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Price Tower

Coordinates: 36°44′52″N 95°58′34″W / 36.74778°N 95.97611°W / 36.74778; -95.97611
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For the building in Quebec City, see Édifice Price.
Price Tower
The Price Tower as seen from Dewey Avenue
Map
General information
TypeMulti-use
Location510 S. Dewey Avenue
Bartlesville, Oklahoma, U.S.
Construction started1952
Completed1956
Height
Antenna spire221 ft (67 m)
Technical details
Floor count19
Floor area42,000 square feet (3,900 m2)
Lifts/elevators4
Design and construction
Architect(s)Frank Lloyd Wright
Main contractorHaskell Culwell
Price Tower
Price Tower is located in Oklahoma
Price Tower
Price Tower is located in the United States
Price Tower
LocationBartlesville, Oklahoma
Coordinates36°44′52″N 95°58′34″W / 36.74778°N 95.97611°W / 36.74778; -95.97611
Built1956
ArchitectFrank Lloyd Wright
NRHP reference No.74001670[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHPSeptember 13, 1974
Designated NHLMarch 29, 2007[2]

The Price Tower is a nineteen-story, 221-foot-high tower at 510 South Dewey Avenue in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, United States. It is the only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that was ever built. The Price Tower's design is derived from a 1929 proposal for apartment buildings in New York City. Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company, a local oil pipeline and chemical firm, commissioned the Price Tower. The tower is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

The structure opened to the public in February 1956 and was sold in 1981 to Phillips Petroleum, which donated it to the Price Tower Arts Center in 2001. The arts center subsequently converted part of the building into a museum, opening a boutique hotel and restaurant on the upper stories. The Price Tower was sold in 2023 and closed the next year following financial issues and legal disputes.

As built, the Price Tower had about 42,000 square feet (3,900 m2) of rentable space, split across one residential and three office quadrants. The floor plan is laid out around a grid of 30-60-90 parallelograms, centered around a pinwheel-shaped structural core with four piers. The facade includes embossed copper spandrels and louvers, tinted glass windows, and poured stucco surfaces. The reinforced-concrete floors are cantilevered outward from the structural core. Initially, the residential and office portions of the building were accessed by different lobbies and elevators. The top three stories originally functioned as an office and a duplex unit for the Price family.

Site

[edit]

The Price Tower is located at 510 South Dewey Avenue in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, United States.[3][4] It is located in Washington County in the northeastern part of Oklahoma,[5] approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Tulsa.[6] The Price Tower is located on a 90,000-square-foot (8,400 m2) city block bounded by the now-closed Silas Street (formerly Sixth Street) to the south, Dewey Avenue to the west, Fifth Street to the north, and Osage Avenue to the east.[7] The Price Tower's base occupies two land lots measuring a combined 150 by 140 feet (46 by 43 m). The rest of the block includes a storage annex, which originally functioned as a grocery store and car dealership, as well as a parking lot.[7] The walkways and driveways outside the building are painted Cherokee red.[8] There are two carports outside the building: one to the north for office tenants, and one to the south for residents.[8][9] The Tower Center at Unity Square, immediately south of the Price Tower, is directly to the south, linking the tower with the Bartlesville Community Center.[10][11]

History

[edit]

Development

[edit]

In the late 1890s, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, had undergone an economic boom due to the success of the oil industry.[5] Oil magnates in Bartlesville commissioned architects to design lavish residences and offices.[12] Among these was the Price Tower, commissioned by Harold C. Price Sr. as a corporate headquarters for his eponymous company,[13][14] a pipeline-construction firm.[15] Meanwhile, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright had wanted to develop a skyscraper ever since the early 1920s, when he drew up plans for the National Insurance Company Building, an unbuilt office tower in Chicago with cantilevered floor slabs.[16][17]

Original New York plans

[edit]

The Price Tower is directly derived from Wright's unbuilt plan for the redevelopment of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in East Village, Manhattan, New York City.[16][18][19] Wright had been friends with St. Mark's rector, William Norman Guthrie, since at least 1908. Guthrie wrote to Wright in October 1927, telling the architect about his intention to construct a high-rise building to alleviate the church's ongoing financial shortfalls.[20] Negotiations over architects' fees continued over the next year. Guthrie asked Wright to waive all but $150 of his $7,500 design fee, claiming that the proposed buildings were located in an undesirable neighborhood and were thus unlikely to attract high-paying rental tenants. It was not until December 1928 that Wright sketched out designs for the St. Mark's towers.[21] Wright's longtime historian Edgar Kaufmann Jr. wrote that the St. Mark's towers were loosely based on the Romeo and Juliet Windmill, which Wright had designed for his aunts at Taliesin, his family's estate in Wisconsin.[22] To comply with New York City building codes, Wright devised plans for towers of between 10 and 20 stories.[23]

