Pre-Christmas trip to Price Tower

I had originally planned to visit my parents and my hometown this Christmas.  They had replied that they preferred that I did not.  My husband had scheduled taking off the Thursday before Christmas (Friday, Christmas eve, his office was closed), and so we still felt that we should do something with that day.  We decided on a trip to Bartlesville, OK, to stay at Price Tower, the only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wednesday evening, I was still feeling upset by being dis-invited from Christmas at my parents.  My husband and I were discussing movies, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? came up, so we started streaming it from Netflix.  The movie opened with "Glory of Love" written by Billy Hill (here being covered by Dean Martin).  I had only watched the movie once, and hadn't remembered the song being in it, but I started to sing along and then the lyric "you've got to... let your poor heart break a little" came up.  And I laughed a little on the inside, because I DID feel heartbroken over the whole Christmas thing with the parents.  Before, I had thought that the song was referring only to romantic relationships, as in, sometimes people who love each other will hurt each other, but in the context of the movie, I could see now, that it also referred to others, outside the relationship, that could also break one's heart (such as the protagonist's parents).  But as the song goes "That's the story of, that's the glory of love."  Suddenly, my own worries and hurt were lifted.  I was free to enjoy my Christmas.

Another thing about the movie I had missed before, storywise:  the couple meet in Hawaii, and there's a line where Sydney Poitier says that his (white) fiancee thinks their child could be president, while he only hopes that their child could be a senator.  Today of course, Obama (formerly a senator), born in Hawaii to a white mother and black father is President.

Price Tower is an unusual building.  One of the chief features is the amount of decorative copper used on the exterior, and another, how none of the rooms are rectangular, but everything is at odd angles.  The elevators are tiny, holding three people at the most, and are trapezoid shaped.  In fact the entire building has an almost cramped feel to it--which makes sense as Mr. Wright had it more in mind for it to fit into New York.  The bottom two floors are now a museum.  There are a few offices are still in the building, and the rest of the building has been turned into hotel rooms.  The hotel rooms were all once apartments or offices, and for a hotel room, the space is adequate.  But as a 400 sq ft apartment, it wouldn't work anywhere except in NY or Tokyo--and in fact, I believe only 2 of the apartments were ever rented out--the building is in rural OK, and people could buy homes with what they asking for in rent on the original apartments.

The architecture is amazing, if not particularly practical.  When we checked in, they asked if we were wanting internet access, because if so, they would give us an ethernet cable--WiFi doesn't work in the building due to all the copper.  The odd angles puts you off balance in a fun sort of way.

The entrance to the room:

From the inside of the room, looking back towards the door:

Farther inside the room, still looking towards the door:

 Standing at the entrance of the bathroom door and looking at the room:

The curtains along the walls do, indeed, cover floor to ceiling windows.  

TV stand and desk:

Closeup of the desk showing the copper tablecloth and the built-in copper trash can:

Bathroom:

Toilet faces a window with copper blinds:

You'll notice an electronic control box next to the shower door.  It controls the heating in the floor tiles!  The tiles in the bathroom are heated.  It's wonderful stepping out of the shower onto warmed tiles.

The exterior:

A closeup of the top balcony.  There's a small bar/restaurant on the top floor, and you can sit out on the balcony.  Note also the horizontal copper awnings on the floors below.

 Closeup of the copper pillar:

It rained the night we were there.  The rain falling on those copper awnings was percussive, but gentle.  I could imagine myself having, in a dream house, a window with copper awnings near which I'd put a reading couch. 

It was early evening when we arrived, so we drove around downtown Bartlesville to have a quick look at the place.  After we checked into the hotel room, we looked at the hotel materials to find area attractions.  There was a park with a drive-thru Christmas display that was quite nice, complete with Christmas music if you tuned your radio to a given station.

Afterwards, we visited "Copper", the bar/restaurant in the Tower.  It was also small, perhaps holding only 25 people, max.  It did, however, have copper chain-link curtains:

 Closeup of curtains:

The food selection is basically burgers and some appetizers.  We had had a big lunch, so neither of us were really hungry.  My husband had a wine with bruschetta.  I had a cranberry juice and some chips and queso.  I wish now I had ordered a burger, just so I could have "really" eaten at the restaurant.  The food was fine.  The bruschetta had a nice smoky flavor to it.  I wonder if they baked it in a wood fired oven.