UPDATE: September 11, 2024 - Price Tower is now listed for auction, expected to take place October 7-9, with a starting bid of $600,000.
Few American architectural projects are as cherished as those of Frank Lloyd Wright. That’s why the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy exists, to protect the properties’ “historic nature for the long term.” That may sound esoteric, but the Conservancy just proved it has teeth when it filed claims against the holder of the Price Tower collection and owner of the iconic Wright building, Green Copper Holdings.
On August 8, 2024, the Conservancy filed against Green Copper Holdings and an unnamed mid-century design dealer, alleging that items from the Price Tower collection were sold to the Dallas-based dealer without consent, which building owner, Green Copper’s, easement agreement with the Conservancy requires.
According to reporting in Architect Magazine, “Under the terms of the easement, the owner cannot sell easement-protected items without the conservancy’s consent.” Some of the items alleged to have been improperly sold include “a one-of-a-kind rolling directory board, architectural copper relief panels, an armchair, and copper tables and stools,” each of which was designed exclusively for Price Tower by Wright himself.
Preservation easements like these are powerful, legally binding tools providing “a higher level of legal protection and enforcement of preservation principles than any other method, including listing on the National Register of Historic Places landmark status, historic district restrictions or local regulations,” according to the Conservancy’s website.
Price Tower is not only significant for its Wright-designed collection. The building itself is a significant architectural icon – the only skyscraper that the architect ever created. Designed in 1952 and listed as both a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places, it contains 19 concrete floors that “cantilever like the branches of a tree,” built around a “trunk” of four elevator shafts, anchored to a deep, central foundation. The walls were conceived as “ornamental screens decorated in copper ‘leaves’ and gold-tinted glass” to complete the tree analogy. Wright’s design originated as an “unrealized 1925 proposal” for an apartment building in New York City and was eventually erected in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
It is one of only two Wright-designed structures created with a vertical orientation (the other being the Johnson Wax Research Tower, also known as the S.C. Johnson Administrative Complex in Racine, Wisconsin), and was purchased in 1981 by Phillips Petroleum, after which it became known as the Price Tower Arts Center, with a museum, hotel, and bar; until 2023, when the building sold to a consortium of five equity stakeholders structured as Copper Tree, Inc. The principal of the group is Cynthia Blanchard, who told the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise in 2023 that Copper Tree is “a locally based company with a desire to save Price Tower.”
On August 9, 2024, just one day after the Conservancy filed its lawsuit, it was reported that Green Copper Holdings (aka Copper Tree, Inc.) had informed tenants that they had until the end of August to relocate from the tower, and told employees that they were being laid off. Copper Tree, Inc. bought the building in 2023 when the beleaguered arts center transferred ownership on the promise of a $10 million cash infusion for upgrades and renovations. The new owners also assumed the non-profit Art Center’s debt on the building as part of the deal.
The tenants are understandably saddened by the turn of events because part of the cachet of the Price Tower address is the connection to the lion of American architecture. “We are just sad,” Keith McPhail, of Bartlesville Monthly Magazine, a long-time tenant told the Examiner-Enterprise. “We hate to see chains on the door of one of the best buildings in the world.”
According to local reporting, the current asking price on the iconic skyscraper overlooking the plains is $4 million.
Buildings like Price Tower, that have significant historical, architectural, and historical value, often require updates and renovations to bring them up to contemporary building codes, install efficient HVAC and MEP systems, or change their internal usage through adaptive reuse. GPRS and Existing Conditions (now a GPRS Company) specialize in providing 3D reality capture and as-built visualization services for the AEC industry, with a particular focus on historic buildings.
We provide comprehensive above and below-ground existing conditions documentation, subsurface damage prevention, and project management solutions for historical renovation and adaptive reuse projects, nationwide.
GPRS Intelligently Visualizes The Built World®. What can we help you visualize?
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I get accurate measurements on complex historical buildings for renovation or conservation?
The most efficient way to capture complex and hard-to-reach architectural details for historical buildings is via 3D laser scanning. A LiDAR scanner can capture as many as 2 million data points per second with 2-4mm accuracy, which can be used to produce a number of deliverables like point clouds, CAD drawings, and BIM models for preservation or renovation use.
How accurate is 3D laser scanning?
GPRS and Existing Conditions employ a variety of technologies in our reality capture services, the most common and efficient being 3D laser (LiDAR) scanners. These scanners can capture millions of data points per second with 2-4mm accuracy in just seconds, and allow for complicated measurements to be taken in difficult environments, often without disrupting regular operations.
