This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/YaB.2ACI/1465.1 Message Board Post: from the Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Tuesday, 5 Jan 1965, p27: "CITY LANDMARK COMING DOWN - A venerable chunk of Oklahoma City history is disappearing under the wrecking hammers at 21 S. Robinson. The old Rasbach Hotel is coming down. Only its vault door and the time-burnished bricks to be used in other local construction will remain as vestiges of a building once used as the county courthouse. Owner Gwynne Laughlin, 813 NW 41, said Monday the building will give way for the present to a parking lot. Future use of the site has not been determined. A contract held by Sooner Demolition Co., El Reno, calls for razing the Rasbach within 80 days, "but at the rate they're going, it will be sooner," Laughlin said. The gallant old building was constructed by the late C.E. Russell soon after the turn of the century, when carriages still rolled through the dust and mud past the Robinson and California intersection. The late H.L. Rasbach leased part of the three-story structure for a hotel. Rapidly becoming a gathering place for county politicos and lobby observers of the political goings-on, the building officially became the county seat in 1902. Yellowing news files show it served courthouse purposes until 1905, when a $100,000 bond-financed building - our "next-to-last" courthouse - was completed at the present site of a W. Main motor hotel. The late Dr. J.B. Rolater, pioneer city surgeon, bought the structure in 1910, and maintained offices there. Laughlin said Dr. Rolater housed his Model T in a ground floor area that most recently had been a liquor store. Dr. Rolater's will provided that his properties could be sold 21 years after his death. Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin bought the Rasbach and its three lots as an investment when the 21 years expired in 1953. The hotel's 60 rooms were fully occupied when notices to vacate were served last October, Laughlin said. Also leased there were the liquor store, a pioneer pharmacy, a tavern, a printing company, a barber college and grocery store. Demolition brings vivid boyhood memories back to Ernest J. Bartels, whose father once operated a bakery in the building. By coincidence, Bartels had been in charge of maintenance for Laughlin's properties for 10?? years. The concrete vault that once housed county records will vanish in the wreckage. But Laughlin said he has reserved ownership of its massive steel door for use in another building. And numerous contractors have expressed interest in the weathered bricks, assuming that bits of the onetime courthouse will remain, to shelter other people in other places." RAOGK