Sam Anderson, Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis (2018)
Sam Anderson, Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis (2018)
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When I fantasize about living in Oklahoma City, I mentally install myself in the Regency Tower, a 24-story downtown apartment building put up in the late 1960s. By comparison to the surrounding built environment — newer, for the most part, than even the city's mere 131 years would lead one to expect — the Regency ranks as a classic. It has also proven itself as a survivor, standing as it was just a block away from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building when the latter was destroyed by the 1995 car-bombing that remains many Americans' sole association with the Oklahoman capital. The Regency sustained only cosmetic damage, despite a proximity to the blast such that an axle of the explosive-packed Ryder truck crushed a car parked nearby. It was that VIN-stamped part, in fact, that hastened the capture of Timothy McVeigh, the embittered Gulf War veteran who'd masterminded the bombing.
Sam Anderson, Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis (2018)
Sam Anderson, Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga…
Sam Anderson, Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis (2018)
When I fantasize about living in Oklahoma City, I mentally install myself in the Regency Tower, a 24-story downtown apartment building put up in the late 1960s. By comparison to the surrounding built environment — newer, for the most part, than even the city's mere 131 years would lead one to expect — the Regency ranks as a classic. It has also proven itself as a survivor, standing as it was just a block away from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building when the latter was destroyed by the 1995 car-bombing that remains many Americans' sole association with the Oklahoman capital. The Regency sustained only cosmetic damage, despite a proximity to the blast such that an axle of the explosive-packed Ryder truck crushed a car parked nearby. It was that VIN-stamped part, in fact, that hastened the capture of Timothy McVeigh, the embittered Gulf War veteran who'd masterminded the bombing.