Same Frank Lloyd Wright, different prairie

Bartlesville, Okla. — It was June 1968, the summer after seventh grade. My friend Carol and I were tucked in the back seat of her parents’ Dodge and full of giggles on our first trip east of the Mississippi.

But then we reached Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home atop a waterfall in the Allegheny Mountains near Pittsburgh, and our giggling stopped. We walked down the wooded path to the entrance, a light mist falling, the house’s long, horizontal layers casting a spell and demanding reverence. At that age I knew nothing of architecture or organic principles, but I could feel the way the home was part of the rocks, trees and water that surrounded it.

Thirty-five years later I was on my way to visit another Wright creation, his only high-rise and his only structure in which visitors can dine and sleep: the Inn at Price Tower, an office-turned-hotel that opened here in April.

Since visiting Fallingwater, I had seen other Wright designs. Because all flowed so smoothly and horizontally into surrounding landscapes, I was curious about this most vertical of structures, a 19-story tower so narrow — just 46 feet wide — and with elevators so small that the furniture had to be built inside each guest room.

Bartlesville, population 34,000, may seem an unlikely place to find architectural innovation, but just as surprising are the region’s other attractions: a striking community center designed by Wright’s first apprentice; the eclectic country estate of Frank Phillips, founder of Phillips Petroleum; and, in nearby Tulsa, Art Deco architecture and two museums that stand as the legacies of other Oklahoma oilmen.

The focus of my June trip, though, was Price Tower. Wright designed the building in 1929 with New York City in mind, but the stock market had just crashed, and financing couldn’t be found.

When the building finally was completed 27 years later, it stood on the plains of Oklahoma, where Wright came to think of it as “the tree that escaped the crowded forest.” The trunk-like tower has cantilevered floors for limbs and is covered with vertical and horizontal patinated copper louvers resembling green blades. It was intended to be a then-novel mix of offices, apartments and stores.

H.C. Price Co. wanted the structure as headquarters for its oil business and completed construction in 1956, just three years before Wright’s death. Price later sold the building to Phillips Petroleum, but that company eventually moved its Bartlesville employees to larger quarters and donated the aging building to the nonprofit Price Tower Arts Center.

The center hired New York architect Wendy Evans Joseph to transform the abandoned offices and apartments into a hotel. The group’s only orders: Don’t change the structure, and complement Wright’s work instead of copying it.

I set out to see the result, driving to Oklahoma from my home in Kansas. The first hint I was entering oil country came in Ponca City, Okla., which resembles a set from the first “Star Wars” movie, with steel refineries stretching along both sides of U.S. 60. When I reached the west edge of Bartlesville, the highway turned into Frank Phillips Boulevard, and I scanned the horizon for Wright’s “tree.”

Above the sign for the Git-N-Split mini-mart, I glimpsed the tower’s jagged green profile. But I was immediately distracted by another sign, a smiling Hereford outlined in neon. This was Murphy’s Steak House, home of the “World Famous Hot Hamburger Sandwich” with “Gravy Overall.” I pulled in.

At 11:20 a.m. all the booths were taken, so I claimed a seat at the counter. I chose the 4-ounce junior hot hamburger open-face sandwich for $4.25. The waitress, a nice woman sporting an American flag pin crafted from beads and safety pins, asked if I wanted gravy “overall.” I hesitated.

“It’s good,” she reassured me.

I took her word for it. How could hand-cut fries and gravy be anything but good?

My order arrived shortly. The plate was piled high with fries atop a hamburger patty and bread, all covered with steaming gravy. Afterward, on my way to the counter to pay, I caught sight of an even heartier meal on its way to another customer. It was a steak so big it hung over the edge of a platter — apparently the 24-ounce sirloin for $14.95.

A building made of triangles

I reached the hotel but was too early to check in, so I went to the adjoining Price Tower Arts Center, where I had reserved space on a tour.

The docent told us the footprint of the structure was a pinwheel and that we would see few squares or circles in the building. Wright used a triangle motif, and I noticed that even the light fixtures were triangular.

We began our ascent to the top floor, four people at a time in the tiny elevators. The docent said one of the original four elevators had been converted to hold air-conditioning equipment. He also pointed out how the long exterior louvers had been designed to control airflow and sun.

Though Wright is most associated with architecture that melds with natural environments, he also was eager to build a high-rise, and on the 19th floor of Price Tower we saw the benefits of his departure from tradition: CEO Harold C. Price’s office had sweeping views of the Osage Hills to the west. An original copper and glass mosaic mural hung on one wall, across from a majestic fireplace with a tall copper chimney.

When someone in our group told the tour guide that he was difficult to hear, the guide pointed out how Wright had used neither draperies nor carpeting. Every floor was concrete, painted Wright’s favorite color, Cherokee red.

The tour ended at the art gallery on the first two floors, which included Wright-designed furniture as well as some dishes he conceived for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Neither guest rooms nor the restaurant was included on the tour, so I was glad I had reservations for both.

The inn’s 21 rooms and suites occupy six floors of the building. (Some floors have not been renovated and aren’t open to the public.) My room was one of three on the 10th floor. After being in the claustrophobic halls and elevators, I was pleased to see that architect Joseph had created an open, airy feeling in what was an average-sized hotel room. Windows formed two walls of the bedroom, and there even was a window in the small, green-tiled bathroom.

