Oklahoma City for the Longer Stay: Golf Estates, Lakefront Evenings and a 1911 Hotel

The upscale way to stay in Oklahoma City for more than a week is a private estate in the gated northwest or on Lake Hefner, with downtown's 1911 hotel and Midtown's seventh-floor terrace for the evenings. The city does not market itself as a luxury destination, and that is the appeal: no velvet rope, no crowds, and the golf neighborhoods, lakefront streets, historic hotel and gallery village all within a 25-minute drive of each other.

I manage furnished estate homes here, which means I spend my time answering one question from arriving guests: where does the good version of this city live? This is that answer.

Where is the gated side of Oklahoma City?

Northwest, along a line from downtown out past Lake Hefner. The anchor at the far end is Gaillardia Country Club at 5300 Gaillardia Boulevard, a private club built around what it calls a "grand Old World-style facility," with a golf course, an Olympic-sized pool, tennis courts and both casual and formal dining. The homes inside the gates are large, quiet and set back on wide lots. A guest in one of them wakes to fairway views and a 15-minute drive to anything downtown.

The club itself is for members and their guests. What a visitor gets is the neighborhood: the security gate, the landscaping, the quiet, and the sort of house that sleeps a family reunion or an executive team under one roof. Our largest home there, Gaillardia Manor, has a pool with a waterfall spa, a formal dining room and a game room, inventory you expect in Scottsdale and do not expect here.

Closer in sits Nichols Hills, a separate municipality founded in September 1929 by the developer G.A. Nichols on a 1,280-acre tract. It is an enclave, bordered by Oklahoma City on three sides, with 3,870 residents at the last census and the city's highest concentration of old-money addresses.

What is Lake Hefner like in the evening?

Still. Between the two districts lies a 2,500-acre reservoir built in the 1940s with 9.5 miles of paved trail around it. The Oklahoma City Boat Club sails from the east shore under a 36-foot replica of Nantucket's Brant Point lighthouse, and the west shore is residential and quiet. A house on that side gets the sunrise off the water and a sunset walk on the trail. In October, when the average high is 73 degrees, there is no better hour in the state. Four of our homes have private pools, two of them on or beside the water; they are listed on our Oklahoma City rentals with pools page.

Where do you eat downtown?

The Skirvin Hilton opened in 1911 at One Park Avenue and remains the address for a downtown dinner. Its restaurant, Perle Mesta, is led by Andrew Black, a James Beard Award winner, and the Red Piano Lounge on the ground floor has live music and a proper cocktail list. A longer-stay guest will eat here more than once.

For the view, Midtown's Ambassador Hotel puts O Bar on its seventh floor at 1200 N. Walker Avenue. It opens at 2 p.m. daily, runs to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 2 a.m. on weekends, and serves food from Cafe Cuvee, the French restaurant downstairs. The skyline from the terrace is the one on the postcards.

Scissortail Park, opened in two phases in 2019 and 2022, gives downtown its green front lawn, with the Skydance Bridge arching over the interstate between the halves. The grounds open at 6 a.m. and close at 11 p.m.

What is the cultural side?

Two museums anchor it. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum on NE 63rd Street holds one of the country's serious collections of Western art and reopens its rodeo hall on November 13 after a renovation. The First Americans Museum, on the river in the Horizons District, tells the story of the 39 First American Nations in Oklahoma inside a 175,000-square-foot building whose architecture is itself the reason to visit.

For galleries, the Paseo was built in 1929 as a Spanish Village of stucco and clay tile roofs, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and holds opening receptions on the first Friday of each month. The rest of the month it is a quiet place to buy something from the artist who made it.

Why book a house instead of a suite, and why direct?

Hotels here are good and fairly priced, and for three nights they are the right call. Past a week, the math changes. A furnished estate gives a traveling family or a visiting team separate bedrooms, a full kitchen, laundry, a pool and a yard, and a monthly arrangement typically bundles utilities, wifi and lawn care into one figure. Companies can be invoiced directly.

A glass-walled kitchen on Lake Hefner's west shore, the quiet side of the water.

Booking matters too. Travelers searching for an Airbnb in OKC find the same homes listed on the platforms, but booking the house direct from the operator removes the platform service fee on stays of four nights or more. BnB OKC, in Oklahoma City, runs eleven estate-sized homes that way; the collection is the Airbnb in OKC, booked direct, grouped by district from the gated northwest to the lake to the medical district. The practical side of a longer stay is set out in our guide to extended stays in Oklahoma City

When should you come?

Spring and fall. April averages 71 degrees, October 73, and both fill the patios and the lake trail. July runs to 93 and is for the pool. Plan around that, book a house instead of a room, and Oklahoma City will do something it is not supposed to do: make you want to come back.