A chronic kerfuffle over the way forward for the architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s solely skyscraper has lastly come to an finish. Earlier this week, a choose ordered that the Worth Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, be offered to the McFarlin Constructing firm, which specialises in revitalising historic properties within the area. The choice follows months of squabbling, duelling lawsuits and what seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s again—the house owners ignoring the identical choose’s court docket order to show the utilities again on within the historic, albeit empty, constructing threatened by freezing temperatures.
The ultimate worth of the sale, $1.4m, had been initially agreed upon in Might 2024 by McFarlin and Copper Tree, an organization run by the native couple Cynthia and Anthem Blanchard, who had bought the skyscraper in March 2023. Nonetheless, it seems that the Blanchards reneged on the settlement, itemizing the constructing for public sale in 2024 with a minimal bid of $600,000—the tower was seemingly price $6.2m, in keeping with the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise’s Andy Dossett, who has been intently following this story because the starting. McFarlin filed a lawsuit towards Copper Tree in September 2024.
The Blanchards had purchased the skyscraper for a token sum of $10 below the situation that they pay down its $600,000 debt and make investments $10m in its rehabilitation. They aspired to remodel it right into a tech hub, however when their blockchain-based, anti-ransomware and gold-backed crypto firms collapsed, they began promoting the Worth Tower’s Wright-designed furnishings. This went towards an easement held by the architect’s conservancy, which publicly protested. Cynthia Blanchard and Copper Tree filed a lawsuit towards the Frank Lloyd Wright Constructing 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 traders in certainly one of his firms; the Blanchards allegedly gave them fairness within the Worth Tower to cowl the debt.)
Probably given the Blanchards’ chequered previous, Choose Russell Vaclaw dominated that the $1.4m paid for Worth Tower be held by the court docket with a view to cowl claims, liabilities and money owed associated to the skyscraper. (Andy Dossett, the native journalist, has reported that the constructing’s debt stands at $2m.) Furnishings and different objects beforehand offered from the Worth Tower are to be purchased again utilizing cash from the fund. The price of restoring utilities to the constructing can even be deducted. As soon as all that’s addressed, any remaining cash will go to the Blanchards.
Vaclaw referred to as the Worth Tower a “priceless artefact of paramount significance”, in keeping with Dossett, and mentioned the constructing had been susceptible to “laying waste” within the chilly climate. “Let me make it easy,” Vaclaw mentioned on the listening to. “There’s an excessive amount of at stake right here — there are too many questions on [the owners] to allow them to stroll away with $1.4m immediately, and that is not going to occur.”
Seeing the writing on the wall, Copper Tree declared chapter the next day, claiming to solely have $216 within the financial institution. A listening to on the corporate’s counterclaims towards McFarlin and Wright’s conservancy is scheduled for 11 February.
The Worth Tower has been empty since September, when the remaining tenants have been requested to go away in order that it may very well be auctioned off. Accomplished in 1956 and with a design impressed by a lone tree, the copper-and-concrete skyscraper was listed on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations in 1974. It grew to become a Nationwide Historic Landmark in 2007.
