Neighborhoods of Oklahoma City Neighborhoods of Oklahoma City The City of Oklahoma City uses Special Zoning Districts as a tool to maintain the character of many neighborhood communities. Downtown Oklahoma City itself is currently undergoing a renaissance. Between the mid-1980s and 1990s, downtown was unchanged and largely vacant. It was the scene of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on 5th Street between Robinson and Harvey Avenues, caused by convicted domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh; most buildings within a radius were structurally damaged by the explosion, including the old Journal Record Building (now home to the National Memorial museum). Many other buildings,
Oklahoma City bombing of the bombing, the national media focused on the fact that 19 of the victims had been babies and children, many in the day-care center. At the time of the bombing, there were 100 day-care centers in the United States in 7,900 federal buildings. McVeigh later stated that he was unaware of the day-care center when choosing the building as a target, and if he had known "... it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage." The FBI stated that McVeigh scouted the interior of the building in December 1994 and likely