Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower Has a New Owner

The price for Price ended up at being $1.4 million, the same amount that McFarlin was supposed to pay for the tower at the beginning of this year, but less than the $1,539,286.04 minimum bed set by an auction broker last month. McFarlin had tried to buy the 19-story tower last year, but Copper Tree Inc. and Green Copper Holdings LLC, the companies of Cynthia Blanchard, who bought the tower in 2023, sent it to the auction block instead. That began a financial and legal back-and-forth between the two parties, with a judge ruling in January that McFarlin could purchase the tower outright—one day later Blanchard's companies filed for bankruptcy, which shifted the process to the auction that was supposed to take place on May 6. As numerous reports have indicated, the auction failed to attract interest so the building went to McFarlin, who had placed a stalking horse bid of $1.4 million ahead of the auction.

Though he designed many skyscrapers, Price Tower is the only one built by Frank Lloyd Wright. He designed the office building in 1952 for the oil company of Harold C. Price, Sr., and it was completed in February 1956. The names of Blanchard's companies hint at the tower's appeal: Inside it has a tree-like structure, in which reinforced-concrete floors cantilever from a central service “trunk,” and outside it is wrapped in copper louvers, copper parapets, and gold-tinted glass. The Price Company owned and occupied the building for just 25 years, before it relocated to Texas in 1981. After that Phillips Petroleum took ownership and used it for office space. Then, around the turn of the century, the building took on a more cultural role, with the Price Tower Arts Center running a gallery, bar, restaurant, and hotel in the tower. They sold it to Blanchard in 2023, whose plans to turn it into a “‘Silicon Ranch’ for start-ups,” per the New York Times, failed to materialize.

The sale to McFarlin comes with a couple complications: Blanchard had began selling some of the Wright-designed furnishings from the tower last year to cover expenses, but “McFarlin’s contract requires the sale to include all fixtures,” per ARTnews, “including Wright-designed items such as copper relief panels and custom armchairs.” The Frank Lloyd Building Conservancy, which has been a third party involved in the tower's legal disputes, states they are “separately continuing to explore avenues for reuniting the missing items with the collection.” Second, the tower's utilities were off during the winter, despite efforts on the part of McFarlin to turn them back on; the extent of any damage to the building from frozen pipes and the like is being determined.

Ultimately, the sale to McFarlin is a positive one, given the company's reputation in Oklahoma for renovating and preserving old buildings, including the Mayo Hotel in downtown Tulsa and Frontier Hotel in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. According to the Frank Lloyd Building Conservancy, McFarlin's renovation of Price Tower is expected to take two years, “with the goal of reopening in 2027 as The Price Tower Hotel and Residences, offering a mix of overnight rooms and rental residences, infused with a renewed sense of the building’s important history.”