Wright's initial design called for four 16-to-18-story apartment buildings between 10th and 11th streets west of Second Avenue.[24][25][26] In contrast to the skyscrapers that predominated in Manhattan at the time, which had setbacks, Wright's designs resembled inverted cones.[24] The floor plans, rotated 30 degrees from a rectangular ground-level site, were divided into quadrants around a pinwheel-shaped core. The rooms were to be designed around a grid of 30-60-90 parallelograms and triangles.[19] The floors would have been cantilevered outward from a pinwheel-shaped core, the only part of each building anchored to the ground.[27][28] A steel-and-glass curtain wall would have been suspended from the ends of each floor slab.[27] The structures would have contained steel furniture and copper walls.[25] The apartments would have been duplex units, with 36 units in each building;[26][28] the second-floor units would have run diagonally across each structure.[25]

Wright called his design "modern—not modernistic".[25] Guthrie began to express doubts in Wright's plans in 1930, following objections from St. Mark's vestry,[29] and the project was ultimately canceled during the Great Depression.[6] Wright attempted to resurrect the St. Mark's project multiple times without success.[7] Among these proposals was one known as Broadacre City.[6][30] Wright continued to refine his tower design in the 1930s and 1940s. In particular, the superstructure of the Johnson Wax Headquarters' Research Tower (completed in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1944) is similar to that of the St. Mark's towers, except for the design of the curtain wall.[31] Wright's next building in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, would not be constructed until the 1950s.[32]

Bartlesville plans

[edit]

By the 1950s, the H. C. Price Company wanted to develop a modern headquarters in Bartlesville.[14][29] Initially, Harold C. Price Sr. did not believe that Wright would be interested, as he neither sought a corporate icon nor needed large amounts of space.[29] The architect Bruce Goff, who chaired the University of Oklahoma's school of architecture, recommended that the Prices hire Wright to design the headquarters.[13][29][33] Harold Sr.'s sons, Joe and Harold Jr., told their father that hiring Wright would be no more expensive than hiring any other architect to design a generic "box-type structure".[34] Subsequently, the Prices went to Wright's Wisconsin studio,[29] and Price and Wright haggled over the building's proposed height.[35] Price had wanted a low-rise structure measuring two[36][37] or three stories tall.[36][38] Although Price envisioned a structure with 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) in total, Wright wanted a 25-story structure with 25,000 square feet per story.[35][38] Price claimed a skyscraper would be "such a big building for a small town", while Wright countered that he had taken a regular low-rise structure and "stood it on end".[39]

By August 1952, Harold Price Sr. sought to develop a building that was at least 10 stories tall, which would also include some apartments.[40] Joe Price, one of Harold's two sons, later recalled that it took Wright two hours to convince Price to agree to a 12-story structure.[41] As Harold Price Sr. later wrote, "we finally compromised on nineteen floors."[34][42] The final design was nearly identical to the St. Mark's design, although the dimensions of each floor at the Price Tower were smaller than those of the St. Mark's towers.[30] The Price Company's vice president, John M. Thomas, later recalled that Harold Price "wanted that building to be a monument to the work our company had done, laying a pipeline through Alaska".[43] On the other hand, Price himself said that "it was not our intent to build a monument" but that, nonetheless, the tower became a point of pride for Bartlesville.[9] Wright thought the Bartlesville location was ideal because he believed that skyscrapers belonged in rural areas, where where they stood out from the surrounding landscape.[44][45] Joe Price also asked Goff to design a house next to the Price Tower, but after Wright asked if Goff's design was meant as a joke, the planned house was canceled.[46]

Construction

[edit]

In May 1953, Price announced plans for an 18-story tower to be built on a 140-by-150-foot (43 by 46 m) site at the northeastern corner of Dewey Avenue and Sixth Street in Bartlesville.[47] As originally envisioned, the structure was to be 186 feet (57 m) tall.[47][48][49] It was to include a three-story penthouse for the Price Company, eight double-story apartments, and a two-story annex for the Public Service Company.[47][48] Wright, who had added the apartments at the Prices' request,[32] envisioned the Price Tower as a model for other mixed-use high-rises in smaller American towns and cities.[50] Haskell Culwell, a company from Oklahoma City, was hired as the main contractor in July 1953.[51] L. B. Perkins was hired as the electrical engineer, and Collins and Gould served as the mechanical engineer.[52][53] Subcontractors submitted extremely high bids for materials; for example, one bidder offered to install the exterior copper for $450,000, while another bidder offered to pour concrete for $300,000.[54] During the building's development, there were also disputes between Wright and Price over such details as chairs.[55]

