Cass and John Mayo

move to Tulsa...

With a sure nose for opportunity, Cass Mayo came to Tulsa from Dallas in 1903, at age 25, and opened a small furniture store in rented space on South Main Street. His younger brother John soon followed from their parents’ home in Clifton Hill, Missouri. The two brothers rented a house at 419 South Frisco and soon had a thriving business.

build a furniture business...

The Mayos' Furniture business grew rapidly, and in 1906 the brothers rented new space across Main Street in the two-story Shelton Building between Second and Third Streets, where they could offer a larger inventory, as well as carpets, drapes, and picture framing. Main Street was then a dirt road, but was paved in 1908.

By 1909 the brothers had begun construction on their own building – a five-story office building with their store on the lower floors. Taking their business two blocks south into a residential neighborhood, the Mayos were extending the southern limits of Tulsa’s business district. Just west of their new building was the original First Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1904, the predecessor of today's First United Methodist Church, and west across Boulder from the church was their home.

The five-story building completed in 1910 was only the start. In 1914 the brothers opened a new five-story wing that connected on the north side of the original building. Three years later in 1917 they built another five floors on top of the two wings to create one of the city’s early ten-story skyscrapers. The furniture business was thriving, but now they were in the real estate business as well. In 1920, they began construction of the Petroleum Building, a ten-story building on the site of Cass's old house at 5th and Boulder. In October 1921, the Mayo Furniture Store moved to its newest building, occupying the first four floors, and the basement.

and raise their families.

In November, 1904, Cass Mayo married his sweetheart, Allene Taylor from Salisbury, Missouri. The young couple bought a house at the northwest corner of 5th and Boulder in 1908 and took in brother John as a boarder.

Cass and his wife moved to 1413 South Cheyenne, in Carleton Place, the new fashionable neighborhood to the south, in 1912. John continued to board with them until 1915, when he married and built his own house next door at 1401 South Cheyenne. In the of this neighborhood as "oil producers".

In 1927, Cass and Allene Mayo were ready to move again, this time to a new house at 2301 South Boston, on a large tract of land which overlooked the Arkansas River. This would be their home until Cass died in 1949. Allene continued to live there for a number of years, but gave up the big house before her death in 1976. Part of the land was sold in the 1960s for the development of the 2300 tower, later converted to condominiums.