A Corner That Defined a Town
At the northeast corner of West 10th Avenue and North Main Street in downtown Bristow, Oklahoma, a one-story brick and limestone building occupies a key downtown intersection with the confident, purposeful presence of a structure that was built to make an impression. Its large display windows — original in conception if not in their current aluminum framing — were designed to do exactly what showroom windows have always been designed to do: stop people on the street, invite them to look, and pull them inside to make the deal of the century on a new automobile. This is the Bristow Motor Company Building, constructed in 1923 as Creek County’s first automobile dealership, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and one of the finest surviving examples of 1920s Commercial-style architecture anywhere on Route 66 in Oklahoma. It has sold Fords and Chevrolets and Pontiacs and Buicks and Conoco gasoline in its century of existence. It has survived the oil boom, the Depression, the highway’s golden era, the bypass, and a 2008 fire that damaged the complex but could not destroy its historic core. It stands today as the physical anchor of one of the most architecturally intact historic automobile districts on the entire Mother Road.
Where Is the Bristow Motor Company Building?
The Bristow Motor Company Building is located at 500 North Main Street, at the northeast corner of West 10th Avenue and North Main Street in downtown Bristow, Oklahoma. Bristow sits on Historic Route 66 (Oklahoma State Highway 66) in Creek County, approximately 33 miles northeast of Oklahoma City and 33 miles southwest of Tulsa, placing it almost exactly at the midpoint of Oklahoma’s urban corridor. The building stands on the corner where Route 66’s Main Street alignment meets 10th Avenue, making it visible to every traveler who drives the historic route through Bristow’s downtown. The adjacent W.E. Krumrei building of 1927 and the modern Mainer Ford complex (formerly Bolin Ford) form an automotive heritage streetscape that spans nearly a century of automobile commerce on this single block.
The Town Behind the Building: Bristow, Oklahoma
Creek Nation Territory and the Coming of the Railroad
Before Bristow was a town, it was part of the Creek Indian Nation — the “Woodland Queen,” as the local landscape was known, a richly forested and fertile section of Indian Territory that the Creek people had made their home after their forced removal from the Southeast in the 1830s. This was not empty land: it was a functioning community with its own governance, culture, and economy, and it would remain so until federal Indian policy dismantled the tribal land base at the turn of the 20th century.
In 1897, the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway (the Frisco) began extending its tracks from Sapulpa toward Oklahoma City, and a small trading post was established at the site that would become Bristow. On April 25, 1898, a post office was established and named in honor of U.S. Senator Joseph L. Bristow of Kansas. The settlement grew rapidly around the railroad depot. By 1900 the population stood at 626; by 1907 statehood it had reached 1,134. Bristow lost a fierce competition with Sapulpa for the Creek County seat of government in a contested 1912 election, but it remained the commercial and cultural center of central Creek County throughout the oil boom era that followed.
The Oil Boom: 1914–1925
The discovery of oil and gas in the Bristow area around 1914–1915 triggered an economic transformation that made the building of Creek County’s first automobile dealership not just possible but inevitable. At the peak of the boom, an estimated 31,000 people lived within a few miles’ radius of Bristow in 1920 — an extraordinary concentration for a central Oklahoma town. By 1930, the petroleum industry supported three oil refineries, four pipeline companies, and numerous oil and gas firms in the community. KFRU, one of Oklahoma’s first radio stations, began broadcasting from Bristow studios in January 1925, owned by oil millionaire E.H. Rollestone. The downtown that the Bristow Motor Company Building anchors was largely built with oil money, in oil boom years, by entrepreneurs who expected the prosperity to last indefinitely.
