
The Price
Tower was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company, a local
oil pipeline and chemical firm. It opened to the public in February 1956.On
March 29, 2007, Price Tower was designated a National Historic Landmark by the
U.S. Department of the Interior, one of only 20 such properties in Oklahoma.
Today, the
building is part of the Price Tower Arts Center, an art complex founded in 1985
as a civic art museum, and reorganized in 1998 to focus on art, architecture
and design. Features includes a museum, tours of the historic tower, a hotel
and restaurant.

Visitors
can tour temporary exhibitions inside Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower, as well
as the fully restored 1956 Price Company Executive Office and Corporate
Apartment. (Reservations are required for groups over 10 and tours will usually
be scheduled at times other than the regularly scheduled tours).
This blog
recently toured the Price Tower and learned The Tower was originally planned as
a mixed-use building, with offices below (except the Price Company executive
suite on the top levels) and apartments.
Wright-sized (557 sq ft) apartments rented for $350 when the Tower
opened in 1956. Today, very cool Tower
Hotel rooms can be had for much less... with bragging rights to sleeping in a
FLW building.
When you
visit Bartlesville, be sure to head South to Tulsa, a half hour away, where an
impressive collection of beautiful Art Deco office buildings can be seen.
Images by
Phyllis Adkisson Shess
Captions:
Top: Tower,
offices on the left, apartments on the right and hotel top floors.
Middle: The massive cloisonné mural in the lobby was designed by FLW associate John DeKoven Hill and fabricated by artist Pauli Lame.
Lower:
Looking down from the upper level of the Copper Bar, which was originally the
dining room for Price Company employees.
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