Two Oklahoma properties will join the National Register of Historic Places. A spot on the list means recognition and some protections for the Prairie House in Norman and the Haywood Estate in Oklahoma City. A third home, Harrah’s Rock House, is expected to make the list in the coming weeks.
Haywood Estate in Oklahoma City
Dr. William L. Haywood was a physician and civic leader in Oklahoma City during the first half of the twentieth century. Amid segregation in Oklahoma City, Haywood established Utopia Hospital in Deep Deuce to provide care for the city’s Black residents. Haywood was the first Black doctor on faculty at the University Hospital (now OU Medicine), where he became director and chief of staff in the 1950s.
Haywood and his wife, educator and pioneering textbook author Susie Price Haywood, lived on the northeast side of the city. In a time when Black people were barred from many of Oklahoma City’s public parks, the Haywoods opened their estate for community picnics.
The Haywoods’ house is a red brick two-story building with a stone fence and statues of deer and lions flanking its path. It’s located at 711 N Sooner Road in OKC.
The building in Deep Deuce that held Haywood’s practice and several storefronts has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1996. The Oklahoma City home of Haywood’s colleague, Dr. Wyatt H. Slaughter, is also on the Register. Credited as Oklahoma City’s first Black doctor, Slaughter convinced Haywood to stay in the city after he visited Slaughter for medical treatment.
Herb Greene’s Prairie House in Norman
Architect Herb Greene moved to Norman to study under Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma. For his first major project in Oklahoma, Greene built the Prairie House east of town to live in after its completion in 1961.
Constructed of wood and other natural materials, the home strikes an organic, flowing figure. Herb Greene’s website describes it as “a sculpture on the Oklahoma prairie [that] evokes a complex set of references – primordial creature, shelter, protective hide, futurist object.”
Others see a less primordial creature in the structure; Life Magazine dubbed it the “Prairie Chicken House” in 1962.
The house is located at 550 48th Ave NE in Norman. The Prairie House Preservation Society offers tours and occasional events on the property, although tours are currently on hold for building restoration.
Harrah’s Rock House
A third Oklahoma property, a whimsical house of rocks in Harrah, was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places this year. Although it has not yet been officially added to the register, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Historical Society said it will be soon after revisions to its nomination requested by the National Parks Service.
The home’s builder, Frank Primm, was a switchboard operator at the Horseshoe Lake OG+E Plant in Harrah.
“After losing significant weight, Primm was warned by his doctor to take up some kind of physical activity or face grave consequences,” reads a post from Höffner Design Studios, whose owner nominated the Rock House for the register. “The physical activity that he chose for himself was to build this house.”
Primm built the house from 1939 to 1942 using stones and added unique ornamentations. He adorned the structure with tiny rose rocks and added smooth stones alongside its windows to mimic shutters, creating what Höffner calls “a lovely work of outsider architecture.”

The house sits at 20000 NE 23rd Street in Harrah, just a mile south of the plant where Primm worked.
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