Gene Autry, Will Rogers, and the Frisco Depot
Among Bristow’s many connections to American cultural history, none is more celebrated than the brief employment of Gene Autry — the future “Singing Cowboy” of Hollywood Westerns — as a telegrapher at the Frisco Railway Depot in the early 1920s. Young Orvon Grover “Gene” Autry (1907–1998) worked at the Bristow depot and later at stations in Sapulpa and Chelsea. It was at the Chelsea station that Will Rogers heard Autry playing his guitar while waiting for a train, was so impressed that he mentioned the young telegrapher on his national radio show, and launched one of the most successful careers in American entertainment history. Autry later returned to Bristow to broadcast live radio shows from the Roland Hotel on Route 66. The restored 1923 Frisco Depot today houses the Bristow Historical Train Depot & Museum and the Bristow Chamber of Commerce, complete with its original wood floors.
Route 66 Arrives: 1926
When U.S. Route 66 was designated through Bristow in 1926, it incorporated segments of the pre-existing Ozark Trail through the community — running directly along Main Street through the downtown. The highway’s arrival energized Bristow’s already-robust automobile economy: the travelers that Route 66 brought required filling stations, garages, auto courts, and dealerships. Bristow responded with one of the densest concentrations of automotive commercial buildings anywhere on the Oklahoma Mother Road. More than seven sites within Bristow’s downtown corridor are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Bristow Motor Company Building, the Beard Motor Company, the Texaco Service Station, the Bristow Tire Shop, the Firestone Service Station, and the Little Deep Fork Creek Bridge.
The Bristow Motor Company Building: Architecture, History, and Legacy
George Carmen Builds Creek County’s First Dealership: 1923
In 1923 — three years before Route 66 was designated, but firmly in the oil boom era that had made Bristow one of the most prosperous small cities in Oklahoma — George Carmen built the structure at 500 North Main Street as Creek County’s first automobile dealership. Carmen sold Fords from the new building for a short time after its completion, establishing the building’s century-long association with the automobile trade that would come to define this corner of downtown Bristow.
The building Carmen constructed is a one-story, 1920s Commercial-style structure built in brick and limestone, positioned on a key downtown corner that gave it maximum visibility from both Main Street and 10th Avenue. Its most distinctive original feature was a run of large display windows designed to showcase the automobiles sold within — the classic automotive showroom form that made a dealership building a piece of advertising as well as a commercial space. These windows were later replaced with modern aluminum frames, but the building’s proportions, its material quality, and its confident corner presence remain intact and immediately readable as the work of an era when automobile commerce was new, exciting, and worth celebrating architecturally.
Wendell List and the List Motor Company
Just eight months after the building was completed, George Carmen sold to Wendell List, who operated the business as the List Motor Company for decades. Under List’s ownership, the building became one of the anchors of Bristow’s downtown automotive district. A 1954 local advertisement identifies the business as “List Motors, Your Friendly Ford Dealer,” indicating that the Ford franchise that George Carmen had established in the building continued through the mid-20th century. The same period shows the business also selling Conoco gasoline — the dual-function model of automobile sales and fuel retail that characterized many successful dealerships of the era. List Motor Company operated in the building until the late 1980s, giving the original dealership enterprise a run of more than six decades in the same building on the same corner.
National Register of Historic Places: 1995
In 1995, the Bristow Motor Company Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NR 95000032) — the same year that the neighboring Bristow Tire Shop (NR 95000033) and the Texaco Service Station (NR 95000034) also received their listings. The simultaneous listing of three related Route 66 automotive properties reflects the coherence and completeness of Bristow’s surviving automobile heritage district — a concentration of 1920s and 1930s commercial auto architecture that had no parallel elsewhere on the Oklahoma Mother Road. The building’s listing recognized it both for its architectural significance as a well-preserved example of 1920s Commercial-style construction and for its historical importance as the county’s pioneering automobile dealership.
The 2008 Fire and Bolin Ford’s Art Deco Rebuild
In 2008, a major fire partially damaged the Bristow Motor Company complex. The response to the fire became one of the more architecturally interesting episodes in Bristow’s recent history: Bolin Ford, the dealership then operating from the building, rebuilt the burned-out portions of the complex using Art Deco- and Route 66-inspired architecture that consciously referenced the visual language of the historic structure and its period. The rebuilt sections blended with the surviving 1923 core of the Bristow Motor Company Building and with the adjacent 1927 W.E. Krumrei building, creating a streetscape that reads as a coherent early automobile-era commercial district despite the interruption of the fire and rebuild. Bolin Ford was subsequently acquired by Mainer Ford in 2019, continuing the building’s unbroken association with the Ford brand that George Carmen established in 1923.
