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Home / About & contact / The shop’s story

Since 1928

Nearly a century at the bench

The shop’s story, year by year, as the shop itself tells it.

Sepia panorama of Tulsa in 1909: brick storefronts, awnings, a streetcar and horse-drawn wagons
Tulsa in 1909, nineteen years before the shop opened. Archive photograph, not the shop.
  1. 1928

    A shoe shop opens in Tulsa

    “Established 1928” is printed on the shop’s order form. From the start it worked in downtown Tulsa.

    Shop to supply Who opened the shop, under what name and where. The shop’s website does not say, so this page does not guess.

    Colour postcard of the Philcade Building, a tall brick office block in Tulsa, with 1930s cars and a bus on the street
    Tulsa in the shop’s first decades: the Philcade Building, postcard, about 1930–1945. Archive image, not the shop.
  2. 1930s

    A photograph from the thirties

    The shop’s website lists a 1930s photograph of the shop, credited to the Beryl Ford Collection / Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.

    Shop to supplyThe 1930s photograph (with the archive’s permission), the old counter, the people who worked here.
    Black-and-white photograph of a shop window lettered “Selis Shoe Repairing”, with a sign reading “Don’t let rationing of shoes worry you! We have plenty soles and rubber heels and our prices remain the same”
    The trade in those years: another shoe repair shop’s window, U.S. Office of War Information, April 1943. Not the Tulsa shop.
  3. To 2004

    The Kemp years

    Otis C. and Ida Kemp owned the shop for more than three decades. In the shop’s words, they “really built the legacy of shoe repair in Tulsa and across the nation”.

    Mr. Kemp taught shoe repair and made cowboy boots himself. Both retired in August 2004.

    Rows of old shoemaker’s tools mounted on dark wooden boards: knives, awls, pincers, hammers and wooden lasts
    Tools of the cobbler’s trade. A museum display in Massachusetts, not the shop’s bench.
  4. 2004

    Carried forward

    The Kemps retired; the shop kept going under the name they built.

    Shop to supply The current owner’s name and a few words from them.

  5. 2008

    Dance soles for a concert

    The shop fitted dance soles to sneakers for the New Kids on the Block concert at the BOK Center.

  6. 2009–2010

    Letters from across the country

    Customers in Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, New Jersey, Mississippi and Colorado wrote to thank the shop.

    ...You all did a FANTASTIC job and exceeded my expectations in both quality and service...

    Matthew N., Montrose, CO. Customer letter, 2009–2010

    One mail-in job from those years: 1986 Tony Lama rattlesnake boots from Jackson, Mississippi, re-welted, resoled and fitted with new diamondback skin. How a restoration works

    A person taping up a cardboard box on a white table
    Stock photo, not the shop or its customers.
  7. 2013

    From 4th Street to South Mingo Road

    Until May 2013: 4 West 4th Street, downtown. After repeated flooding the shop moved to the Commerce Plaza Shopping Center at 55th Place and South Mingo Road, less than 12 miles away.

    Address, hours and directions

    Downtown Tulsa from the air: a cluster of office towers among low buildings and trees
    Downtown Tulsa in 2023. Stock photo.
  8. Today

    Still doing it by hand

    • 1928the year the shop dates from
    • 30+ yearsaverage experience at the bench
    • 150+brands repaired
    • Member of the Shoe Service Institute of America
    • Mail-in work from across the US and Canada
    • Counter open three days a week: the team is in the back shop every day, working through orders
    • Free or deeply discounted repairs for charities it knows
    A hammer, a half-moon knife, awls and a curved needle laid out on a dark surface
    Leatherworker’s hand tools. Stock photo, not the shop’s bench.

About this page. Every date and name comes from the shop’s current website. The photographs are free-licence archive and stock images, captioned as what they are; none shows the shop or its people. The shop’s own photos would replace them.

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