About Milk Bottle Grocery
At a busy Oklahoma City intersection sits a red brick building so small that the giant milk bottle on its roof almost seems capable of crushing it.
The triangular commercial building was constructed in 1930 on a narrow piece of land associated with an old streetcar route. It contains only about 350 square feet. Around 1948, an enormous sheet-metal milk bottle was added to the flat roof as an advertising structure for the dairy industry.
The bottle has carried different paint schemes and commercial messages over the years while the tiny building below has housed a succession of businesses. That mismatch is the attraction. The oversized container and undersized store create a piece of mimetic architecture that looks stranger the longer the proportions are considered.
The Milk Bottle Grocery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The exterior can be seen from surrounding public areas, but the building’s current business use and interior access can change. Visitors should respect the property and nearby traffic while photographing one of Oklahoma City’s smallest buildings with one of its largest beverages.