Work was delayed for several months due to difficulties in securing materials and widening a nearby street,[56] and groundbreaking took place in November 13, 1953.[57] Site excavation was complete by that December.[58] Wesley Peters was appointed as Wright's on-site representative, and several contractors from Oklahoma and Texas were hired for the project.[58] Wright visited Bartlesville in early 1954 to discuss the tower's design with 400 college students.[59] Construction was temporarily halted that March due to a labor strike.[60] Workers installed a temporary elevator hoist, which was extended upward as the building's superstructure rose.[61] Simultaneously, the floor slabs were poured; the lowest stories took a month to pour, but workers became more efficient at pouring concrete as the structure ascended.[55][62] By August 1954, concrete work had reached the sixth story, which had been poured in a week.[62]

Work on the tower continued through late 1954, with workers completing one story every 12 days;[63] the tower had reached the 15th story by December.[61][64] The developers were so heavily focused on the Price Tower's completion that they discouraged sightseers from coming, and they did not respond to he myriad of inquires about the tower's construction.[65][66] The 19th and final story was completed in February 1955, and workers began installing interior finishes on the lowest stories.[65][67] In addition, workers began installing some of the windows.[67] A topping out ceremony took place the next month, March 14, 1955,[68] at which point the building was scheduled to be completed in mid-1955.[66] Joe Price was so heavily involved with the Price Tower's development that he lived on site while the tower was being completed.[55] By that October, the building was still not open, but the Price Company was preparing to receive its first tenants.[69] In January 1956, in preparation for the tower's opening, Bartlesville's traffic committee voted to add parking spaces to the streets surrounding the tower.[70]

Late 20th century

[edit]

Completion and early years

[edit]
The lobby

The Price Tower opened for media previews on February 4, 1956.[71] The building officially opened six days later on February 10,[72] Only residents of Bartlesville were allowed to tour the structure on the first day, and the general public was allowed to visit over the weekend of February 11 and 12.[73][74] The opening ceremonies attracted 13,000 sightseers.[75] A retrospective Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article claimed that the Price Tower had cost $2.4 million to construct,[76] while contemporary estimates ranged as high as $13 million.[77][78] The developers themselves cited the building as having cost $6.5 million.[77] At the time of construction, the Price Tower was rumored as the most expensive building ever constructed in Bartlesville.[65] The structure was also among the first skyscrapers that was built with both apartments and offices from the outset.[6][74]

Harold Price was proud of the structure, placing images of it on the cover of his company's newsletter, Tie-In;[39] the Price Company also gave free tours of the building.[79] The apartments were variously cited as having been rented out for $285[80] or $325 a month.[55][73] The offices rented for $135 to $165 a month depending on the office's location in the building.[55][80] The Price Company initially occupied the office space on the 12th through 19th floors,[77][81] employing sixty employees there.[80] The Public Service Company of Oklahoma moved into the two-story annex east of the main tower.[73] Other early tenants included the General Acceptance Company on three stories, the Claiborne Company on the 11th floor,[82] and an ophthalmologist's office.[83] Bruce Goff also moved into one of the Price Tower's apartments and maintained an office in the building.[84] Two years after the Price Tower opened, it still attracted 40 to 50 tourists during the weekend, and two of the eight apartments were vacant.[75]

After Wright's death in 1959, Price hired a Swiss company to manufacture a sundial in Wright's honor.[85] The sundial, which was installed next to the tower's southwest corner in November 1961,[85] was vandalized shortly after its installation.[86] In 1960, Wright's firm Taliesin Associated Architects drew up plans to convert some of the unused apartments into offices. One of the apartments' lower levels was converted to a conference room and five workspaces, while its upper level was divided into a secretary's office and two more workspaces.[87] Although the Price family continued to take pride in the building's design, Joe Price said the company did not earn much from rental income.[88] By the late 1960s, the Public Service Company had outgrown its offices in the building.[89] In addition, the lobby displayed a rotating exhibit of photographs that Joe Price had taken while on a safari.[90] Thirty-five to forty Price Company employees still worked at the Price Tower in the early 1970s.[91] As part of a master plan for Bartlesville, in 1978, city officials announced plans for a $10.5 million community center next to the Price Tower.[33][92]

Philips Petroleum ownership

[edit]

The H. C. Price Company sold Price Tower to Phillips Petroleum in 1981.[39] Philips Petroleum occupied the building until 1984, when it abandoned the Price Tower's offices following the 1980s oil glut.[12] Phillips Petroleum's lawyers deemed the exterior exit staircase a safety risk and only used the building for storage.[93] Phillips Petroleum considered selling the building, as well as its furniture, in the 1990s.[94] The facade was restored in 1999.[95] The same year, the Price Tower Arts Center restored Bruce Goff's studio in the tower, and the organization received $125,000 for furnishings and educational programming in the studio.[96] The Price Tower Arts Center also convinced Phillips Petroleum to donate the building to the arts center and renovate it for $4 million.[12]

