Exterior Painting in Highland Park, Ardmore, OK

Highland Park, Ardmore's 1930s neighborhood

Highland Park sits in southwest Ardmore, west of Commerce Street and south of Broadway. In 2012 an intensive survey for Oklahoma's state historic preservation program documented 370 buildings in and around it. It counted 117 contributing homes inside a recommended Highland Park Historic District, and found five houses individually eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The district has not been listed, but one of its houses has: the Turner House, added to the National Register in 2013.

The recommended district takes in the whole original Highland Park plat, the north side of McLish Avenue from Commerce west to Sunset, homes along Sunset Drive and the Highland Park blocks of 3rd Avenue SW.

Built on oil money

The neighborhood grew out of the Healdton Oil Field boom. The survey records that new additions such as Rose Lawn and Highland Park were platted in its wake. An April 1915 article in the Daily Ardmorite announced plans for many new bungalows. In September 1916, Ardmore held its first open house, with hundreds of people lining up to tour four new bungalows.

The building did not stop when the boom faded. The survey found that most Highland Park houses went up in the early to mid 1930s, and it moved the district's recommended period to 1915 through 1939 because Ardmore's 1913 Sanborn maps do not show Highland Park and the first ones that do date to 1918.

The styles on these streets

Craftsman houses peaked here by 1930, but Tudor designs stayed extremely common through 1940, and the survey calls Tudor one of the district's defining styles. The five individually eligible homes show the range:

• Turner House. A 1935 Mission and Spanish Colonial Revival home built for oilman Waco Turner. The survey calls it a local landmark and a centerpiece of local folklore.
• Renaissance Revival. A two-story 1935 home with a high degree of original integrity.
• Mary Stuart Smith Residence. A 1931 Colonial Revival house of the centered-gable type.
• Quintin Little home. A 1949 Colonial Revival tied to a locally prominent family.
• Mid-century modern. A 1951 brick Modern Movement house mixing straight lines, curves and even a conical roof section.

Colors by style

Highland Park owners pick their own colors. Ardmore's development code lists only the Downtown Historic District as a Historic Preservation overlay, so no city color approval applies to these houses. That freedom works best with a plan matched to the architecture:

• Tudor. Body color on the brick or stucco, a darker or contrasting color on half-timbering, and trim chosen to frame steep gables and arched doors.
• Craftsman. Earthy body colors, with a second color on exposed rafter tails, brackets and tapered porch columns so the woodwork stands out.
• Colonial Revival. A light body, crisp white or off-white trim, and a strong accent on the front door and shutters.
• Spanish Revival. Warm whites and creams on stucco or painted brick, so tile roofs and wrought details show.

What the survey flags

The 2012 survey spells out which changes cost a house its historic character. Replacement siding does not count against a house unless it was applied wrongly, such as vertically. Enclosing a front porch, other than screening, does. That makes careful repainting of original porches, columns, trim and siding one of the best things an owner can do for a Highland Park home.

On houses from 1915 to 1939, prep is most of the job. Old layers get scraped and sanded smooth at the edges, soft wood on sills and porch parts is pointed out before painting, bare spots are primed and open joints are recaulked before color goes on.

The McLish neighborhood next door

Directly east, across Commerce, lies the McLish neighborhood. Richard McLish, born in the Chickasaw Nation in 1860, filed the McLish Place plat in 1905 on land from his farm. A 2017 state survey of part of it covered 70 homes. About three in four were built between 1910 and 1929, and most are Craftsman bungalows, with some Colonial Revival, Minimal Traditional and Tudor houses. In the later 20th century, residents updated houses with additions, siding and sometimes new windows. Like Highland Park, McLish has no city color rules, and its bungalow details get the same style-aware painting.

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