DALLAS — (EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated with a statement from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy)
Price Tower, the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed skyscraper, overlooking Bartlesville in northeast Oklahoma, is going up for auction next month. The building was originally imagined in the 1920s and while it’s miles away, its long history has ties to North Texas.
The iconic copper and concrete building in downtown Bartlesville, about 50 miles north of Tulsa, was originally conceptualized in the 1920s to serve as an apartment tower in New York City.
That plan was unrealized amid the effects of the Great Depression and the building design was updated to serve as the headquarters of Harold Price’s pipeline construction company. Wright nicknamed the building “the tree that escaped the crowded forest’ of Manhattan. When it was built in 1956 it was the tallest building in Bartlesville.
Price Tower was listed as one of Wright’s most significant works by the American Institute of Architects in 1960 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Wright also designed a home for Price in Phoenix and Price's grandson, Charles, later commissioned New York architect Steven Holl to design the Stretto house in Dallas, built in the ‘90s.
The Price family continued to operate their company and work in the tower until 1981, when the company moved to Dallas and Phillips Petroleum bought the building. Phillips donated the building to the nonprofit Price Tower Arts Center in 2001. The tower was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2007.
The nonprofit reportedly struggled to fund building operations over the years, and the Price Tower Arts Center reached an agreement with Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to sell several furniture pieces from Price Tower in 2019 and 2022.
A private investor bought the building in 2023. Since then, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has alleged, and local Oklahoma media have reported, that the new owners had sold items from the Price Tower to an art dealer in Dallas without the Conservancy’s permission.
The Conservancy says the Price Tower Arts Center donated a preservation easement to them in 2011, which protects the exterior, certain interior spaces, and collection items.
The building has reportedly since closed and the Price Tower is listed on the online commercial real estate marketplace Ten-X with an auction set for October 7-9.
Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, told News Channel 8 in Tulsa that the conservancy wasn't aware the building was closing or that pieces from the building were sold.
"In early August, when KTUL was first reporting the closure of Price Tower, the owners of the building had not directly communicated to the Conservancy that it was their intention to shut it down. The owners had also failed to inform us that they had sold easement-protected items from the Price Tower collection earlier that year, in violation of the easement that we hold on the building and some of its contents," Eric Rogers, a spokesperson for the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy said. "The Conservancy has taken legal steps to enforce our easement. As the Tower goes up for auction in October, we hope that a buyer will come forward with the resources and the vision to steward this landmark into the future."
One of the new owners, though, told the news outlet that she doesn't feel she owes the conservancy an explanation.
The only theater that Frank Lloyd Wright designed is the Kalita Humphreys Theater in Dallas, which was built in 1959. It was one of Wright’s last completed projects.
