© Mark Hertzberg (2024)
The future of Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is uncertain. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has initiated legal proceedings against Cynthia Blanchard, the owner of the building, over her sale of Wright artifacts from the building, including one of the office chairs Wright designed, to a mid-century design dealer in Dallas. The Building Conservancy has an easement on the property, which, it says, prohibits the sale of any of the artifacts.
Wright designed the tower in 1952 as a combination office and apartment building, and it opened in 1956. The exterior and two-story pinwheel floor plan are derived from Wright’s unrealized design for the St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery apartment buildings in New York City (1927-1929).*
The Inn at Price Tower hotel opened in 2003. Blanchard said in a television interview that it was no longer profitable to operate the hotel and its Copper Bar and Restaurant. She announced the closure August 9. Hotel and restaurant employees were laid off and tenants of the building were given notice to move out within 30 days. She said in an interview that the closure is not necessarily permanent, and that she hopes to find a buyer for the building which, she says, is no longer profitable for her to operate.
The photographs are from our stay at the hotel in April 2011. Scott Perkins, who was the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and at the Price Tower Arts Center, was our host, graciously allowed me to photograph every nook and cranny of the building (he is now Fallingwater’s senior Director of Preservation and Collections).
This photograph and the one below were taken looking up on the external staircase.
Price Tower reflected in a nearby building
The living room of one of the original apartments
The sitting room on the lower floor of one of the two-story hotel rooms
One can only hope that my sunset photo of Price Tower was not a harbinger of things to come.
*While Price Tower was designed around Wright’s idea of a taproot tower, the late Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer told me that it is not a taproot tower because it is tied into the foundation of the adjoining two-story office building. He told me that the SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine is Wright’s only realized taproot tower.
Author’s note: Thank you to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy for their attention to the tower, and to the Building Conservancy’s John Waters for his editing notes on this article.
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Links:
Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy coverage:
https://savewright.org/endangered-price-tower-in-bartlesville-oklahoma/
Local television coverage:
A dining chair from Taliesin (c. 1925) frames a view of the library table for the Edward C. Waller House Remodeling (1899).
The library table, in turn, frames the Taliesin chair and an “origami chair” from Taliesin West (1946).
Hanging lamp, William R. Heath House (c. 1905) – the lines are distorted by the camera angle.
Safina Uberoi – photo courtesy of Safina Uberoi
Lukas Ruecker at the Bagley House
Lukas Ruecker, right, and Safina Uberoi with Jeff and Jeannette, Goldstone, the previous owners of the Bagley House – photo courtesy of Safina Uberoi
Some of the original siding is under the aluminum siding.
Before the aluminum siding was put on – Courtesy Hinsdale Historical Society
The addition to the rear of the house will be taken off.
Safina Uberoi with Jay Deguchi and George Suyama – Photo courtesy of Safina Uberoi
The “Finding Grace” exhibit at the Bagley House
The Stephen Foster Cottage
The Mitchell House in 1895 – 
The Bagley House library
Tim Samuelson, left, David Jameson, and Eric O’Malley work in Samuelson’s archives as they prepare an exhibit about Alfonso Iannelli at the Racine Heritage Museum in 2018.
Saturday’s afternoon sun projected the pattern of the entry hall windows onto the walls. Robert McCarter writes that the floor plan of the house is articulated in the windows.
Gene signs papers transferring stewardship of the house to him, September 17, 2012.
This photo of Anne’s 14th birthday party at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed dining room ensemble (which was lost after her parents sold the house) was in the Racine newspaper in 1946. She is holding the cake at the head of the table.
