Skirvin Oklahoma City, a Hilton Hotel

The hotel that spooked the visitors

★★★★★📍 Downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma$$

The history: Skirvin was an oilman who built big, and his hotel became the social center of a young state capital, its ballrooms hosting the city's elite through the boom years. Its decline, closure and long dark years made its revival a civic cause, and the restoration is one of the city's great preservation stories. The details: the hotel opened on September 26, 1911, as a ten-story tower, added a third wing in the 1920s and was raised to 13 floors around 1930; it reopened in 2007 with 225 rooms, and new owners completed a major renovation in 2025, so rooms are fresher than the building's age suggests. Theodore Roosevelt spoke to a crowd from a hotel balcony during his 1912 Bull Moose campaign, and the restaurant is named for Perle Mesta, Skirvin's daughter, the Washington hostess Harry Truman appointed ambassador to Luxembourg. The Effie legend usually places her in Room 1015 and says she leapt from a window with her baby; local reporters who researched it found no evidence. The NBA chapter is real reporting: in 2010 the New York Knicks blamed a loss in Oklahoma City on a sleepless night at the hotel, and other visiting teams have told similar stories.

Room craft: ask for an upper floor for city views and, if you want the legend, the tenth floor; book a table at Perle Mesta for the Art Deco room and catch a set in the Red Piano Lounge. Parking is valet only, and the hotel is walkable to Bricktown's canal, restaurants and the arena.

Practicals: One Park Avenue, downtown Oklahoma City; pets allowed with a fee; indoor pool; near the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Fit: a Thunder game weekend with a ghost story, a Route 66 overnight and a downtown base for the city's museums.