Facility offered dinners for $2 each

The burgeoning town had only six hotels, including the Midland, the largest with 99 rooms, the Hannan, the Warren, the Wolverton, the Ramsey and the Lawton Hotel, among other smaller accommodations and “tourist cabins.” “There are no housing vacancies in Lawton at this time; in fact, there is a large waiting list of parties desiring housing,” the men wrote. “It is the census of opinion that Fort Sill, after the present war, will be maintained with much larger forces than it has in the past in peace time periods.” Greer and the others were proven right. After World War II, Lawton maintained the feel of a small city, its skyline marked by the 10- story Hotel Lawtonian, which opened in 1955 and remained Lawton’s tallest building for many years.

As it was envisioned by Greer and others who invested in the hotel, the Lawtonian was to eclipse the Casa Del and all other meeting halls and hotels in the city, projected to generate income of more than $650,000 a year — maybe not all that impressive by today’s standards, but quite impressive at a time when the most expensive hotel rooms rented for $10 a day and the hotel’s coffee shop turned out breakfasts at an average cost of 50 cents. In the hotel’s swankier banquet room and officers’ club, dinners sold for $2 each. In addition to room rentals and food sales, the Lawtonian generated income by way of a full service valet, a cigar stand, telephone and telegraph services, barber and beauty shops and by leasing accommodations for the KSWO radio studios. A “cabana” addition, with 46 more rooms and a heated swimming pool, was completed in 1960. A major remodeling of the hotel was carried out in 1964. According to newspaper accounts, the hotel eventually declined as Fort Sill’s population steadied and then fell, and an assortment of newer hotels opened in the community. The Hotel Lawtonian was converted to a retirement community in 1982. In 1999, it was purchased by John and Gayle Rutherford, who have operated it as the Lawtonian Apartments since. Gayle Rutherford said she and her husband, originally from Oregon, never intended to stay in Lawton, but the Lawtonian — both its history and potential — enticed them to stay here. Since 1999, they’ve worked hard to revitalize the building, including making major investments in things like new plumbing and boilers. In many ways, she said, they’ve tried to maintain the building’s 1950s vintage feel, using some original furnishings and old photographs. “It’s a lot more than we anticipated, and I’ve probably found out more history of this building than any native Lawtonian,” she said. Entertainers like Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong and James Brown were visitors to the hotel in its heyday. She said Presley, even though he wasn’t known as “the king” at that time, stayed on the top floor. For another reason, too, she said the 10th floor earned a place in Hotel Lawtonian lore. A half-century or so ago, she said, soldiers and other men at street level could look up to the 10th floor and see call girls behind the windows in various shades of dress and undress, which caused the 10th to become known as the “wallpaper” floor. The more colorful characters of the hotel’s past may be gone now, but the Lawtonian still contributes to the character of the city’s downtown. Rutherford said that not all of the apartments in the building have been renovated, but most have been rented. One of her oldest tenants, Evelyn Barfield, 92, can claim places both in the hotel’s past and present. When she was a young woman, she worked for a couple of years as a desk clerk at the Hotel Lawtonian. Barfield said she doesn’t remember serving any famous guests, but does remember the hotel being a busy place that stayed consistently booked. “There were not a lot of hotels in Lawton, so people came here on business,” she said. “It was full up quite a bit.”

Top Photo: Three men pose on the fire escape of the Hotel Lawtonian in September 1954 when Lawton Community Hotel Inc. launched an intensive campaign to sell an additional $30,000 worth of stock to finish and furnish the ultramodern 10-story hotel's 150 rooms.