Frank Phillips Home

The Frank Phillips Home in Bartlesville offers a remarkably personal look into the life of one of the men who helped transform Oklahoma into a center of the American oil industry. Built in 1909, the elegant Neoclassical residence was the home of Frank Phillips, co-founder of Phillips Petroleum Company, and his wife, Jane, during the years when their family and business rose to national prominence. Frank Phillips arrived in Bartlesville during the excitement of the early Oklahoma oil boom. After finding success in banking and oil production, he and his brother, L. E. Phillips, founded Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville in 1917. The company eventually grew into one of America's major petroleum corporations, making the Phillips name inseparable from the history of the city. The Phillips family moved into the home in 1909, when Bartlesville was still a young community in the newly created state of Oklahoma. The house reflected their growing prosperity while remaining very much a family residence. Over the years it was expanded and updated as the Phillips family's fortunes increased, eventually becoming an impressive three-story home filled with fine furnishings, artwork, decorative objects, and personal possessions. One of the home's greatest attractions is its authenticity. Much of what visitors see belonged to the Phillips family, allowing the rooms to retain the character of an actual early-20th-century residence rather than feeling like a reconstructed historical exhibit. Formal entertaining spaces sit alongside more intimate family rooms, creating a picture of both the public and private lives of one of Oklahoma's most influential families. The home also provides a window into Bartlesville during an extraordinary period of change. Oil discoveries brought entrepreneurs, workers, investors, and new wealth into northeastern Oklahoma, transforming what had been a relatively small frontier community. Phillips Petroleum became one of the companies at the center of that transformation, and Bartlesville developed into an important headquarters for the petroleum industry. Frank Phillips himself became known for more than business. His interests in the American West and Native American culture eventually led him to develop his nearby Woolaroc ranch, which became a gathering place for business leaders, celebrities, cowboys, aviators, and Native American guests. Today, Woolaroc and the Frank Phillips Home provide two very different perspectives on the same man—the ranch displaying Phillips' larger-than-life fascination with the West, and the Bartlesville residence revealing the quieter setting of his everyday family life. The Frank Phillips Home remained associated with the Phillips family for decades and today survives as one of Bartlesville's most important historic residences. Walking through its rooms provides an unusually intimate connection to the people behind one of Oklahoma's greatest business stories. More than simply the home of a wealthy oilman, the Frank Phillips Home captures a moment when Oklahoma was rapidly changing from a newly admitted state into an important center of American industry. It tells the story of oil, ambition, family, wealth, and the growth of Bartlesville through the rooms where much of that history was actually lived.