In limbo

In the neighborhood of S. E. Hinton’s famous novel, locals still feel like outsiders

“We’re not north enough to be North Tulsa, and we’re not south enough to be cared about,” Yawnie said on a warm March afternoon.

It’s easy to see why she and other Crutchfield residents feel this way. The neighborhood is located just north of I-244 and spans from I-75 to North Utica, just a stone’s throw away from East Village and Greenwood Districts. Yet it feels like a different world: Its vacant lots, boarded-up houses, and barbed-wire fences contrast sharply with Tulsa’s flourishing downtown. At the BNSF railroad crossing on North Trenton Avenue, a crossing sign graffitied with “666” greets those entering the neighborhood proper, as if it were a warning that some sort of limbo, a hole in the Bible Belt, awaits.

“We used to have what I call a front porch community,” said Tony Bluford, president of the Crutchfield Neighborhood Association. “Then everybody was afraid to sit on their porch in the evening because of drug dealing and the gangs. But it’s slowly coming back around.”     

Bluford told me this, fittingly, as we were sitting on a front porch. He speaks with an Oklahoma accent, deep and twangy, and every so often during the interview he reached into his pack of Camels for a smoke. Bluford has lived in Crutchfield since 1983.

JoAnna, who owns the house, sat on a tube television across from me while Yawnie perched on a lawn chair. Both women asked that their full names not be used. They moved into their houses in 2012 through Tulsa Habitat for Humanity’s homeownership program. Joanna works three jobs, while Yawnie balances a job with social work studies.

All three are involved in their community. JoAnna fought for speed bumps so her children could safely cross the street to Crutchfield Park. Bluford started the Crutchfield Neighborhood Association in 1989, and the group worked together to lead several clean-up efforts. During one month, a group of residents filled ten 30-cubic yard dumpsters with trash and debris several times. When Bluford said he received the “Dumpster King” award from the City of Tulsa, I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

Crutchfield is one of Tulsa’s oldest neighborhoods. Much of it was platted in the 1910s, and many of its houses were built in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s. The Barton Showgrounds, located just north of the railroad on Trenton Avenue, once hosted circuses, carnivals, and events like medicine shows.

During the early days of Tulsa, up through the 1920s, Brady Heights—named after W. Tate Brady, Tulsa founding father and exposed racist—was a fashionable neighborhood for the Tulsa elite: a place for business and oilmen with names like Diamond Joe and G. Y. Vandever.

Crutchfield, on the other hand, was a bastion for blue-collar families, a community that thrived due to its proximity to industrial powerhouses like Dow Chemical Company and Oklahoma Steel Castings Company. In the morning, employees would walk to work. On their lunch break, they would walk home.   

Then came the oil bust of the ‘80s. With a sudden influx of cheap foreign oil, local industrial companies shut down or moved from the “Oil Capital of the World” to greener, more exploitable pastures. Oklahoma Steel Castings Company was deemed a brownfield, and Lowell Elementary, the neighborhood school, was shut down. As years passed, houses were abandoned or fell into disrepair, and property values plummeted as the rates of prostitution, theft, and drug use rose.

For years the city has speculated on measures to revitalize the Crutchfield community. Articles released in the early 2000s proclaim the neighborhood as “prime for renewal.” One article claims Crutchfield is “badly in need of a face-lift,” as if the neighborhood were just a wrinkled face on Tulsa’s youthful body.

Late last year, the Tulsa Development Authority announced it would formulate a new sector plan for Crutchfield. O.C. Walker, the executive director of the TDA, says the priority is to make the neighborhood appealing to young families while keeping it affordable.

“This plan still welcomes existing residents or residents that are looking to relocate in the Crutchfield neighborhood but also the urbanite that hasn’t really looked at the neighborhood yet,” Walker says.

With the Evans-Fintube industrial site, the new USA BMX home, minutes away, and with the opening of the Outsiders Museum in Crutchfield, the neighborhood has become a place of interest for city and private developers, especially because it’s close to downtown.

Stuart McDaniel, founder of local ad agency GuRuStu and president of East Village District Association, has purchased several lots in the area. His plan is to keep housing affordable for lower-to-middle-income workers, so as to appeal to service industry and retail workers in the downtown area.

McDaniel acknowledges that redeveloping the neighborhood is a precarious endeavor.

“You have to do it in a safe, slow way,” he said.

While residents of Crutchfield are hopeful for change, they are concerned about gentrification, with higher property taxes and insurance premiums driving residents from their homes. Many homeowners have lived in the neighborhood for more than 20 years, Bluford said.

“These people worked hard for what they have,” he continued. “And then the city wants to come in and kick them out? I’m totally against that.”

With all these changes, Crutchfield residents once again find themselves in limbo, waiting for what’s next.