The news had been shared, three days earlier, in the Save Wright forum by Zachary Matthews, who posted an April 17 email from “The Bavinger Boys.” The text reads: “The Bavinger House receives the ‘It’s Gone” award.'” (This is seemingly a reference to the accolades the house received, such as the AIA Twenty-Five Year Award in 1987 and a listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.) A photograph shows a CAT excavator and not much else, the stone, glass, and metal remains of the house all hauled away.
Unfortunately, the destruction of the Bavinger House is not surprising. Back in 2011, the home appeared to suffer damage in a storm, and when a crew with News 9 attempted to see the house, they were “greeted with gunfire.” Then, Bob Bavinger told the Norman Transcript that he’d had to “remove the target,” meaning the house, as he thought OU was attempting to get in the way of his own restoration efforts. The status of the house remained something of a mystery (it sat on private property, accessed by a rural road) until last July, when PraireMod reported that it had been contacted by Bob Bavinger’s son, Boz, who claimed to be putting the property up for sale for the price of $1.5 million. An accompanying photograph showed the base of the building mostly intact, although the spire had been snapped off and support cables were mangled.
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- RIP: Bruce Goff's Bavinger House demolished, Saturday, June 11, 2016 - 12:13