This 26-room mansion was built for the family of Frank Phillips, who established the Phillips Petroleum Company with his brother L. E. Phillips in 1917. Frank and Jane Phillips and their heirs lived in this home from its completion in 1908 until 1973, when their granddaughter Betty Irwin donated the property and its contents to the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Bartlesville became the first of many frontier towns with an oil well in 1897-ten years prior to Oklahoma statehood. By that time, the new state was the leading producer of oil in the United States and the Phillips brothers had completed an unrivaled streak of drilling over eighty successful oil wells in the surrounding area. This home, expanded and redecorated in the 1920s and 1930s, reflects the great wealth of the oil barons of Oklahoma during the first half of the 20th century. Famous Oklahoma residents such as Will Rogers where guests at the home, as were many of the leading politicians of the early and mid-20th century.