Original Business Card for the Hotel Small, "The Most Complete Colored Hotel in the Southwest
- Tulsa, OK , 1940
Tulsa, OK, 1940. Very Good. Tulsa, OK: n.d. [ca. 1940]. Pictorial business card (6x10cm.) printed on pink card stock. Light toning to margins, old red wax remnants to verso, else Very Good.
"Clean, Comfortable, Convenient" reads the hotel's logo. Located at 615 E. Archer St. in the heart of Tulsa's historic Greenwood neighborhood, the establishment of an upscale hotel for Black travelers and road trippers marked a turning point in the reconstruction of the neighborhood. Just a generation earlier Greenwood, nicknamed Black Wall Street for its thriving Black businesses and citizenry, had been decimated by white supremacists, businesses and homes razed to the ground, and as many as 300 citizens murdered. At its height the hotel, run by owner-manager W.H. Small, boasted 77 rooms, 50 of them "with connecting bath / Fans and telephones in all rooms." Date of business card based on the "Negro Motorist Green Book" for 1940, which lists the hotel on p. 39.
The address 615 E. Archer Street today stands on the corner across from the Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center which commemorates the neighborhood's history and legacy.
"Clean, Comfortable, Convenient" reads the hotel's logo. Located at 615 E. Archer St. in the heart of Tulsa's historic Greenwood neighborhood, the establishment of an upscale hotel for Black travelers and road trippers marked a turning point in the reconstruction of the neighborhood. Just a generation earlier Greenwood, nicknamed Black Wall Street for its thriving Black businesses and citizenry, had been decimated by white supremacists, businesses and homes razed to the ground, and as many as 300 citizens murdered. At its height the hotel, run by owner-manager W.H. Small, boasted 77 rooms, 50 of them "with connecting bath / Fans and telephones in all rooms." Date of business card based on the "Negro Motorist Green Book" for 1940, which lists the hotel on p. 39.
The address 615 E. Archer Street today stands on the corner across from the Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center which commemorates the neighborhood's history and legacy.