The Eagle's Nest. The Chandelle Club. And Now, Slate.
Oklahoma City · 1964 – Present
The Eagle's Nest.
The Chandelle Club.
And Now, Slate.
Sixty Years of Oklahoma's Most Legendary Room
There is a room at the top of Oklahoma City that has never stopped calling people back. Through a dozen names, a dozen eras, it has always been the place where this city comes to mark the moments that matter.
This is its story — and the story of the building that holds it.
A Tower Rises
Designed by the Oklahoma City architectural firm Hudgins, Thompson, Ball & Associates, Founders Tower was built in 1964 as a modern monument to a growing city. Its distinctive cylindrical silhouette — twenty floors of glass and concrete rising from the northwest corridor — was unlike anything Oklahoma City had seen.
From the moment construction cranes framed the skyline, it was clear this building was meant to be more than office space. It was meant to be a landmark.
The Modern Oklahoma City
In its early years, Founders Tower was the embodiment of mid-century confidence — a city daring to dream big. Surrounded by a landscape still catching up to its ambition, the tower commanded the horizon and announced something new was happening in Oklahoma.
The building quickly drew the city's most prominent businesses, law firms, and executives. But it was what waited on the twentieth floor that made it truly unforgettable.
The Chandelle Club
At the top of Founders Tower, the Chandelle Club opened as one of the most remarkable restaurants in the world. It was only the fourth revolving restaurant on earth — and the second in the United States, behind Seattle's Space Needle.
Guests dined as the floor slowly rotated 360 degrees, revealing a panoramic canvas of Oklahoma City lights. Power dinners. Proposals. Anniversary celebrations. The Chandelle Club became the backdrop for the moments that defined this city's social life.
"The finest dining room in Oklahoma" was not a marketing line. It was a statement of fact.
A Living Building
While the Chandelle Club ruled the skyline, Founders Tower was a living, breathing city unto itself. The Queen Ann Cafeteria served the building's workers and visitors — a midday institution as beloved in its own way as the revolving room above it.
Tenants came and went. The city changed around it. But the building held its character — and the top floor never stopped drawing people who wanted to see Oklahoma City from somewhere above the ordinary.
The Years That Made the City
The years between are where the real story lives.
Founders Tower watched Oklahoma City become itself. It stood through the oil boom of the late 1970s — and through the bust that followed, when the bottom fell out and this city learned resilience the hard way. It was standing in April 1995, when Oklahoma City endured the unthinkable and answered it with a strength the rest of the world is still trying to understand.
It watched Route 66 — the Mother Road, turning one hundred years old in 2026 — carry generations of travelers past its doors. It watched the Hornets arrive after Katrina, a borrowed team that proved a "small market" city could hold its own. It watched that proof grow into the Thunder, and the Thunder grow into champions — and as these words are written, into a team chasing its sixth Western Conference Finals, a repeat title, and a claim to dynasty.
Storied tenants like Rainbow Travel came and went. Booms and busts. Quiet years and comeback years. In 2003, Founders Tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places — a formal acknowledgment of what Oklahoma City always knew.
This building didn't just survive Oklahoma City's history. It kept watch over it.
The Twentieth Floor — A Lineage
The Room Is Open Again.
The Chandelle Club's revolving floor is still. The Eagle's Nest has come home to roost. But on the twentieth floor of Founders Tower, the lights are back on — and the city looks exactly as extraordinary as it always has from up here.
Slate at Founders Tower carries sixty years of history in its walls. Every event here is part of that lineage. We aren't the first chapter, but we intend to be worthy of every one that came before.
"Make It A Landmark Occasion."
