Hoit, Price & Barnes, a local firm that conceived many of Kansas City's landmark structures, designed the building in association with I.R.

The ground was broken at Eleventh and Oak Streets in 1917, but due to shortages of manpower and materials during the First World War, construction was delayed and was not completed until 1920.

[3][4] Oak Tower's top half was built with Haydite, the first modern structural lightweight concrete, which had recently been invented and patented in Kansas City by Stephen J. Hayde.

Today Oak Tower is one of the key fiber transit buildings for Kansas City and houses a 9,000-square-foot (840 m2) Tier II data center.

[10] In September 2018, the Tier II data center, operated by Netsolus, is 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) and is home to several key transit and telecommunications providers including Cogent, Verizon, and Zayo.