Bristow’s Route 66 Automotive Heritage District
The Bristow Motor Company Building is most fully understood not in isolation but as the cornerstone of one of Route 66 Oklahoma’s most concentrated and coherent automobile heritage streetscapes. Within a few blocks of 500 North Main Street, travelers can explore a remarkable collection of surviving automotive commercial buildings from the highway’s golden era:
The Beard Motor Company (Bristow Chrysler Plymouth): 1947
At 210 East 9th Street — one block from Route 66 — stands the Beard Motor Company, built in 1947 by the flamboyant Bristow businessman Grover Hubert “Red” Beard as a 24-hour “Automobile Service Institution.” The building is a masterpiece of Streamline Moderne commercial architecture: curved brick corners, linear tile motifs, large display windows, and a filling station integrated into the complex. Its great claim to fame is the 102-foot Chrysler Plymouth tower that Red Beard erected in 1949 specifically to be visible to travelers on Route 66 — effectively using the highway as his advertising medium. The sign has been dark since the late 1950s, but its silhouette remains one of the most dramatic on the Oklahoma Mother Road. In a remarkable development, state leaders broke ground on August 1, 2025 on a $1 million project to refurbish and relocate the tower two blocks closer to Route 66, with completion anticipated by Summer 2026 — which would make it the tallest free-standing neon sign on the entire highway. The building is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Bristow Tire Shop: 1923
At 115 West 4th Avenue, the Bristow Tire Shop — also built in 1923 — presents one of the most architecturally distinctive gas stations anywhere on the Route 66 corridor: an Italian Renaissance Revival filling station with arched windows, a relatively flat tiled roof, and a pressed tin ceiling under the original canopy. The combination of Italian Renaissance vocabulary applied to a 1920s American gas station is architectural audacity of the first order and makes the Bristow Tire Shop one of the most photographed buildings in town. It too is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it remains in operation as Bristow Tire & Auto Service.
The Texaco Service Station: Route 66 at 4th
At 201 West 4th Avenue, a restored Texaco Service Station represents the standard-issue Route 66 filling station form of the 1930s and 1940s in beautifully preserved condition — another National Register property contributing to Bristow’s extraordinary concentration of recognized automotive heritage.
The Firestone Building: 1930
At 321 North Main Street, the Art Deco Firestone Service Station of 1930 — restored and renovated in 2011 by Jack Longacre into the Bristow Body Shop, complete with a vintage-looking neon sign that hangs from the original pole — adds a third distinct architectural period and style to the Main Street automotive heritage corridor that the Bristow Motor Company Building anchors.
More Brick Streets Than Any Other Oklahoma Town
One of Bristow’s most immediately striking physical characteristics is its downtown streetscape: Bristow has more brick-paved streets than any other town in Oklahoma. The brick streets that Route 66 travelers drive through Bristow’s downtown are not a heritage recreation — they are original infrastructure, laid in the oil boom years when Bristow had the resources to build its downtown properly and the ambition to make it last. Walking or driving the brick streets of downtown Bristow in front of the Motor Company Building gives every traveler an immediate, tactile connection to the era in which the building was built and the community it served.
More of Bristow’s Route 66 Story
The Bristow Historical Train Depot & Museum
At One Railroad Place, one block from Route 66, the Bristow Historical Train Depot & Museum is housed in the beautifully restored 1923 Frisco Railway Depot — the same year the Bristow Motor Company Building was constructed, making the two buildings contemporaries of Bristow’s most ambitious building era. The depot retains its original wood floors and houses the Bristow Chamber of Commerce alongside displays of railroad history, oil boom memorabilia, and the story of Gene Autry’s telegraphic career in Bristow. The Chamber of Commerce provides a History Tour brochure listing 37 buildings and places of historical interest within the city — an outstanding resource for travelers who want to explore Bristow’s architectural heritage systematically.
