The future of Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1956 Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is uncertain with tenants receiving eviction notices and elements of the historically-important interiors being sold off.
Artnet reports that Copper Tree Group bought the architect’s only high-rise building last year for the nominal sum of $10, after the previous non-profit owner ran into $600,000 of debt. Copper Tree, founded by Anthem and Cynthia Blanchard, states its ‘mission is to acquire and restore iconic properties, and establish modern, sustainable, state of the art business models’. At the time the Blanchards promised a further $10 million in investment.
The Blanchards run HeraSoft, a blockchain ‘solutions company’, that was declared insolvent in April, with staff saying they were offered equity in the building to cover unpaid wages.
Now the hotel, bar and restaurant operators in the tower, as well as arts organisations and a local magazine, have been told they have to be out by the end of the month. Furniture designed by Lloyd Wright for the 19-storey building is being offered for sale via private dealers. The Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, which looks after the architect’s legacy, say the sale is against the covenant of the building, but galleries dealing in the stripped stools, armchairs, tables and copper reliefs dispute this. They say the injunction only stood under the previous ownership deal.
Originally designed by Wright for downtown New York City in 1929, the copper and concrete building was realised two decades later for industrialist Harold C. Price as a corporate headquarters for his pipeline construction company. Recognised as a National Historic Landmark, Wright created wood and chrome furniture for the design as well as using his Taliesin line of wallpapers and fabrics throughout.
