The Price Tower is a skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Bartlesville, Oklahoma . The 19 story, 221 foot tower was commissioned by Harold C. Price of the H. C. Price Company. It was completed in 1956. It is the only skyscraper designed by Wright which was actually built, and is one of only two vertically oriented Wright structures extant. (The other being the S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower.)
Wright called the Price Tower, which was built on the Oklahoma prairie, "the tree that escaped the crowded forest". Wright was not merely referring to the building's height, but also to its design. The Price Tower is supported by a central core which is anchored in place by a deep central foundation, as a tree is by its taproot. The floors of the building are cantilevered from this central core, like the branches of a tree. The lightweight outer walls hang from the floors like leaves hang from a tree's branches. Wright had championed these design ideas, which other architects had put to use before the construction of the Price Tower as early as the 1920s. Indeed the design of the Price Tower was based on a previous Wright design for St. Marks in the Bowery, in New York City.
Wright designed the Price Tower to be a multi-use building with business offices, shops and apartments. After years of being primarily an office building, followed by years of vacancy, the Price Tower has been returned to a multi-use building, currently housing an art center, a restaurant, and a hotel. Pritzker Prize winning architect, Zaha Hadid, has designed a new museum to be built adjacent to the Price Tower.
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