21st century

[edit]

Price Tower Arts Center takeover

[edit]
Furniture in the Price Tower

Phillips Petroleum donated the building in 2000[97] or 2001 to the Price Tower Arts Center.[98] The tower was rededicated on February 10, 2001, with a ceremony featuring Native American performers from Oklahoma.[38] The Price Tower Arts Center operated a museum on the first and second stories.[99] Initially, the museum included contemporary art, including Frederic Remington sculptures, in addition to architectural works by Wright and Bruce Goff.[100] The art center wished to convert the Price Tower into a "living museum", planned to add a hotel and a restaurant.[100] Profits from the restaurant and hotel would be used to help maintain the tower.[101] Wendy Evans Joseph designed a boutique hotel, the Inn at Price Tower, which opened in April 2003[6][99] and cost $2.1 million.[12][101][102] The Copper Bar and Restaurant opened on two additional stories,[6][101] and the lobby and Price's penthouse were also renovated.[101] Also in 2003, the Price Tower Arts Center received a $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant for the penthouse suite's restoration.[12][95]

Following a brief international search, the British architect Zaha Hadid was commissioned to design an expansion of the Price Tower Arts Center in 2002.[103][104] The expansion was planned to cost $15 million,[101][103] and it would have covered 50,000 square feet (4,600 m2)[12][103] or 58,000 square feet (5,400 m2).[104] The annex's design was inspired by that of the original building, with triangular motifs, and was boomerang-shaped. Had the annex been built, it would have included three galleries, classrooms, offices, and an auditorium.[104] Most of the art center's collection would have been moved to this annex, freeing up space in the original building for the hotel and restaurant.[100] Although Hadid's design was showcased at New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2006,[105] the Price Tower Arts Center never completed the expansion.[106]

In 2005, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the tower's development, the Price Tower Arts Center hosted an exhibit on the building's history.[107] Work on the Tower Center at Unity Square park, directly south of the Price Tower, began in March 2019,[108][109] and the park opened in May 2020.[10]

Sale and closure

[edit]

The tower was sold in March 2023 to Copper Tree Inc., which paid a nominal fee of $10 and planned to restore the building.[97][110] Copper Tree also took over $600,000 in debt that the Price Tower had incurred.[111][112] Cynthia Blanchard, one of the principals in Copper Tree, had planned to renovate the tower to attract technology-related tenants.[112] The owner of the Mayo Hotel in Tulsa, John Snyder, made an unsuccessful bid for the tower during May 2024.[112][113] By that August, the owners owed more than $2 million and were selling off the tower's furniture. As a result, the tower was closed on September 1, 2024, amid financial issues and a dispute with the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy regarding the sale of the furniture.[114][115] In addition, the owners issued 30-day eviction notices to the tenants,[116] and Copper Tree began selling the furniture in late August.[117][118] Visit Bartlesville, the city's tourism agency, said at the time that the Price Tower was the city's most popular visitor attraction.[119]

By the end of September 2024, some of the furniture had been sold.[120] Ownership of the building was to be the subject of an online auction in early October 2024, with a starting bid of $600,000.[110][121] The auction was halted amid a lawsuit over whether an earlier sale agreement covering the structure was still in force.[121][122] Copper Tree sued the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy in mid-October, requesting that a judge nullify the conservancy's liens on the building.[111][123][124] Snyder's company, McFarlin Building LLC, also sued Copper Tree, alleging that Blanchard had agreed to sell the building to him before reneging.[113] If the disputes were resolved, the building was scheduled to go up for bid again in mid-November.[121][123] However, the November auction was also canceled.[125][126] The Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy filed a counterclaim that December, saying that Copper Tree had violated the easement, which the organization claimed was still valid.[127]

Architecture

[edit]

The Price Tower is a 19-story building, measuring 221 feet (67 m) tall[4][7] from ground level to the building's television spire.[128] Excluding the spire, the building is 186 feet (57 m) tall.[129][52] Wright nicknamed the Price Tower "the tree that escaped the crowded forest", referring both to the building's design and to his original plans for a New York skyscraper.[97][130] The floor plan is laid out around a grid of 30-60-90 parallelograms,[128][80] each measuring about 2.5 feet (0.76 m) wide.[75][131] The building is divided into quadrants; one quadrant was originally dedicated to double-height apartments, while the other three were for offices.[7][32][52] One of the quadrants is slightly smaller than the others.[55] In addition to the main tower, the Price Tower includes a two-story annex occupied by the Public Service Co.[47]

