Price Tower

Frank Lloyd Wright's only completed skyscraper, opened 1956

Price Tower is a 19-story, 67-metre office building at 510 South Dewey Avenue in downtown Bartlesville — the only skyscraper that Frank Lloyd Wright ever completed. Designed in 1952 and opened in 1956, it represents the sole realization of Wright's long-held theory that tall buildings should be built around a central structural core rather than a conventional steel frame.

The building has a distinctive copper-and-glass skin that has changed colour with decades of oxidation. Wright described it as his "tree that escaped the crowded forest." The building now houses the Price Tower Arts Center, which offers guided tours of the structure, a hotel in some of the upper floors, and a restaurant and gallery space. Tours are the only way to see the upper floors and fully appreciate Wright's spatial concepts. Unmissable for anyone interested in American architecture.

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Wright designed Price Tower in 1952 for Harold Price, an oil pipeline magnate who approached Wright after seeing his earlier Bartlesville commission. Wright called it his "tree that escaped the crowded forest" — a reference to his philosophy that tall buildings should grow from a single structural core like a tree from a taproot, rather than stacking floors on a conventional steel frame. He had designed a nearly identical building for New York in 1929 that was never built; the Price Tower is the only realized version of his "tap-root" skyscraper concept. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 2007.

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