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Frank Lloyd Wright's 1956 Price Tower, now houses an art museum and the local landmark preservation council. (courtesy Bartlesville Museum in the Price Tower) |
| In a true quixotic Wrightian fashion, the building has no freight
elevator, so furniture for the offices ...had to be built on-site
by a staff craftsman by Maria Ricapito Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is the kind of small southwestern city where sawhorses block off insect-like oil pumps that bob up and down in the middle of downtown. Oil built the town, as well as what is arguably its most interesting edifice--the Frank Lloyd Wright--designed Price Tower, which is currently being sold by the Phillips Petroleum Company to an art museum known as the Bartlesville Museum in the Price Tower. Commissioned in 1956 by H.C. Price, an oil pipeline millionaire, the 19-story building is the only skyscraper that Wright ever managed to complete. Because of its oxidized copper trim (legend has it that workers treated it with horse urine), Wright called the building his "tree that escaped the forest." Although the tower was originally designed in 1929 to house a school and offices for New York's St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church, those plans were scrapped after the crash of the stock market, and Wright later adapted them for the offices of Price's company. In 1980, the Price company moved to Dallas, and Phillips Petroleum bought the building for much-needed office space during the oil boom. After the oil and gas market crashed in 1987, however, the Price Tower was one of the first buildings to become vacant, and it remained so for the next three years. In true quixotic Wrightian fashion, the building has no freight elevator, so furniture for the executive offices and apartments had to be built on-site by a staff craftsman. (Wright designed furnishings for all tenants who requested them, which was almost a necessity because of the odd room shapes.) Like many of Wright's buildings, the Price Tower is hard to maintain, says Carol Wofford, director of the museum, which currently inhabits a few floors, along with the local landmarks preservation council. "The heating and air systems run through the interior walls, and there's a great deal of glass, so it's hard to keep cold and hot," she says. "Wright wanted tall, slim, straight lines, so there are lots of really narrow passageways. And on the steps themselves, the risers are too narrow for most people's feet, so you have to walk sideways." The museum is in the process of raising money to buy the tower for traveling exhibitions and offices. Phillips initially gave the museum until the first of this year to raise funds, but it has since extended that deadline. Wofford says the goal is to amass $10 million (which includes the purchase price of a nearby non-Wright building, money to renovate rentable office space, and a $3.5 million endowment). "They're going to cut us a good deal," she says. "They've been more than generous in maintaining the building" while it was vacant, she adds, "although the exterior is not in excellent condition." "Mr. Price was a very civic-minded individual," Wofford says, referring to the incongruity of the triangular green skyscraper poking out of what may be a stretch to call the skyline of the small town. "He really put Bartlesville on the map. At the time, I don't think he saw it as anything strange, but it was." |
Keywords:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
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