During the spring 2023 semester, OU Environmental Design students created reuse design concepts for the historic Jewel Theater in northeast Oklahoma City. Led by Vanessa Morrison, assistant director of OU’s Institute for Quality Communities, students conducted research, listened to local stakeholders and visited historic sites to gain a deeper understanding of the spatial and social challenges facing the Black community in Oklahoma City.
The Jewel Theater, located right at the heart of a thriving Black commercial corridor, was built by Hathyel and Percy James in 1931. During this time, the Black community was geographically isolated to very specific boundaries within northeast Oklahoma City because of Jim Crow laws and segregation. This region was once filled with a variety of restaurants, barber shops, cleaners and other local businesses. The Jewel Theater acted as a safe space for joy, art and culture to thrive; people gathered there to watch movies, listen to live music, learn about current events and, most importantly, cultivate creativity.
However, when urban renewal efforts began in the 1950s, this once-thriving neighborhood began to decline drastically. Many homes, businesses and neighborhoods were destroyed, causing social and psychological trauma as these communities were erased from history. Integration efforts also impacted the population density of this region, as Black residents were finally allowed to move into different geographic areas. The significant decrease in population and challenging living conditions created by urban renewal caused the Jewel Theater to suffer.
Because of this disruption, the theater was forced to close its doors in the 1970s and has not been operational since. Most of the structures and businesses that once existed in this area are gone, leaving the Jewel Theater as one of the few Black assets to survive urban renewal. According to Morrison, “it represents a legacy and a history that tells the story of northeast OKC, where so many of those other physical representations of that history have been lost.”
Arthur Hurst, who was a regular attendee of the theater as a child, took ownership in the 1970s and has been working to revitalize the space. Morrison began working with Hurst in 2019 to help him with fundraising efforts to save the theater. In collaboration with Stout Media, BlackSpace Oklahoma, Notis Studios and the Jewel Theater Foundation, Morrison and Hurst created a short video highlighting the cultural significance and history of the theater.
In 2020, the Open Design Collective, an Oklahoma City nonprofit whose mission is to bring together underrepresented communities and the design and city planning resources necessary to promote social and spatial change co-founded by Morrison and Deborah Richards, began working with Hurst on several projects to raise awareness and fundraise.
In December 2022, the Open Design Collective was awarded a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support restoration and renovation efforts for the Jewel Theater. According to Morrison, this aligned perfectly with the timeline of the Environmental Design service-learning course, in which students work on a project within a local community that allows them to apply classroom knowledge to a real-world scenario.
“I really wanted the students to understand the intersection of the Black experience, culture, and place in history,” Morrison said. “It was important to me that the students understood the full story of the community, the spatial and social challenges that community has faced, and at a deeper level, how their reuse ideas could connect to address some of those challenges and position the community to be whole again.”
Over the course of the semester, Morrison and her students discussed ideas of spatial and social injustice, including the impact of urban renewal. They listened to a variety of local stakeholders from the community, including Ward 7 Councilwoman and Regional + City Planning graduate student Nikki Nice. They also heard from Kimberly Francisco of Progress OKC, Scotia Moore of Flourish OKC, Perrin Duncan of the Arnall Family Foundation and Alta Price of the Inasmuch Foundation. In addition, they met with local neighborhood leaders from both the JFK and Harrison Walnut neighborhood associations.
The students visited the Jewel Theater to hear from Hurst about his future vision and learn about the history and memories held within the space. They also explored the surrounding area- its businesses, historic sites and neighborhoods- to help them understand how to connect their reuse concepts with the local community to help it thrive once again. “We really dug deep and had a lot of conversations, heard a lot of stories, did a lot of unlearning and relearning, and just really challenged them to think beyond normative practices in our field,” Morrison said.
With this newfound knowledge, the students developed ideas that connected to the history and legacy of the theater while also supporting the needs of the community in a new and multi-functional way. For their final presentations, students shared their ideas for activities that could revive the theater and explained how these ideas fill in existing gaps within the community. They also shared the core values that informed their projects and showed examples of repurposed historic theaters that have successfully reunited communities.
It was important to Morrison and her students that their work be shared with the community surrounding the Jewel Theater, so they selected a venue located directly across the street from it. The presentations took place on May 4 at The Auditorium at The Douglass in Oklahoma City. Friends, family and Gibbs faculty and staff members attended, as well as Hurst, his daughter and local Oklahoma City community members.
Some of the students’ innovative ideas will be implemented into future renovations and activities at the theater. Their work will also be shared in a documentary about the theater, currently being filmed by Prairie Surf Studios, a film production complex located in downtown Oklahoma City. In addition to memorializing the student’s work, Morrison hopes this documentary will serve as a national storytelling and fundraising tool for the theater.
Future fundraising efforts to support the full renovation and restoration of the theater are planned. Follow the Open Design Collective here to stay up to date and learn how you can support this project.