Facade

[edit]
Detail of the Dewey Avenue entrance

As designed, each elevation of the main tower measures 45 feet (14 m) wide.[81][128] The building is asymmetrical, and each elevation has a different appearance.[132][133] The facade panels are suspended from the floor slabs.[7][76] There are embossed copper spandrels embedded into the ends of the concrete floor slabs;[7] Wright anticipated that the copper would change color as it aged.[54] In addition, the facade includes sheet-copper louvers,[134] which were intended to help cool down the interior.[38][135][131] The louvers are 20 inches (510 mm) wide[128] and were allowed to oxidize into a blue-green color before they were installed.[7][32][131] The louvers on the office sections of the building are arranged horizontally, while those on the residential section are arranged vertically.[7][52] The horizontal louvers were intended to keep out the wind and rain while also blocking direct sunlight.[81][136][137] The vertical louvers are placed on the southwest corner, which has the most exposure to sunlight throughout the day.[41][81] On the 16th-story terrace are movable louvers.[128][138]

The rest of the facade is generally made of poured concrete, which is covered with stucco. All exterior trim is made of aluminum, while the exterior lamps are made of copper.[8] The glass panes were originally tinted in gold and copper hues.[38] A reflective film was added to the windows in the late 20th century, though the film on the southeast-quadrant windows was removed in 2003.[80] Balconies on each floor provide shade to parts of the facade,[139] and roof gardens were planted atop the annex and the apartment balconies.[140][138] Wright, a major proponent of organic architecture,[137][139] believed that the roof gardens and glass-and-steel facade would help integrate the building's interior and exterior.[44][81] He envisioned the terraces as "intermediaries" that connected the indoors and outdoors.[141] The facade also contains a 4-by-4-inch (100 by 100 mm) red tile,[8] on which Wright signed his initials.[8][138]

At the ground or first story, the annex was originally divided from the main tower via a drive-through counter with vertical windows. Although the second story of the annex was physically connected to the main tower, there was no way to travel between the two parts of the building without going outside. The annex's northern wall has an rhombus window with embossed copper bands, as well as a skylight with a copper frame.[8] Between 1978 and 1979, the drive-through counter was enclosed, becoming the Taliesin Room.[142] There is also a one-story storage shed to the east, which was built in the 1980s or 1990s.[8]

Structural and mechanical features

[edit]

The floor slabs are made of reinforced concrete, while the walls are made of glass and concrete.[47][48][136] The structural core is made of four reinforced-concrete support piers extending the full height of the tower, each measuring 18 feet (5.5 m) wide by 10 feet (3.0 m) thick.[52][136] The piers rest on a concrete platform 25 feet (7.6 m) below ground, which measures 3 feet (0.91 m) thick.[129][143] The piers are arranged in a pinwheel configuration around a small open area in the center, forming a hollow "X" shape as seen from above.[75][144] Utility pipes, wires, and ducts are embedded into these piers, and an air-conditioning system is placed within the piers and floor slabs.[81][52] The building's interior is divided into four air-conditioning zones, one for each quadrant; the ducts in each pier serve a different quadrant. The building is served by three air-cooling machines above the main tower's 15th story, as well as another machine above the two-story annex.[54]

The main tower's floors are all cantilevered from a structural core,[7][52] extending as much as 19 feet (5.8 m) outward from the crossbeams between each pier.[144] The cantilevered floors allowed a more flexible floor plan while also making the building one-seventh the weight of similar skyscrapers.[49][143] Wright himself claimed that a similar-sized building in New York's Rockefeller Center weighed about as much as 6.1 buildings of Price Tower's size.[145]

The upper stories were originally served by four elevators, one in each pier,[144][146] which could fit four people comfortably.[55] Each hexagonal elevator cab covers about 10 square feet (0.93 m2) and was custom-made due to its small size.[147] One elevator was originally used exclusively by residents, while the other three were used by office tenants.[52][73] All four elevators could be either operated automatically or staffed by an elevator operator.[128] The residential elevator shaft is no longer used, and the cab has been removed to make way for additional ducts and wires.[148] The building was constructed with a single emergency-exit staircase,[30] which is placed outdoors and is covered by a canopy.[73] This may have contributed to the building's abandonment in the late 20th century, as fire-safety regulations required at least two emergency exit stairs.[30]

Interior

[edit]

