I want to say that they finished building Devon Tower when I was about 14, but it was started a couple of years earlier. At that time, I don’t think I’d left OKC, so it was by far the tallest building I had ever seen. Of course, I understood that there were taller buildings in other cities, but it is hard, standing there, looking up at the tower rising out of the city, dwarfing the buildings around it, and say that it isn’t impressive. Especially when standing right beneath it, looking up, it seems to go on forever.

One of my friends likes to call Devon Energy Center ‘The Citadel,’ which I find particularly apt, because it dominates the city in a way that I really haven’t seen recreated, whether through images or in person, anywhere else. Another friend says it looks like an finger, in which the sloped part at the top is the nail. It seems as though everyone that lives in and around OKC has some special name or story for the tower, and it seems to be quite polarizing, insofar as a building is able. Perhaps the fact that Devon Energy Center redefined the skyline of OKC nets it a special place, whether out of love or hate, in Oklahoman’s hearts.