November 16, 1907. I honestly swear that I don't chose deliberately this day to share with you this postcard, especially since until the morning I didn't know when has entered Oklahoma in the Union. It's an entirely coincidental. Indeed, from some time the coincidences follow me as a shadow, but about that with another occasion. 

When I say Oklahoma, come to my mind the Land Run of 1889 (whom I first heard in some movies) and the Oklahoma City bombing. The postcard isn’t related to none of these things. From the picture, you'd think that the city is packed with skyscraper, but things are not at all like this, only the center being occupied by very high buildings. Two digits about the city are conclusive in this regard: it has a little over half a million inhabitants and is in the top five largest cities in the country in terms of geographic area. The ratio between urban area and number of inhabitants not being so high, means that high buildings aren't so numerous as in other American cities.

Downtown Oklahoma City, that appears in the picture, is located at the geographic center of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area and is the principal business district of the city, also its economic, financial, and entertainment center. The five skyscrapers of the picture are (from left to right):

• Leadership Square North Tower - the tallest of the Leadership Square complex (1984 - 94m)

• City Place Tower (1931 - 134m)

• Chase Tower, also known as Cotter Ranch Tower, previously known as Liberty Tower (1971 - 152.4m) - it’s the tallest completed building in the city (Devon World Headquarters Tower, currently under construction, already has exceeded it in height)

• First National Center, formerly known as First National Bank Building (1931 - 136m). The tower has a pronounced architectural resemblance with the Empire State Building in New York, with its art deco style.

• Oklahoma Tower (1982 - 132m)

I would also add that The First National Center is connected to adjacent buildings in the downtown area via the Oklahoma City Underground series of tunnels and elevated walkways. 

About the stamp

The stamp, issued on June 28, 2009, in Washington, DC, by the Postal Service, and designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda (Maryland), is a definitive one and belongs to Scenic American Landscapes series. It features a photograph by Dennis Flaherty (Bishop, California) of Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming), taken from the Snake River Overlook at dawn.

sender: Dena (postcrossing)

sent from Oklahoma City (Oklahoma / United States), on 02.11.2011