As built, the Price Tower had about 42,000 square feet (3,900 m2) of rentable space; including corridors and other non-rentable spaces, the gross floor area was 57,315 square feet (5,324.7 m2).[80] Each floor has a usable floor area of 1,900 square feet (180 m2).[80][131] On each floor, 1,150 square feet (107 m2) were originally used for offices; the remaining space was part of an apartment. The Price Company had the 11th to 16th-floor offices, while the offices on the 3rd to 10th floors were rented out.[80] There were eight apartments including the Prices' penthouse.[78] Michael Christopher, an executive at the Price Tower Arts Center, described Wright as having planned the building as an "urban microcosm concept, where you would live, work, eat, and shop all in the same space".[100] To save space, the hallways were intentionally designed as low, narrow spaces.[138]

Wright also designed some furniture for the tenants,[128][149] and he was responsible for the overall color scheme.[77] All lighting fixtures and ventilation grilles were designed to fit the building's parallelogram grid, and the angled walls and built-in furniture were designed to fit within that grid.[81] Among the objects in the building are chairs with heavy aluminum bases, sloped arms, and hexagonal seatbacks, which had to be custom-made by a firm from Dewey, Oklahoma.[55][77] There are also pieces of furniture donated by Bruce Goff.[118][115] Mahogany, aluminum, and tarnished copper are used throughout the building.[77][149]

Lower stories

[edit]
Lobby ceiling

The lobby was accessed from the north via a driveway from Dewey Avenue, as well as from Sixth Street to the south.[62] The lobby contains a newsstand.[47][80] The floor is painted Cherokee red, while the fluted, light-colored walls contain low seats.[146] Inscribed on the walls are two quotes, adapted from the work of Walt Whitman;[146] one is from the concluding stanza of Salut au Monde, and the other is from Song of the Broad-Axe.[150] On the lobby's double-height ceiling are triangular lamps with copper frames and opaque glass panes.[146] There is an open-air mezzanine overlooking the lobby,[47][151] running from west to east.[80]

The two-story annex had offices for the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, as well as a superintendent's apartment with a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.[8] The superintendent's apartment subsequently became a catering room for the Price Tower Arts Center, while the offices became a lobby and welcome center.[142] When the art center moved into the building, two partition walls and a restroom were added, and the second floor was converted into exhibition space.[148] In addition, there was a basement with laundry, storage, and garbage rooms, and a sub-basement with elevator equipment.[47][48]

Apartments and hotel rooms

[edit]

The southwestern quadrant was devoted to residential use.[128][144] There were seven two-story apartments on the 3rd through 16th floors, each occupying 982 square feet (91.2 m2) across two stories. The apartments were stacked atop each other.[80] Each apartment had a small kitchen with painted cabinets, laminated countertops, refrigerator-oven, dishwasher, and a trash chute.[152] The lower level had a living–dining space, kitchen, closets, a bathroom, and a vestibule, while the upper level had two bedrooms.[55][128] A glass skylight illuminated each apartment's upper level.[62] The apartments, which were unpopular because of their small size and high prices, were later converted to regular offices.[39]

Decorative detail in one of the hotel rooms

After 2003, a boutique hotel named The Inn at Price Tower occupied the 7th to 13th floors[36] and was described as containing either 19[112][153] or 21 rooms.[6][99][72] The hotel had orange and green upholstery, reflecting the colors of Wright's original design,[38][130] in addition to furnishings and motifs inspired by the original design.[38][135] These included Tibetan rugs, green curtains, and maple furniture.[98] The hotel's architect, Wendy Evans Joseph, designed copper-accented furniture for each room.[36][130] The beds were manufactured on-site from plumbing pipes because the elevators were too small to accommodate new beds.[130] The hotel rooms also had Cherokee-red concrete floors. Tours of the tower were included with room reservations.[36]

The 15th story included Copper, a restaurant and bar.[130] This bar had a copper countertop above a maple plywood counter, an allusion to the materials used in Wright's original furniture;[154] the bar's shape was an allusion to the curved facade of the Guggenheim Museum, also designed by Wright.[102] In addition, the barstools and chairs were made of plywood and copper.[154]

Offices

[edit]

The office space on the upper stories was designed so that it could be further subdivided; tenants could install partitions along the parallelogram-shaped grid.[78] At the 16th story was an open terrace, buffet, and kitchen.[128][138] Because of the tower's small footprint, the Bartlesville Record wrote that "every unit of space [is] an outside unit".[128] Wright's sketches indicate that the office spaces were to be furnished with hexagonal desks, in addition to triangular drawers with triangular knobs; at least some of these decorations were retained in the Price Company's offices.[155]

Penthouse unit

[edit]

