Bartlesville's Price Tower Gets Preservation Assessment

The Price Tower in Bartlesville is in the midst of an architectural preservation assessment, paid for in part by the Getty Foundation.

The result will provide a blueprint for the future conservation of the building.

Christy and Keith McPhail publish their magazine "b Monthly" out of their office in the Price Tower.

Keith said they used to meet clients at coffee shops or at their offices.

“Now they are wanting to come here to the cool place," he said. 

And the cool place, of course, is the iconic Price Tower, the only skyscraper designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright that was ever built.

"He designed it for New York City, it escaped to the prairies of Oklahoma and that makes it special in both his mind and it certainly makes it special for us," said Price Tower Docent Jana Russell. 

It is an architectural one-of-a-kind and Bartlesville seems to have fallen in love again with Frank Lloyd Wright's dream.

“In the last 20 years or so there's been lots of resources put into it and a lot of life brought back into the building," said Executive Director Scott Ambler. 

It houses offices, a restaurant, a boutique hotel and gallery space which was the idea; a multiuse building before there was such a thing.

The unique structure in downtown Bartlesville attracts thousands of visitors every year, and the Getty Foundation Preservation grant will help guarantee the Price Tower will be there for all of us for decades to come.