The Roland Hotel and KFRU Radio
The former Roland Hotel at 119 West 6th Avenue, built in 1923 by oilmen Rollestone and Freeland, hosted KFRU — one of Oklahoma’s first radio stations — from its studios and was later the venue from which Gene Autry broadcast live radio shows. The hotel’s association with both early Oklahoma radio history and with Autry’s career gives it a cultural significance beyond its architectural interest as a well-preserved 1920s commercial building.
Russ’ Ribs: The Hamburger King Building
At 223 South Main Street, the former Hamburger King building — now home to Russ’ Ribs — carries its own piece of American musical history: this was where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys stopped to eat on their late-night runs between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Wills, the King of Western Swing, traveled Route 66 regularly during his years of peak popularity, and his association with Bristow’s Hamburger King is one of the more charming pieces of music history embedded in the town’s Route 66 fabric. A meal at Russ’ Ribs is still a recommended stop.
The Town Square and Main Street Architecture
Bristow’s Town Square opens directly onto Historic Route 66/Main Street and features a small amphitheater that serves as a community gathering space. The surrounding Main Street architecture — oil boom commercial buildings in brick and limestone, many of them well-preserved and occupied — gives the town a genuine period character that no amount of heritage theming can replicate. This is what Route 66 actually looked like in the 1920s and 1930s: a prosperous small-city commercial district built in brick, on brick streets, in the confident commercial style of a community that expected to grow forever.
Continuing Your Route 66 Journey from Bristow
Bristow occupies a central position on Oklahoma’s Route 66 corridor, roughly equidistant between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. To the northeast, the highway runs through Sapulpa — with the Sapulpa Historical Society Museum, the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum, and the landmark Rock Creek Bridge — and on to Tulsa and northeast toward Catoosa and the Blue Whale and the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore. East of Sapulpa lies the Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum in Warwick and the Route 66 Interpretive Center in Chandler. To the southwest, Route 66 continues through the Rock Cafe in Stroud, the Round Barn in Arcadia, and on to Oklahoma City. For the full picture of Oklahoma’s 432-mile Will Rogers Highway corridor, see our guide to Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Climate and the Best Time to Visit
Bristow and central Creek County experience a humid subtropical climate. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) offer the most comfortable conditions for walking Bristow’s brick-paved downtown streets and exploring the historic automotive district. Spring is Oklahoma’s severe weather season — monitor forecasts from late March through June. Summer brings temperatures above 90°F; early morning visits to the downtown buildings are recommended in July and August. Winter is generally mild, with temperatures in the 30s–50s°F, and the brick streets and historic facades have a particular photographic character on grey winter days.
Practical Tips for Visiting the Bristow Motor Company Building
- Address: 500 North Main Street, at the corner of West 10th Avenue and North Main Street, Bristow, Oklahoma 74010
- Access: The building is currently operated as an active Ford dealership (Mainer Ford). Visitors are welcome to view the exterior from the street and sidewalk at any time. The interior is a functioning commercial space; walk-in visitors are welcome during business hours.
- Bristow Chamber of Commerce: Stop at the Bristow Historical Train Depot & Museum at One Railroad Place for the History Tour brochure, which maps 37 buildings and places of historical interest within the city — the most efficient way to explore Bristow’s full architectural heritage in a single visit.
- Photography: The corner position of the Bristow Motor Company Building gives photographers strong compositional options from multiple angles. The adjacent Mainer Ford building (2010, Art Deco/Route 66-inspired) provides interesting contrast with the 1923 original. The neon sign on the Mainer Ford building is best photographed at dusk.
- The full automotive heritage circuit: Allow 60–90 minutes to walk the complete Bristow automotive heritage circuit: Bristow Motor Company Building (500 N. Main), the Firestone/Bristow Body Shop (321 N. Main), the Beard Motor Company (210 E. 9th), the Texaco Service Station (201 W. 4th), and the Bristow Tire & Auto Shop (115 W. 4th). Bring the Chamber brochure as your guide.
