When a skyscraper is made available for just over a million dollars, people tend to pay attention. When you throw in the fact that this particular skyscraper was designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright, the level of intrigue increases even more. The selling price of Oklahoma’s Price Tower — $1.4 million, to be specific — might well bring a lengthy legal dispute involving historic preservationists, cryptocurrency advocates and architecture buffs to an end.
As The Art Newspaper‘s Elena Goukassian reports, Judge Russell Vaclaw recently ruled that Copper Tree — the company that owns the building — must follow through on an earlier pledge to sell the building to the McFarlin Building company. Andy Dossett of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise explained that the McFarlin Building company has restored several historic builings in the area and pledged to invest $10 million in revitalizing Price Tower.
Why did what seems like a fairly straightforward real estate transaction require a juicial ruling to be completed? If you haven’t been following this story, the controversy began when Copper Tree — a company with ties to the cryptocurrency world — purchased the tower in 2023. As Architectural Digest noted last year, Copper Tree’s pledges to revitalize the building did not come to fruition.
More recently, Copper Tree began selling some of the Wright-designed custom furniture online — something that led to heated debate between Copper Tree and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy about whether the furniture sales violated the terms of an easement. Following the news of the ruling and the pending sale, the Conservancy posted on social media that they “look forward to working with the new owners and will share more information as it becomes available.”
What’s Next for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Skyscraper?
Price Tower is at the center of a legal battleAccording to The Art Newspaper‘s report on the ruling, part of the resolution to this case involves returning the furniture that was removed from Price Tower. There’s also the matter of restoring utilities to the skyscraper and reckoning with existing debts; still, this decision does move things much closer to a resolution — and hopefully a new beginning for the tower.
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