Price Tower, skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, celebrates its 50th annivercary

The National Building Museum is celebrating the Price Tower's 50th anniversary with an exhibit of 108 drawings and objects by Wright,  including the chairs from the skyscraper.

Photo: Price Tower, skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, celebrates its 50th annivercary

The exhibit, which opens Saturday, emphasizes the tower's revolutionary design: Its 19 floors stretch out from a central core, like the branches of a tree. A lone tree escaped from the forest, Wright called it.

Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect who won the Pritzker prize for architecture in 1995, called it one of the most important buildings of the century.

"He broke the glass box," said Richard P. Townsend, director of what is now the Price Tower Art Center, referring to Wright's description of many 20th century skyscrapers.

Wright's skyscraper, built for the H.C. Price Co., cost 2.4 million dollars and took three years to build.