On June 11, actor, producer, and activist Sophia Bush, married entrepreneur and angel investor Grant Hughes during a weekend-long celebration in Tulsa. According to Vogue.com, the couple, who got engaged in August 2021 on Lake Como, Italy, exchanged vows in the stunning Tuscany-inspired South Garden of Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art.
On the evening before the ceremony, guests arrived at the 10,000-plus-square-foot Westhope house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his cousin, publisher of the Tulsa Tribune, Richard Lloyd Jones, in 1928. The dinner party had an “elevated cowboy” theme, with the bride and groom donning white Western-style hats. The fete’s decor was kept to a minimum, complementing the house’s interiors with only a few earth-toned floral arrangements, styled in the centuries-old Japanese art of ikebana. Bush said: “The florals nod to Japanese ikebana, as Frank Lloyd Wright drew inspiration for much of his architecture from studying Japanese design.”
True to Wright’s nature-inspired “organic architecture” ethos, furniture, built-in cabinets, and drawers at the home are all constructed of similar wood, achieving the visual and spatial harmony for which his signature aesthetic is known. (Although the dining room furniture is said to be Frank Lloyd Wright–designed, according to TulsaWorld.com, it is not the home’s original).
Walls of the two-story house seamlessly integrate concrete blocks with a salient use of glass panes (5,200 to be exact) arranged in pillar-like forms, creating a vertical rhythm that permits ample natural light into the interiors while keeping dwellers connected to the outside environment. According to PriceTower.org, Westhope is Wright’s only home outside of California built in the architect’s original Textile Block style, as also seen in the celebrated Ennis House.
Stuart Price, a Tulsa real estate developer who owns several local historic buildings, bought Westhope in 2021 for $2.5 million as told by the Architect’s Newspaper. Restorations to the home are complete, but the space is currently open to invite-only tours exclusively.
Knowing that their wedding would be exposed to the world via social media, according to Bush, the philanthropic pair who have made activism a huge part of their lives, chose to use their “privilege of attention” as high-profile figures to shine a light on the “cultural renaissance” taking place in Tulsa. Throughout the weekend, the pair worked together with many of the local community organizations with which they partner, to usher guests through tours of several culturally significant Tulsa sites like the Greenwood Rising Museum.
