Myriad Gardens & Crystal Bridge

The development of the Myriad Botanical Gardens and the Crystal Bridge deserves its own chapter in the story of urban renewal in Oklahoma City. This grand project was the hallmark of the Pei Plan, intended to be both the playground of the thousands of Downtown residents who would flock to the area and a draw for the tourists and conventioneers visiting town.

The development of the Myriad Botanical Gardens and the Crystal Bridge deserves its own chapter in the story of urban renewal in Oklahoma City. This grand project was the hallmark of the Pei Plan, intended to be both the playground of the thousands of Downtown residents who would flock to the area and a draw for the tourists and conventioneers visiting town.

The site selection and land clearance occurred early in the urban renewal process and Pei's original vision was something like the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark which is part amusement park and part gardens. The original plans included a bridge structure like the Crystal Bridge of today, but it straddled a lake large enough for boating.

The initial stages of urban renewal moved very quickly and by 1972 many of the earliest projects like the convention center and Liberty Tower were completed. Those projects were completed by private developers, but the gardens had no such investors; neither did the city have a plan to pay for development of the large park. Having the large vacant superblock on the gardens site was a constant visual reminder of that failure.

In 1975, Dean A. McGee created a foundation to raise money for the park. Under his leadership the foundation cobbled together a mixture of private donations, federal grants, and municipal bonds to pay for the park. Work finally started in the early 1980s, but most of the promised private donations evaporated when the oil bust devastated the city's economy after 1982. Still the park was able to open in stages and after years of determination and hard work the Foundation completed the gardens and the Crystal Bridge in 1988 - 20 years after the project began.

Goff-Majors, Kevan . "Crystal Bridge Finished!." Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) March 25th, 1988. , Weekend sec.1.

Paschal, Jan. "Myriad Gardens Closer to Reality." Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) July 11th, 1982. .10.