Storied Structure Helps Occupants Create Better Future

April 15, 2024

By Landry Brewer

An old Elk City building has a new purpose.

In its nearly 100 years, the Standifer Building on the southeast corner of Seventh & Randall has served scores of people spanning several ages and stages and conditions of life.

According to a 2002 article in The Oklahoman, Etta Musick built it as a hospital for Dr. John Echols Standifer in 1927.

The Western Oklahoma Historical Society’s “Elk City: Rising from the Prairie” says that Dr. Standifer practiced medicine there in the Musick Hospital, and Etta Musick was its “head nurse and manager.”

A stone inscription in the building’s exterior verifies the date, builder, and hospital name.

The hospital eventually closed, though, and the building then housed apartments.

Later, the Bethel Nursing Home operated there, but it also eventually closed.

In 2002, Joe and Ann Smith and Ruben and Kay Worley completed a two-year building remodel and opened Standifer House Bed & Breakfast with Musick Inn Fine Dining.

Then, last August, Justice Rheaume, Director of Elk City’s Lincoln Teen Center, opened Standifer Apartments in the historic building as a non-profit to help teenagers and twenty-somethings transition to responsible adulthood as members of the workforce instead of drifting aimlessly.

“I saw that several of the teenagers who had aged out of the teen center lacked direction and a plan for their future,” Rheaume said.

So, he decided to open the vacant Standifer Building as a low-cost group-housing option where young people can live up to a year while they learn life skills and job skills to help them become independent, working adults with better, brighter futures.

Though his Lincoln Teen Center kids provided the motivation to open Standifer Apartments, anyone 18 to 25 years old is eligible to live there.

“Our mission is to provide support to young people and help them bridge the gap from childhood to adulthood, from dependence to independence,” Rheaume said. “We want to help them invest in their future and be productive members of our community.”

Those tenants and scores of other locals who’ve benefited through the decades are fortunate that Etta Musick invested in the Standifer Building nearly a century ago.