A prolonged kerfuffle over the future of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper has finally come to an end. Earlier this week, a judge ordered that the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, be sold to the McFarlin Building company, which specialises in revitalising historic properties in the region. The decision follows months of squabbling, duelling lawsuits and what appears to be the straw that broke the camel’s back—the owners ignoring the same judge’s court order to turn the utilities back on in the historic, albeit empty, building threatened by freezing temperatures.
The final price of the sale, $1.4m, had been originally agreed upon in May 2024 by McFarlin and Copper Tree, a company run by the local couple Cynthia and Anthem Blanchard, who had purchased the skyscraper in March 2023. However, it appears that the Blanchards reneged on the agreement, listing the building for auction in 2024 with a minimum bid of $600,000—the tower was likely worth $6.2m, according to the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise’s Andy Dossett, who has been closely following this story since the beginning. McFarlin filed a lawsuit against Copper Tree in September 2024.
The Blanchards had bought the skyscraper for a token sum of $10 under the condition that they pay down its $600,000 debt and invest $10m in its rehabilitation. They aspired to transform it into a tech hub, but when their blockchain-based, anti-ransomware and gold-backed crypto companies collapsed, they started selling the Price Tower’s Wright-designed furniture. This went against an easement held by the architect’s conservancy, which publicly protested. Cynthia Blanchard and Copper Tree filed a lawsuit against the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in October 2024, arguing that the easement was void and the conservancy was impeding on the sale of the tower. (The month prior, Anthem Blanchard had been charged with defrauding investors in one of his companies; the Blanchards allegedly gave them equity in the Price Tower to cover the debt.)
Likely given the Blanchards’ chequered past, Judge Russell Vaclaw ruled that the $1.4m paid for Price Tower be held by the court in order to cover claims, liabilities and debts related to the skyscraper. (Andy Dossett, the local journalist, has reported that the building’s debt stands at $2m.) Furniture and other items previously sold from the Price Tower are to be bought back using money from the fund. The cost of restoring utilities to the building will also be deducted. Once all that is addressed, any remaining money will go to the Blanchards.
Vaclaw called the Price Tower a “priceless artefact of paramount importance”, according to Dossett, and said the building had been at risk of “laying waste” in the cold weather. "Let me make it simple," Vaclaw said at the hearing. "There's too much at stake here — there are too many questions about [the owners] to let them walk away with $1.4m today, and that's not going to happen."
Seeing the writing on the wall, Copper Tree declared bankruptcy the following day, claiming to only have $216 in the bank. A hearing on the company’s counterclaims against McFarlin and Wright’s conservancy is scheduled for 11 February.
The Price Tower has been empty since September, when the remaining tenants were asked to leave so that it could be auctioned off. Completed in 1956 and with a design inspired by a lone tree, the copper-and-concrete skyscraper was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It became a National Historic Landmark in 2007.
