Following a series of financial struggles, Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper, Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has shuttered its doors, reports the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise. The closure is only the latest chapter in a saga that began with the building’s controversial sale to private investors in March 2023. Now, longtime tenants of the mixed-use building have been given a month to vacate the premises, and the building’s once-public museum (The Price Tower Arts Center) and hotel (The Inn at Price Tower) are no longer accepting visitors.
As Wright’s only completed skyscraper, Price Tower holds an important place among the architect’s work. Built in 1956, the iconic building showcases how Wright drew inspiration from the natural world. Indeed, the architect based the design on a tree, imagining a trunk formed by the central elevator shafts and the green copper panels and sun louvers on the exterior forming the leaves.
In fact, Wright called the building “the tree that escaped the crowded forest,” as it was originally intended for New York City but was ultimately built on the Oklahoma prairie. Designed in the late 1920s, the structure was planned as four apartment towers in the Big Apple, but construction never started due to the Great Depression. When the H.C. Price Company, an oil and gas company, contracted Wright to build its headquarters in Bartlesville in 1953, he revisited those 1920 designs, changing them to a single tower.
The 19-story, 221-foot building originally housed offices and apartments for the H.C. Price Company. However, after the business closed in 1981, the building struggled to find its place. It was sold to Phillips Petroleum Company, which used it for storage. In 2000, Phillips donated the tower to a newly formed nonprofit, the Price Tower Arts Center. They created a museum dedicated to Wright, opened a boutique hotel—The Inn at Price Tower—and established two floors as the Copper Bar and Restaurant. Other spaces were rented as offices, but the nonprofit struggled with rising maintenance costs, eventually falling deep into debt.
In March 2023, Price Tower sold to Copper Tree Inc., a group of private investors helmed by Cynthia Blanchard, for a mere $10. As part of the inexpensive price, the company agreed to take on the nonprofit’s debt and pour $10 million into the preservation of the building, according to the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise.
