engineering

Surety Building

Surety Building is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Surety Building rather than just read about it. In short: The Surety Building in Muskogee, Oklahoma is an eight-story skyscraper built for the Southern Surety Company in 1910. It is one of five skyscraper buildings, ranging from five to ten stories tall, built in 1910–1912 and included in the Pre-Depression Muskogee Skyscrapers Thematic Resources study.

Key takeaways

Surety Building belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Surety Building to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Surety Building from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Surety Building in Muskogee, Oklahoma is an eight-story skyscraper built for the Southern Surety Company in 1910. It is one of five skyscraper buildings, ranging from five to ten stories tall, built in 1910–1912 and included in the Pre-Depression Muskogee Skyscrapers Thematic Resources study. The others are:

Baltimore Hotel, Manhattan Building, Railroad Exchange Building, and Severs Hotel. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

General description The Surety Building was constructed in 1910 in downtown Muskogee, at the corner of Broadway and Third Street by the Southern Surety Company. The approximate cost was $325,000. It was the first building in Eastern Oklahoma to be considered a skyscraper. It was used as offices by government officials, attorneys, petroleum companies, and land developers. Although the architect is not known, the building's style is classed as Sullivanesque Chicago Style. It is a skeleton-framed rectangular structure with a flat roof. It has the characteristics employed by Louis Sullivan, such as elaborate projecting cornices, ornate two-story base and linteled windows with vertical bands.

Conversion to senior-living apartments The building was converted into affordable apartments designed for senior living. It contains 18 one-bedroom units and 19 two-bedroom units, which went into service in 2006. Funding for the conversion was provided through the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program.

References

External links Media related to Surety Building (Muskogee, Oklahoma) at Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Surety Building

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Surety Building claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Surety Building before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Surety Building ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Surety Building

In research: Surety Building appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Surety Building in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Surety Building is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1910, Chicago school architecture in Oklahoma, Residential skyscrapers in Oklahoma, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Surety Building outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Surety Building in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Surety Building means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Surety Building out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Surety Building in simple terms?

Why does Surety Building matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Surety Building?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Surety Building.