Over and out
Film Row crystal business is closing
International Crystal Manufacturing is fulfilling its final orders and is preparing to shut its doors next month, ending a 66-year run that dates back to the early days of radio communications.
The shutdown coincides with the owner, Royden Freeland Jr., selling the company’s longtime home along Film Row that was once home to a film distribution hub for 20th Century Fox and MGM.
Allison Bailey, a broker with Price Edwards, said the closing comes with an upside for Film Row — the opportunity to convert a vintage Art Deco property into open storefronts that can add vitality to the district.
“It has the original film vaults,” Bailey said. “The building is in wonderful shape. I think we all have appreciated this building from the street for a long time. I believe returning some of those windows to the storefront would be a good design move for the street.”
Those windows, blackened out years ago, are a reminder of the district’s long decline into the city’s skid row throughout the 1980s and 1990s. International Crystal Manufacturing opened on the strip just as its heyday as one of the country’s film distribution hubs was coming to an end. As the studios closed their operations, Freeland’s company grew and took over one building after another.
“Film Row began to decline to some extent in the 1950s when most of the film companies moved to Dallas and there was a wholesale change in how films were distributed,” Freeland said. “In the 1960s we saw a lot of urban blight. And then there was the Urban Renewal Authority, which destroyed at lot of the beautiful buildings we had left. These buildings survived because we kept using them.”
The company’s own glory days, however, ended long ago with the switch to digital. Film Row, meanwhile, is no longer skid row. Down the street construction crews are busy building the $70 million West Village apartments and retail development, which will adjoin the already opened 21c Museum Hotel and soon to open Jones Assembly restaurant and event venue.
The street is filled with restaurants, creative firms, shops and offices. The stretch of Sheridan Avenue between Classen Boulevard and Dewey Avenue is no longer skid row.
“There is just not enough business to support the infrastructure we have,” Freeland said. “I am 74 and I decided it’s time to fold up the company.”
American dream
International Crystal Manufacturing was started by Freeland’s father, Royden Freeland Sr., an engineer at the University of Oklahoma when he joined the U.S. Army during World War II. While with the Army, Freeland Sr. worked extensively with the quartz crystals developed to stabilize radio frequencies.
“Quartz crystals are a part of crystal in quartz,” Freeland Jr. said. “They look like glass but they are not. The idea of the crystal is it vibrates like a tuning fork. Depending on the cut of the crystals, you can vibrate it at different modes.”
The crystals, Freeland said, were the answer to ending trouble with early day radios that would swing off their frequencies due to the lack of a control mechanism. Radios, meanwhile, had become a critical part of the war effort, and each radio required dozens of crystals.
Toward the end of the war, the Army was assisting in setting up dozens of startups to manufacture the crystals.
“During and after war there were several hundred companies,” Freeland Jr. said. “The government had set up the industry to serve the war. Afterward, there were still 20 of these companies.”
Freeland Sr. left the army in 1948 and started International Crystal Manufacturing with humble beginnings.
“It was started in the family garage, and he had this interest in the crystal business having worked with the Army in the Signal Corps,” Freeland Jr. said. “That’s where a lot of the crystal items were developed and then they were turned over to the public.”
Freeland Sr. subsidized the business and paid his own bills by consulting with WKY Radio and Television and radio station KOCY. He measured frequencies for young television stations throughout Oklahoma.
Those connections led Freeland to set up shop on Film Row in a building owned by Video Theaters.
“The company started on Film Row because Dad was looking for backers,” Freeland Jr. said. “He had borrowed some money from family, and two people from Video Theaters were interested. They started the company in a building Video Theaters owned here on Film Row.”
The company grew into the buildings abandoned by the Hollywood studios. Freeland Sr. expanded into manufacturing CB radios and microwave ovens. The company’s workforce was climbing up to 240 people. Freeland Jr., who developed an interest in radios while still in elementary school, joined the family business.
‘Well established’
Freeland Sr. had started his company with six employees and in the 1970s it had grown into a significant downtown employer.