The top three stories originally functioned as an office and a duplex apartment for the Prices.[94][130] The former corporate office is at the middle of the 17th floor,[146] and the Price family's living room occupies the same story.[128] The corporate office includes a glass curtain wall.[94] Another wall includes a full-height wood-burning fireplace,[155] the only such fireplace in the building.[94] Wright designed a custom rolling chair for Harold Sr.,[94][155] along with four aluminum chairs for visitors.[155] There was also a bronze lamp with a pebbled glass shade[94] and a retractable banquette under Harold Sr.'s desk.[155] Wright designed a mural called The Blue Moon, a reference to the phrase "once in a blue moon", used as a metaphor for rare occurrences.[36][94] Wright said at the time that it was very rare for "the perfect design, perfect architect and perfect buyer" to be present on the same project.[36] Outside Harold Sr.'s office was another office for his assistant, with a U-shaped desk and swivel chair.[149] There is a terrace to the north and a roof garden to the south of Harold Sr.'s office.[146]

The 18th floor includes a conference room and bedrooms for the Prices.[128][146] The conference room provides a secondary entrance to the Price apartment,[146] whose two bedrooms are accessed by a steep staircase.[79] The 19th floor was used as an executive office[128] and, unlike all the other stories, was not divided into quadrants.[146] Eugene Masselink designed a glass mural for the wall of Price's 19th-floor office,[156] which includes gold, copper, red, and turquoise hues.[94] As planned, there was to be a rooftop kitchen and buffet area, an open terrace, and a television antenna above the 19th floor.[47]

Management

[edit]
View from Dewey Avenue

The Price Tower Arts Center was the art complex at Price Tower. The center was founded in 1985 as a civic art museum and reorganized in 1998 to focus on art, architecture, and design.[157] The center provided tours of the building, in addition to displays of modern art. furniture, textiles, and design.[76] The museum's collection included many objects collected by Bruce Goff, including 7,000 phonograph records, pieces of laundry, and paintings created using toothbrushes.[12]

The Inn at Price Tower was a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[158] It was on the 2021 list of Top 25 Historic Hotels of America Most Magnificent Art Collections.[159] The hotel was closed in 2024.[116]

Impact

[edit]

Critical reception

[edit]

Contemporary

[edit]

When plans for the Price Tower were announced in 1953, Architectural Forum magazine published a ten-page article about the planned building, saying that "Never has so tall an office building been built in so small a city."[160] A writer for the Kansas City Times described the Price Tower as "a slender, blade-like building",[75] and Americas magazine wrote that the Price Tower "reveals Wright's curious concept of skyscrapers".[44] The Bartlesville Record predicted that the Price Tower would help bring good publicity to Oklahoma.[161] Wright wrote a book about the building's construction, The Story of the Tower,[162] in which he compared the floors to the branches of a tree.[38] Joe Price, who produced a film about the tower's development,[41] recalled that "the true building itself became visible to me" one day while the louvers were being installed on the facade.[163]

When the building was completed, it was one of the most widely-discussed skyscrapers in the U.S.,[141] and it was depicted in magazines such as Newsweek and Fortune.[164] The Christian Science Monitor wrote that it was "one of the world's most modern buildings".[81] Thomas W. Ennis of The New York Times called the Price Tower a seeming "reversal of the natural order of things",[32] and the Enid Daily Eagle called the Price Tower "perhaps the most notable achievement in art in Oklahoma" during 1955.[165] The Nowata, Oklahoma, Daily Star regarded the tower as "slim and graceful",[73] and the Tulsa Tribune wrote that the building "adds a distinctive note" to Bartlesville's downtown.[166] The author Allan Temko said that, even though the Price Tower "makes use of standard parts, mass produced by machine technology", it was a good example of Wright's organic architecture.[167] Conversely, critics likened the Price Tower to a hood ornament and a spaceship, and people derided it as "Price's folly".[72] The British architectural writer Ian Nairn called the tower "the saddest case of an unrealized focus" because it was set back from the city's street grid and, thus, did not readily attract passersby's attention.[168]

The Bartlesville Morning Examiner wrote in 1957 that many publications had ranked the Price Tower among Wright's best works or among the best new buildings.[169] Depictions of the tower were displayed at Expo 58 in Brussels, and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) also hosted an exhibit in Washington, D.C., with photos of the tower.[170] The United States Information Agency displayed pictures of the Price Tower overseas as part of campaigns promoting Oklahoma.[171] When Wright died in 1959, Walter H. Stern of The New York Times wrote that "to attribute a single architectural style to Mr. Wright would be a misjudgment of his art", citing the contrasts between the Price Tower and Wright's Taliesin studio.[172]

Retrospective

[edit]

The Price Tower received the Twenty-five Year Award from the AIA in 1983.[132][38] The AIA's jury said at the time, "The Price Tower is an embodiment of his organic philosophy that buildings should grow out of the ground."[132]