- Dining: Russ’ Ribs at 223 S. Main Street (the former Hamburger King building where Bob Wills ate on his Oklahoma City–Tulsa runs) is the recommended Route 66 dining stop in Bristow. Joseph’s Fine Foods at 549 S. Main Street offers hearty Oklahoma comfort food.
- The Beard Motor Company tower: Check the status of the $1 million Chrysler Plymouth tower relocation project before your visit — if the Summer 2026 completion target is met, the 102-foot tower will be the tallest free-standing neon sign on Route 66 and a major new landmark on Bristow’s Route 66 streetscape.
- Brick streets: Bristow’s downtown brick-paved streets are most noticeable when wet or in low-angle morning light — they have a warm, warm red-orange glow that photographs exceptionally well.
- Oklahoma Route 66 Passport: Check with the Bristow Chamber of Commerce about Oklahoma Route 66 Passport stamp locations in Bristow.
Final Thoughts: Why the Bristow Motor Company Building Matters
The Bristow Motor Company Building is not the flashiest stop on Route 66 through Oklahoma. It doesn’t have a giant blue whale or a round barn or a space capsule. What it has is something that the more dramatically photogenic Route 66 landmarks often lack: a complete, coherent, readable story embedded in its physical fabric. The building was constructed in 1923, the year that also produced Bristow’s Frisco Depot and its Tire Shop, in the flush of an oil boom that made this Oklahoma community one of the most prosperous small cities in the state. It sold cars — Fords, Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Buicks — to the people who drove Route 66 and the people who lived along it. It survived a fire, a bypass, and seven decades of changing ownership without losing its fundamental character. And it stands today on a corner that it has occupied for more than 100 years, surrounded by a streetscape of surviving 1920s and 1930s commercial buildings that give travelers a more complete picture of what Route 66 actually was than any dedicated Route 66 museum can provide.
This is what the Mother Road looked like when it was new and the future felt wide open: brick streets, limestone-trimmed showrooms, big display windows full of gleaming automobiles, and a confidence that the prosperity of the moment would last forever. It didn’t, of course. But the building did. That is the story of the Bristow Motor Company Building — and it is worth the stop.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights
- Bristow, Oklahoma — Complete Route 66 Guide — The definitive guide to Bristow’s Route 66 heritage, with all major sites, dining, and lodging.
- Sapulpa, Oklahoma — Northeast of Bristow on Route 66, with the Sapulpa Historical Society Museum, Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum, and the Waite Phillips Filling Station.
- Rock Creek Bridge, Sapulpa — The 1921 steel truss bridge with a rare red brick deck, now the centerpiece of Sapulpa’s Route 66 Park.
- Seaba Station Motorcycle Museum, Warwick — A 1921 National Register filling station now housing 125+ vintage motorcycles, between Bristow and Chandler on Route 66.
- Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler — Immersive Route 66 museum inside a 1937 WPA sandstone armory, southeast of Bristow.
- Rock Cafe, Stroud — The legendary Route 66 diner open since 1939 that inspired Pixar’s Cars.
- Round Barn, Arcadia — The 1898 Route 66 landmark built of Kellyville sandstone, west of Bristow toward Oklahoma City.
- Oklahoma City on Route 66 — The state capital and Route 66 hub, approximately 33 miles southwest of Bristow.
- Tulsa on Route 66 — Oklahoma’s second city and a Route 66 destination, approximately 33 miles northeast of Bristow.
- Blue Whale of Catoosa — The iconic 80-foot fiberglass whale, northeast of Tulsa on Route 66.
- Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore — Honoring Oklahoma’s most beloved son, northeast of Tulsa on the Will Rogers Highway.
- Route 66 in Oklahoma — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to Oklahoma’s 432-mile Route 66 corridor, the Will Rogers Highway.
