Tudor cottages and Craftsman bungalows from the 1920s through the 1940s, small lots, low crawl spaces, and a lot of brick piers that have been leaning since Truman.
Florence Park sits between 15th and 21st, from the Broken Arrow Expressway east to Harvard. The park itself is at 21st and Gary, and Pratt Park is tucked in on Florence Avenue. The neighborhood was platted in the 1920s and built out by the end of the 1940s. Nearly every house is a one story cottage or bungalow on a 50 foot lot, and nearly every one is pier and beam.
Brick piers, mostly. The 1920s and 30s houses sit on brick stacks built up from a concrete pad, with a continuous perimeter wall of brick or poured concrete around the outside. The later 1940s houses switched to poured concrete piers. Clearance is tight everywhere. Eighteen to 24 inches is normal. We've been under a few on Florence Place with less than a foot at the back.
The Tudors have brick or stone veneer over the framing. The bungalows have wood siding. That matters for repair, because brick shows movement in the mortar joints and wood just flexes.
The perimeter wall holds up fine. It's the interior piers that sink. The middle of a Florence Park house is carrying the heaviest load, the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway walls, and it's sitting on a handful of brick stacks that have ridden Tulsa clay through 90 summers. Each dry August shrinks the clay under them a little. Each wet spring pushes it back, but not all the way. Over decades the middle of the house drops and the floor slopes in from the edges.
You feel it in the hall. Doors drift open or won't latch. A crack runs across the plaster above the bathroom door. The dining room floor has a hump where a girder still sits on a pier that didn't move.
Then the water. Low crawl spaces don't vent well, and 80 years of damp rots sill plates and joist ends. We see a lot of joists that have pulled off the girder entirely because the end rotted away. Cast iron drains under these houses crack and leak into the crawl space for years, which keeps one corner wet and sinking.
Florence Park has good trees on small lots, which puts a 60 foot oak or elm within 15 feet of a lot of foundations. In July a tree that size pulls the clay dry on its side of the house. That side settles first. On the level we can usually tell you where the big tree is before we walk outside.
Plumbing is original in more houses than you'd think. Cast iron drains and galvanized supply, both at the end of their life. A slow leak under the kitchen is the most common reason a Florence Park house settles in one corner and nowhere else.
Most of these houses have had a kitchen or bath remodel. Tile and a cast iron tub add weight to piers sized for linoleum. We find a lot of homeowner fixes under there. Stacked blocks, scab posts, a car jack somebody left in 1990.
Crawl space work, almost every time. We jack the dropped girders back to level over a few days so the plaster and brick come up gently. We add new concrete piers under the sections that sank and replace the brick stacks that have crumbled. We sister new lumber alongside rotted joists and cut out rotted sill plates. Then we shim everything tight.
If the crawl space is wet, we fix the water first. A vapor barrier, a drain, or just getting the downspouts six feet out. New piers on wet clay just move again.
Helical piers come in when a section of the perimeter wall has settled far enough that shims won't hold it. They can go in by hand in a tight crawl space, which matters here.
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Yes. Most of the neighborhood is that tight. We work on our backs with short jacks. Where a girder is too low to reach we dig a small pit under it. We don't cut your floors.
Because the interior piers are carrying the most weight and sitting on the least stable dirt. The perimeter wall is a continuous footing. The middle of the house sits on a handful of brick stacks. Those are what sink.
A little. Brick doesn't flex, so we lift slower and watch the mortar joints. Existing stair step cracks usually close. New ones are rare if the lift is gradual.
Yes, the City of Tulsa requires a permit for structural foundation work. We pull it and schedule the inspection.
Yes. We crawl it, measure the floor, and write you a quote. No charge.
Nearby neighborhoods: Cherry Street | Midtown Tulsa
Related service: Crawl space and pier and beam repair
Related reading: Pier and beam vs slab in Oklahoma | Foundation crack types and what they mean
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