Skyscrapers: Frank Lloyd Wright

We took a day trip north to Bartlesville to see the tallest (of two) skyscrapers designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that was actually built, the Price Tower.



This was built to give everyone good views and yet to keep the sun at bay. That picket-fence-looking thing on the top floor is actually made of louvers that at least used to be adjustable. You can see a few of them here.



Do you want to see a close-up of the triangular lights over those cute little balconies in the first picture? There are some just like it in the little cafe.



Oh, too bad, I thought I heard you say yes. (The rest of that room is not original.)

Here is a close-up of my favorite windows. There are some like these in the kitchens of the little apartments inside.



Wright wanted plants to be all over the place, inside and out. But now, there are virtually no plants remaining. Here is a picture of a cool one.



I wish I could show you the apartments. They were very unusual, but probably quite livable except perhaps for the extremely narrow staircase. For example, he was not into 90-degree angles at all. Here are some pictures from the Fall 2005 Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly.



(You wouldn't think there could be a quarterly on a dead guy, but there is, and it's totally cool.)

Skyscrapers: Art Deco

Tulsa has the third most art deco buildings of any city in the US (beaten by New York and Miami), so we went on a walking tour. The ones we saw were mostly skyscrapers, which I found to be not as much fun as the little two- and three-story hotels we saw in Miami.

For example, here's the Oklahoma Natural Gas Company Building (Noble) (1928) - a zig-zag building "constructed of reinforced concrete, enclosed with buff tapestry brick and Indiana limestone," according to my walking tour description. Zig-zag is the earliest, most ornamented style of art deco, the style popular in the 1920s.



Here's the Public Service Company of Oklahoma (TransOK) Building (1928) constructed as a zig-zag art deco style building; Robin prefers the addition on the right.



If you know what a Bell building looks like, you can recognize this one, even if the tower is camouflaged. Here's the Southwestern Bell Main Dial Building (1924), a zig-zag art deco building.



There are other styles of frou-frou, too. This is my favorite:



If you prefer the classical style, you might like this "MVNICIPAL BVILDING."



My favorite thing was probably the doorway on the gothic revival Trinity Episcopal Church.



This "Auto Hotel" also amused me. (Yes, I do think it's a parking garage.)