“We were supplying crystals for all sorts of communications gear, especially public safety,” Freeland Jr. said. “All of the radios for the cities required a crystal for each channel, so it was a huge business at that time.”
All was going well. And then, on May 27, 1978, Freeland Sr. and his wife, Virginia, started a trip to Colorado Springs, taking off in their twin engine Aero Commander. The plane, piloted by Freeland Sr., exploded shortly after leaving the runway.
Freeland Jr., who was in his mid-30s, inherited the business along with his two sisters.
“It was well established,” Freeland Jr. said. “That was the boom time of the crystal industry, before synthesizers took over and the technology changed dramatically in how they make radios.”
Film Row’s decline was getting worse as the last of the film-related businesses shut down. Video Theaters was acquired by an out-of-state buyer and its operation was shut down, allowing the Freelands to acquire their former landlord’s buildings at 11 N Lee, 707 to 711 W Sheridan. The expansion included the district’s landmark Paramount building.
Video Theaters had already covered up the Paramount’s windows with metal siding with the combined effect of attempting to modernize the property while also securing it. Freeland Sr. had early on blackened the windows of his buildings looking out onto Sheridan Avenue.
“We had a lot of street people, it was a yucky place, but the buildings were cheap and we owned them,” Freeland Jr. said. “We looked at moving, but the costs were prohibitive.”
As downtown stagnated in the late 1980s, Freeland Jr. struggled with a wave of change sweeping through the radio and electronics business.
“The radios were no longer manufactured in the United States,” Freeland Jr. said. “The synthesizer was developed in the early 1980s and it only required a couple of crystals for the radios, which cut the demand dramatically. Manufacturing went off shore.”
‘Not enough business’
The company was no longer in growth mode. The passage of the city’s Metropolitan Area Projects created a resurgence for downtown, but it seemed to stop just short of Film Row, which was still being referred to as skid row.
Homeless people and panhandlers napped in entryways of abandoned buildings by day, sometimes walking over to nearby fast-food restaurants to beg for some change. By the early 2000s, downtown was thriving. But Film Row was forgotten.
The last true vestige of the film era, Oklahoma Theatre Supply, shut down in 2004 after the death of its owner, Maxine Peak. The business’ roots dated back to 1930 when it was a supplies stop for theater owners who were screening films at the studio outposts.
International Crystal Manufacturing was shrinking. Freeland Jr.’s sister unsuccessfully attempted to draw interest in turning Film Row into a historic district.
Freeland sold the large Paramount Building in 2003 to investors from Alaska. The new owner, Ron Smith, removed the metal siding and started some minor improvements while seeking to find tenants for an area that was still considered sketchy.
Chip Fudge, owner of Claims Management Resources, who has an affinity for historic buildings, started buying Film Row properties in 2006. He worked with David Wanzer to launch redevelopment efforts while convincing the city to do a streetscape along Sheridan that would include intersection markings reflecting the area’s film history. Fudge didn’t shy away from making offers to Freeland Jr. for his last cluster of buildings. But Freeland Jr. wasn’t ready to sell. That changed this last year.
“We have 13 employees,” Freeland Jr. said. “There is just not enough business to support the infrastructure we have, and I am 74 and I decided it’s time to fold up the company.”
A tour of International Crystal Manufacturing is a glimpse of another era. Much of the building’s original architecture is intact. Pictures of beloved employees hang on a wall marking celebrations of their careers. Displays show off the company’s decades of products including vintage radios. International Crystal Manufacturing was a place where people worked their entire lives.
Freeland Jr. loves the transformation that has taken place along Film Row, but he admits he probably won’t visit the area much once the business is closed and the property is sold. The business is just one of a few left in the country that was still manufacturing and selling quartz crystals.
“This is the end of an era,” Freeland Jr. said. “It’s sad. We’ve done business 66 years and it’s difficult to walk away from customers who have relied on us for a product. But I’m getting old and I’m getting tired. We have a tremendous amount of business coming in at the last minute. Business is booming in these final weeks.”