The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

MANHATTAN CONSTRUCTION COMPANY.

In 1896 Laurence H. Rooney of Muskogee, Oklahoma, established a construction company that holds the distinction of being the first corporation registered in Oklahoma. Because Oklahoma was a territory at the time, Rooney traveled to New York City to get his corporate charter. When the clerk began to fill out the charter form, he asked for the company name. Rooney, who had not decided on a name, told him to call it Manhattan, because they were in that part of the city when the document was signed. Rooney's firm built Oklahoma's original Capitol building at Guthrie in 1907, constructed the new Capitol building when the state capital relocated to Oklahoma City in 1919, and headed the team that added the Capitol's dome in 2002. Manhattan continued its growth and in 1942 opened a branch office in Houston, Texas, to supervise part of more than $1 billion in military construction contracts that the company secured during World War II. In Oklahoma the company constructed Camp Gruber and the Tulsa Bomber Plant in the early 1940s. Since then, the Muskogee firm has opened branch offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Texas, Washington, D.C., Tampa, Florida, Richmond, Virginia, and Mexico City, Mexico. Through the years the enterprise has built many Oklahoma courthouses, banks, hospitals, churches, college campus buildings, and various business facilities. At the turn of the twenty-first century Manhattan was the largest construction company in Oklahoma and continued to be owned by the Rooney family.

Bobby D. Weaver