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Bed and Breakfast Opens Across from Woodward
ParkBy DAVID LLOYD JONES
Contributing Writer
TWENTIES THEME: Hard
work went into renovating this house
into a “Roaring ‘20s atmosphere” Tulsa
bed and breakfast on 21st Street.
ALICIA SHRUM for
GTR Newspapers
You had to feel sorry for the woebegone
house at 1521 E. 21st St. It looked unloved.
Built in 1920, it sat across the street from
Woodward Park, one of Tulsa’s truly lovely
parks, but the asking price was a paltry
$139,000. The realtor handling the sale
gently suggested that the building could use
some major renovation or might be used to
its best advantage by tearing it down. It
was not, to put it gently, a hot property.
But Janet Mobbs took one look at it and
her heart went out to the house. It seemed
to fit perfectly with her plans. That
building, she decided, would be the answer
to her dreams, which was to own a Tulsa bed
and breakfast.
Happily her husband, Mark, agreed. Mark
is the accounting manager and controller at
Borden Dairy and Janet is an x-ray
technician but both had been looking for
another outlet for their talents. Two years
ago, they bought the house and started the
massive project of turning it into a viable
hostelry. In time, the Inn at Woodward Park
was ready for business.
“It was quite a project,” says Mark. “We
had to completely strip everything down and
start all over.”
“One of the problems was how to fit
bathrooms into bedrooms that hadn’t had them
before. When the house was built there was a
bathroom downstairs and two upstairs. It
wasn’t much trouble to have one of those
bathrooms go into one of the bedrooms, but
the space for the other bathroom we had to
steal from the closets. With the help of an
architect we managed to do it however, and
now each of the bedrooms has its own bathing
facilities.”
Contractors moved the walls and put in
the bathrooms, but when it came to
fine-tuning the details, Janet and Mark had
to apply their own elbow grease.
“We decided on a Roaring ‘20s
atmosphere,” says Mark, “and Janet did all
the planning. She bought the furniture and
put it all together.”
“But it was Mark who did all the painting
and heavy work,” says Janet. “We couldn’t
have afforded to have it done
professionally.”
As much as the Mobbs had to struggle with
the amenities of the house, they had to also
work their way through the Tulsa
bureaucracy. The house has a two-car garage
but with three different guest rooms the
city regulations demanded a parking space
for each. In time, a way was found to
accommodate five cars and the problem was
solved.
As the Mobbs envisioned it, the house
would be divided up into two distinct areas.
Go through the front door and you are faced
with an imposing wooden staircase. Climb the
stairs and you have three bedrooms and a
sitting room that appears to be an enclosed
sleeping porch. From the windows of that
room you get a magnificent view of Woodward
Park.
As they envision things happening, the
downstairs sitting room with a large dining
room table will be reserved for the Mobbs
private use except for breakfast in the
morning. The guests have their bedrooms,
baths, and can share the upstairs sitting
room.
One area where they feel they really have an
advantage is in their location: they are two
blocks from Utica Square with its many shops
and restaurants, within yards of Woodward
Park and just six blocks from Cherry Street,
with its own eclectic combination of
restaurants and shops.
They have even given their bedrooms
names: The Moroccan, the Hollywood and the
Jazz. Rates run from $95 to $125 a night.
Pets are a negotiable item (one suspects the
third member of the Mobbs family, Miss
Kitty, would prefer not to have large dogs)
but children under the age of 12 are
discouraged.
Plans are nice, so far as they go, but
there comes a time you have to put them into
action. That moment came early this month
when a couple celebrating their anniversary
became the first customers of the new
innkeepers.
“They seemed to like it,” says Janet,
proudly. “I fixed them a breakfast that had
yogurt with blueberries and almonds, bacon
and tomato quiche and cinnamon muffins. They
had breakfast in the upstairs sitting room
and said they enjoyed it.”
And how was it having strangers in the
house?
“One of the reasons I’m doing this is
because my kids have left. It’s comforting
to have people in the house.
