Price Tower

The Price Tower is a nineteen-story, 221-foot-high tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is the only realized skyscraper by Wright, and is one of only two vertically oriented Wright structures extant (the other is the S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin).

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.

History

The Price Tower was commissioned by Harold Price, for use as a corporate headquarters for his Bartlesville company. His wife, Mary Lou Patteson Price, and his two sons, Harold, Jr., and Joe, rounded out the building committee. The Prices were directed to Frank Lloyd Wright by architect Bruce Goff, who was then Dean of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, where the Price sons had studied. That relationship bonded into a lifelong patronage of both architects by the Price Family. Wright designed an Arizona home for the senior Prices and a Bartlesville home for Harold, Jr., his wife Carolyn Propps Price, and their six children. Goff, who was also a tenant at Price Tower, became the favored architect of Joe Price, designing a bachelor studio on his family's property in Bartlesville and two later additions following his marriage to Etsuko Yoshimochi.