In 2003, The New York Times wrote that the Price Tower "presides over this city of 36,000 with a strange totemic power",[12] while Architectural Record wrote that the building was "as much a social manifesto as a work of architecture".[72] The architect Tadao Ando described the Price Tower as one of the most important 20th-century buildings.[76] A writer for the Austin American-Statesman said in 2016 that the Price Tower was an "engineering marvel in the middle of the prairie" that architecture students, architects, and engineers came to visit.[140] Architectural Record magazine said after the tower's 2003 renovation: "The Price Tower has come full circle—from curiosity to avant-garde symbol to corporate castoff to community icon."[102] A writer for The Atlantic magazine described the building as "easily one of the more bizarre towers ever built".[42]

Landmark designations

[edit]
Model of the tower

On March 29, 2007, the Price Tower was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior;[76][173] at the time, it was one of 22 National Historic Landmarks in Oklahoma.[174] In designating the building, the Interior Department described the structure as embodying "the powerful architectural idea of the cantilevered tower".[76] In 2008, the U.S. National Park Service submitted the Price Tower, along with nine other Frank Lloyd Wright properties, to a tentative list for World Heritage Status.[175] The Price Tower and ten other Wright buildings were renominated to the list in 2011.[176] However, after a 2016 nomination to the World Heritage List was rejected by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, a revised 2018 proposal removed the Price Tower from consideration.[177] UNESCO ultimately added eight properties to the World Heritage List in July 2019 under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright"; the Price Tower was not one of them.[178][179]

Architectural influence

[edit]

After the building was announced, models of it were displayed at Tulsa's Petroleum Exposition,[143] Bartlesville's First National Bank,[180] New York City's American Academy of Arts and Letters,[145] and the Guggenheim Museum during 1953.[181] The building was also depicted in a 1954 exhibit about Wright's work at Los Angeles's Barnsdall Art Park.[182]

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that the building "has been imitated but never duplicated".[38] The Price Tower's design partially inspired that of the Citizens Bank Tower (now The Classen) in Oklahoma City, which was designed by the architectural firm Bozalis & Roloff.[183][184] Similarly to the Price Tower, the Citizens Bank Tower includes concrete floors cantilevered from a structural core.[183] Wright's unfinished design for The Illinois, a mile-high skyscraper, was also loosely derived from the cantilevered structure of the Price Tower and Tokyo's Imperial Hotel.[185]

With the Price Tower's construction, Harold Jr. also commissioned Wright to design a house in Bartlesville,[186] which became known as Hillside.[187][188] The Usonian home has two stories and an L-shaped hipped roof.[188] The Price Tower and Hillside are two of the only three Wright buildings in Oklahoma; the other is Westhope in Tulsa.[189] Wright would later design another house for the Price family in Phoenix, Arizona.[75][190] The neighboring Bartlesville Community Center was also designed by Wright's apprentice and son-in-law William Wesley Peters.[186][33]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]

Citations

[edit]
  1. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. ^ "Price Tower". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved June 28, 2008.
  3. ^ Warner, Elaine (2009). Insiders' Guide to Tulsa. Insiders' Guide Series. Globe Pequot. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-7627-6321-4. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Price Tower Arts Center – The Skyscraper Center". Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – CTBUH. May 7, 2024. Retrieved December 15, 2024.
  5. ^ a b National Park Service 2007, p. 4.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Nash, Eric P. (March 16, 2003). "Travel Advisory; Rooms With a View, By Frank Lloyd Wright". The New York Times. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j National Park Service 2007, p. 5.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h National Park Service 2007, p. 6.
  9. ^ a b Architectural Record 1956, p. 156.
  10. ^ a b "Tower Center at Unity Square Opens in Bartlesville". Bartlesville Radio. May 29, 2020. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
  11. ^ Archer, Kim (May 28, 2021). "Unity Square approaches one-year anniversary in full stride". Examiner-Enterprise. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h Brown, Patricia Leigh (October 16, 2003). "Built on Oil, Banking on Design". The New York Times. Retrieved December 15, 2024.
  13. ^ a b Henderson, Arn (2017). Bruce Goff: Architecture of Discipline in Freedom. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 363. ISBN 978-0-8061-5829-7. Retrieved December 15, 2024.
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  16. ^ a b Architectural Forum 1956, p. 107.
  17. ^ McCarter 1997, p. 191.
  18. ^ Toker, Franklin (2003). Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-307-42584-3.
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  20. ^ Hoffmann 1998, p. 63.
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  22. ^ Architectural Record 1956, p. 158.
  23. ^ Hoffmann 1998, p. 68.
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Sources

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Further reading

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