Elementary living

Pershing Studios upcycles historic school into non-traditional housing

Depending where you’re standing, the Pershing Studios are between 47 and 97 years old. The former classrooms and offices of the newly renovated school building, now available as work/live studio apartments, feel both startlingly new and extremely old. If you’ve been to Europe, you might recognize in Pershing Studios the peculiar marriage of historic and modern design employed so well and so often there. 

Architecturally speaking, Tulsans could learn a lot from the Europeans about incorporating the past into our present context. The Pershing Studios seem to have it down, though. 

Built in 1918, Pershing School underwent additions in ’24, ’27 and ’68. Structural engineer Tom Wallace purchased the building (located in Owen Park at 1903 W. Easton St.) a few years ago with his wife, Susie, as a conversion project. Historic tax credits stipulated that the building remain as close to its original form as possible—”to leave it as much school-like as we can,” he said. “Hopefully, we did that in spades here.”

Indeed. They’ve succeeded to the extent that in some moments, walking the halls and studying the original cabinetry and chalkboards feels downright eerie. Yet the spaces are beautiful, and the reimagined school feels like an ideal blank slate for the artists, musicians and other residents it’s already begun to attract.

Wallace is president and CEO of Wallace Engineering, the structural and civil engineering consulting firm behind projects including Guthrie Green, AHHA, TCC Center for Creativity and many more across Tulsa and the U.S. But Pershing is the Wallaces’ alone, separate from the firm.

Financial gain took a backseat to community benefit from the project, which includes 24 units ranging from about 300 to 1,700 square feet and starting around $375 (at press time, about half of the units had already been leased).

“We’re kind of ignorant, in terms of, we don’t look at it from a moneymaking standpoint,” Wallace said. “We looked at it to see if it was possible to make money with this. And if it was, we thought it was a good thing to do for the community that would help maybe revitalize this end of the Owen Park area. And we’ve gotten a lot of feedback that that might be the case.”

Tulsa contractor Micky Payne (Happy Hammer Inc.) has managed the project. Despite his highly visible public work on the Cain’s remodel, The Vault, Dust Bowl, both Yokozuna locations, Dilly Deli/Dilly Diner and now the Fassler Hall expansion (to name just a few), Payne flies pretty far under the radar. He’s also one of the founding owners of Soundpony, so he knows a thing or two about grassroots development (the iconic local bar was among the early strongholds of what’s now the Brady Arts District).

“I’m the undercover guy, which is fine, because that’s kind of how I operate everything,” Payne said. “I’ve never really been on the self-promotion kick, just because I think my work will speak for myself. And so far so good. I don’t need to advertise.” 

Payne had just finished renovating the Wallaces’ home when Pershing School came up for sale. He pitched it to them, leading to a collaboration with architect Mike Abernathie of Sikes | Abernathie, a local firm specializing in historic preservation.

Payne said Wallace is the only one in town who could have done the project justice. 

“Nobody else has the vision to see what it could be,” Payne said. “And also just the styling of it—a lot of people, they take these old structures and they Home Depot them out, or they make them granite and South Tulsa. You need to let the spaces speak to you.” 

Having shepherded many of the most unusual and widely loved projects in the city as well as some of the most obscure, Payne said he welcomes growth and development, but he stressed the cultural and economic benefits of proceeding imaginatively.

“You have one chance, when you’re building a new structure, to make it cool,” he said. “We could make this city Barcelona if we wanted to. We could make it so wicked.

“… It’s like, they’re gonna build the Davenport next to the Soundpony—absolutely, build something there. But let’s make it look like the Borg Ship, man. Let’s don’t fuckin’ make it look like Plano. … You’re messing with my mojo because I have to look at it every day. You’re messing with my quality of life because I’m not inspired by my surroundings.” 

Payne sees sustainable development as essential for keeping costs low and nurturing a thriving, creative community with affordable housing. 

“In urban renewal in the ‘80s, we tore down so many of our brick structures,” he said. “That’s why we don’t have very many at all. You go to St. Louis or Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and there’s hundreds, thousands of brick structures. Small little brick buildings where there used to be mom and pop stores. The city of Tulsa tore all those down in the ‘80s.

“… You have to use the old structures. You can’t be tearing stuff down. That’s basically the bottom line of sustainability—keeping an old structure—and you rehab it instead of demoing it and building a new structure. You can rehab a building cheaper than you can build a new one. Through that, keep the costs low, keep the rents low, keep the prices low.”

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Wallace has also been a local leader in sustainable development. While planning Guthrie Green with the park’s designers (SWA out of Sausalito, California), Wallace suggested a geothermal heating and cooling system with a well field that would also service the surrounding buildings (including Wallace Engineering). GKFF obtained and matched a federal grant for $2.5 million, and the result is one of the biggest geothermal fields in the nation. 

“It’s kinda neat,” Wallace said. “And I’ll take credit for it; it was my idea. But the neat thing is to have somebody as neat as George Kaiser that listens and thinks about things and thought that would be a good thing. Because most clients would just say, ‘No. It’s too much first cost.’ But it cuts the cost of heating and cooling a building in half. … It paid for itself in my building in about five years.”

Though Pershing isn’t on geothermal, the well-constructed building is highly energy efficient. Repurposing the existing property also came with a few other unique benefits: picnic tables and mature trees where the playground once stood, a plot for a community garden, a sizable common area in the former cafeteria and kitchen, and—perhaps best of all—a fully restored gymnasium and stage. In keeping with the focus on community over profit, Wallace opted to keep the gym intact rather than use the space to add more units.

“All of the professionals that I know that have rental property said, ‘Oh man, this would make a great two or three or four apartments,’ Wallace said. “Yeah it would, but it makes an even better gym. We could make more money turning it into apartments, but it just seemed like such a wonderful amenity that was in great shape when we bought it. What a shame to get rid of it.”

“I want it to make money,” Wallace said. “But money isn’t the main thing. Everybody advised me, ‘You’ll never be able to rent those big classrooms very easily. Divide them in half, just tear out all the walls and make it all apartments that are 400 or 500 square feet.’ 

And it’s true, [the smaller units] are the ones that have leased up right away. So we’ll see if we can lease the other ones. … We’re hopeful that there’s just enough crazy people that want to live in an elementary school.” 

It’s hard to imagine a shortage of such “crazy people”—the Pershing Studios are unlike any other space in Tulsa. 

“It’s big city,” Payne said. “And it’s a great alternative to all this. It’s a loft—there may be a few true lofts here in town, but everybody builds North Dallas here. It’s like they can’t fathom not having a bedroom and a closet. I’m like, ‘Free your mind, man!’”

For more from the Voice's Spatial Recognition issue, read Andy Wheeler's story about a home bus conversion. 

For more from Molly, read her interview with filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, her reviews of alternative wellness resources in Tulsa and her take on TPS Superintendent Deborah Gist.