Bartlesville, OK - Part 2

Should you decide to travel to Bartlesville to stay at Price Tower here are things you should do:

1. Take the tour of the Price Tower. Admission is free to guests of the Inn. Tours are limited to groups of 8.

2. Take the driving tour of Bruce Goff architecture. Ask for a map at the front desk. The trip should take about an hour or so, depending on how long you stop to take pictures at each house.

3. If the Bartlesville Community Center is open, be sure to take a peek inside to see the cloisonne mural. The sister mural is in the lobby of the Price Tower museum. The Community Center was built in 1982 and designed by Wesley Peters, chief architect of Taliesin West.

Places to eat:

1. Copper Bar at Price Tower has nice cocktails and light bar food fare.

2. Weeze's - classic local dinner just about a block away from Price Tower. Good for breakfast.

3. 2 Sister's Pub & Grill - 110 S.W Frank Phillips Blvd. We ate there for lunch. Good food and decent beer selection.

4. Frank & Lola's - 2nd Street & Dewey. We ate here for dinner. Good crowd with a nice upscale menu and wine list.

More info about Bartlesville here.

Now for the pictures! The first group are Bruce Goff homes and a church hes designed; the remaining pictures are of the Bartlesville Community Center. Enjoy!








































I am posting these for my friend Jeff. He just loves gigantic pieces of glass mounted into walls.

















































This metal tower thingy was in the middle of a park. Unfortunately we couldn't climb up it for "safety reasons." Total bummer.





























Bartlesville Community Center.































I call this the "band photo."

Price Tower - Bartlesville, OK - Part 1

Over the Memorial Day weekend, myself, the Architect and some friends traveled to Bartlesville, OK to spend the weekend at the Price Tower. The Price Tower is the only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that was ever built. It was originally, a design for the Bowery in NYC. Harold Price, owner of the H.C. Price Co. (an oil pipeline company) commissioned the building of this skyscraper. The building's inspiration is a tree. The building is covered in copper louvers which represent the leaves of a tree.

Price Tower was conceived as a mixed-use development. When it was built it had apartments, office spaces for the Price Company, a beauty salon, commissary, and dress shop. Today, the apartments are now The Inn at Price Tower. The lower level is a museum (Price Tower Arts Center) and the commissary is the Copper Bar. The Price Tower Arts Center restored the Price family's apartment and the company's offices to their original MCM glory and gives tours of the building. Now onto the pictures!

The vertical louvers are the apartments, now the rooms at the Inn. The horizontal louvers are the office spaces. The "66" sculpture is by Robert Indiana. The "66" is for Philips 66 oil, the Philips Oil Company was founded in Bartlesville, OK.



































The triangles jutting off the building are small balconies for each apartment. I use balcony loosely - there is only enough room for one person to stand out there and no room for any furniture.















The living room on the first floor of our room. The furniture was "inspired" by FLW designs. True to form, it wasn't the most comfortable furniture to sit on.






















These were the stairs of death leading up to the sleeping loft. I have no idea what FLW was thinking. The stairs are at an angle, so when you step on the tread your foot hangs half of the stair and they are very steep.















A view of the copper trim on the sleeping loft. This detail is mirrored on the copper trim on the outside of the building.










The kitchenette in our room. When these were apartments, the kitchen had a range/oven, refrigerator, sink and a dishwasher.

















The FLW designed logo for the Price Company. This logo is inset on every floor of the building in the exact center of the building - the "trunk of the tree." It is one of the few squares you will find in the building. Triangles were the dominant motif at Price Tower.







The view from the outside stairwell leading to the 19th floor. This was the only picture I was allowed to take on the tour.

Part 2 of my trip will have pictures from around Bartlesville, along with places to see and eat.

The Statler Hotel and a would be suitor, Mr. Chiu

D magazine has a nice short article on Richard Chiu - a developer who was apparently interested in buying the Statler Hotel and possible restoring it to its former glory. Mr. Chiu is the president of Warwick International, which owns the Melrose Hotel. There is an interesting twist to this story, Mr. Chiu had already been an owner of the Statler before.

Read the article here.

Renzo Piano addition to the Kimbell Musuem revealed

Last week the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth unveiled Renzo Piano's proposed design for the new addition to the museum.

Listen to KERA's discussion of the addition with Renzo Piano here.

See more pictures of the proposed design here.

Image from www.kimbellart.org.