Joseph had continued Wright’s metaphor of the tree with leaf-themed wall coverings, pillow shams and a thick area carpet she designed. The armoire and other furniture were maple with copper mesh and pipe accents. A queen-sized bed and a chair rested on maple platforms, giving the room a contemporary and comfortable feel.

I bought a book about Fallingwater at the gift shop, the Wright Place, then headed out to explore the rest of Bartlesville. First stop: Johnstone Park and its replica of the state’s first commercial oil well, the Nellie Johnstone, a wooden shrine to the oil boom built in 1897.

After touring the Frank Phillips home and museum, I drove east on Frank Phillips Boulevard. I was headed for Dewey, five miles away and home of antiques shops, but I was diverted by the aroma of “world famous” Dink’s Pit Bar-B-Que. What are the odds, I wondered: two “world-famous” restaurants in little Bartlesville?

I had to find out, even though it was 4:30 p.m. and I had 7 o’clock dinner reservations at the Inn at Price Tower’s restaurant. I ordered Dink’s rib special, three ribs with a side and bread for $6.50. They turned out to be the best and meatiest ribs I’d ever consumed — and I spent my formative years in Kansas City. The pork was so tender it fell off the bone, and the sauce was the right blend of smoky and sweet.

My cousin Cathy joined me later for dinner at Copper Restaurant + Bar, which occupies two floors of Price Tower. I chose the Chicken Taliesin only because it looked like the lightest entree. She chose the steak with sautéed mushrooms and garlic mashed potatoes. I knew that Cathy, the daughter of a Hereford farmer, would be a tough judge. But she enthusiastically gave the thick filet two thumbs up.

It was the last weekend of OK Mozart, a nine-day classical music festival held each year, so the restaurant was busy with patrons bound for the Bartlesville Community Center across the street and a performance by the Solisti New York Orchestra. The center was designed by Wright’s first apprentice, William Wesley Peters, who collaborated with Wright on Fallingwater and provided the engineering to build many of Wright’s other designs. Just like Price Tower, the community center eschews right angles, instead using sweeping curves to dramatic effect.

Back in my room, I noticed a few more of Price Tower’s quirks. Despite heavy maple doors and thick area rugs, the space was noisy. Elevator sounds and after-concert conversations from the hallway slipped under the door.

I slept serenely, though, and in the quiet of a small-town Sunday morning, I sipped coffee on Copper’s balcony 16 stories above street level, better understanding how Wright conceived of this tower as an urban oasis. I walked around the building, photographing it from all angles. Like a sculpture, its personality was different on every side.

I checked out and drove 12 miles southwest to Woolaroc, Frank Phillips’ 3,600-acre country estate, now an unusual combination of wildlife refuge, art museum and hiking trails. Phillips came up with the name by combining “wood,” “lake” and “rocks,” but I saw much more. During the two-mile drive from the gate to the museum and lodge, longhorn steers, deer and buffalo, many with their new offspring, wandered near the car. Two water buffalo soaked up to their chins in a pond.

The museum is an eclectic blend of Native American and Oklahoma history, Western art and Phillips 66 memorabilia. One of the most memorable exhibits was a miniature scene depicting the death ceremonies of a chief in an eastern Oklahoma village about 3,000 years ago. Based on a 1936 excavation of Spiro Mounds, the scene showed the sacrifices of the chief’s wives, advisors, shaman, friend and a dog to accompany him on his journey to the spirit world.

At the lodge, built in 1925, a dining porch provides panoramic views of sculptures, gardens and a lake beyond. After sitting down for warm peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream, I finished the five-mile route through the refuge, seeing not one other car along the way.

I headed south 45 minutes to Tulsa to look at the legacies of two other oilmen: Thomas Gilcrease and Waite Phillips. I was running short of time, and as a fan of museum gift stores, I shortchanged the galleries for shopping time.

The Gilcrease Museum focuses on Western art. I bought a ceramic tile with a painting titled “Mother’s Trail,” by Jeanne Rorex Bridges, an Oklahoma artist of Cherokee ancestry.

The Philbrook Museum of Art is at the end of a long block of Gatsby-esque mansions. The 72-room Italian renaissance villa was built by Waite Phillips, Frank Phillips’ brother, in 1927 and donated to the city in 1938. There I selected a poster from “Modern Masters: Corot to Kandinsky,” an exhibit that has since closed.

It was time to head home, and I hadn’t even checked out the Art Deco architecture in downtown Tulsa. I didn’t worry, though, because I had good reason for a return trip: Back in Bartlesville, another architectural landmark is on the horizon.

The Price Tower Arts Center has hired Zaha Hadid, an internationally respected architect known for cantilevered, acutely angled designs, to build an expansion next to Wright’s tower.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff recently called Hadid “one of the profession’s most precocious talents,” a woman whose work “seems intent on breaking down social and aesthetic boundaries.” He said her design for Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, opened earlier this year, “proves once and for all that such a vision is not only possible, it is the kind of cultural sustenance our world craves.”

Which explains why, as Bartlesville faded in my rearview mirror, I knew I’d be back.