While the Anderson-Prichard Oil Corporation was founded as a Delaware corporation, Lev H. Prichard and J. Steve Anderson set up the company headquarters in the grand Colcord Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma back in 1919.

The building was finished in 1909 and is considered to be Oklahoma City’s very first skyscraper. It is 145 feet (44 m) tall and currently has 14 floors (when it was completed in 1910, it only had 12 foors).

The office tower was developed by Charles Colcord, who was one of the near-legendary men of the Old West, and who was a cattle rancher, a U.S. Marshal, the city’s first Chief of Police, and a businessman. Colcord was also an oil man, having been one of the earliest who developed oil fields and drilled, and he also owned a company that operated an oil refinery. In his autobiography, Charles Colcord wrote that it “was to be the first big building in Oklahoma City, and I was anxious not to make any mistakes.”

The Colcord Building was the first steel-reinforced concrete building in Oklahoma, because Colcord had seen the devastation to lesser buildings in San Francisco after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and the resulting fires. In an article they wrote for “Outlook in Historic Conservation,” Kent Ruth and Melvena Thurman noted that in San Francisco, Colcord discovered 11 buildings that had withstood earthquake and fire. “These buildings which stood out like lone trees on a prairie, were all built of reinforced concrete,” he wrote in his autobiography. “The steel buildings had all gone down, melted and crumpled in the tremendous heat. Up until that time I had been planning a steel building, but when I viewed these ruins, I changed my mind and decided to build of reinforced concrete.”

The Lisle-Dunning Construction Company was the general contractors that built the reinforced concrete structure. It was originally designed to have two wings, but only the east wing and a connecting elevator/stair segment were ultimately constructed. Architect William A. Wells, who was a protégé of Louis Sullivan (a founder of the Chicago School style of architecture), designed the decorative terra cotta ornamentation on the first, second, and twelfth floors of the Colcord Building. Wells also designed several other buildings in downtown Oklahoma City.

Every luxury feature of the time period was incorporated into the building. The columns and walls of the main lobby were adorned with marble, the original nickel and bronze letterboxes and elevator doors shined, and ornamental plaster decorated the ceiling of the lobby.

In an original précis that described the building, the management company touted its amenitites and features as follows:

• COLCORD BUILDING
• OUR elevator service is equal to that of the best office building in New York City. Four 550 feet per minute elevators furnishing day and night service the year around.
• LOCATION excelled by none. Every street car line in the city passed the building.
• COMMODIOUS lobbies, corridors and toilets, floored and wainscoted with marble.
• OPERATED to secure the highest standard of efficiency in every detail effecting the safety, comfort, sonvenience and health of the occupants.
• REFRIGERATED and sterilized drinking water on every floor. Mail chute from every floor. Gas and hot and cold water in every room.
• DAYLIGHT and outside ventilation for every room in the building. No rental space more than 22 feet from a window.
• BUILDING when completed will have more floor space than is contained in any three of the largest office buildings in the city, thus placing a tenant in touch with the largest possible collectivve number of business interests as well as in the best advertised building in the Southwest.
• UNEQUALED janitor service, using the latest vacuum cleaning devices.
• INCLOSED stairs, elevators and fire escapes, making the lowest insurance risk of any building in the City. Fire escapes are such that any man, woman or child can use same without fear or risk.
• LIGHTING system includes eight electric ceiling outlets and four base plugs to each undivided room.
• DEMONSTRATIVE of the highest type of office building construction.
• INCLUDING not only every convenience but the maximum amount of luxuries.
• NOTHING has been overlooked that would enhance the value of the building from the standpoint of a tentant, and the
• GREATEST care and attention will be paid to every detail of management and upkeep.

Considering the visibility and prominence of the Colcord Building, it is little wonder that Anderson and Prichard chose the Colcord to be the address for their first company headquarters.

Nowadays, the Colcord Building is considered one of the landmarks of Oklahoma City, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The Colcord Building is now the Colcord Hotel.