Johnson Wax Headquarters is the world headquarters and administration building of
S. C. Johnson & Son in
Racine, Wisconsin
Racine ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River. Racine is situated 22 miles (35 km) south of Milwaukee and approximately 60 ...
. Designed by
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements o ...
for the company's president, Herbert F. "Hib" Johnson, the building was constructed from 1936 to 1939.
Its distinctive "lily pad" columns and other innovations revived Wright's career at a point when he was losing influence. Also known as the Johnson Wax Administration Building, it and the nearby 14-story Johnson Wax Research Tower (built 1944–1950) were designated as a
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...
in 1976 as Administration Building and Research Tower, S.C. Johnson and Son.
Design
The Johnson Wax Headquarters were in an industrial zone, and Wright decided to create a sealed environment lit from above, as he had done with the
Larkin Administration Building
The Larkin Building was an early 20th century building. It was designed in 1903 by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1904-1906 for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York. The five story dark red brick building used pink tinted mortar and ut ...
. The building features Wright's interpretation of the streamlined
Art Moderne
Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...
style popular in the 1930s. In a break with his earlier
Prairie School
Prairie School is a late 19th- and early 20th-century architectural style, most common in the Midwestern United States. The style is usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in ...
structures, the building features many curvilinear forms and required over 200 different curved "
Cherokee red" bricks to create the sweeping curves of the interior and exterior. The
mortar between the bricks is raked in traditional Wright style to accentuate the horizontality of the building. The warm, reddish hue of the bricks was used in the polished concrete floor slab as well; the white stone trim and white dendriform (tree-like) columns create a subtle yet striking contrast. All of the furniture, manufactured by
Steelcase
Steelcase Inc. is an American manufacturer of furniture, casegoods, seating, and space solutions for offices, hospitals, classrooms, and residential interiors. It is headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
History
Originally known as The ...
, was designed for the building by Wright and it echoed many of the building's design features.
The entrance is within the structure, penetrating the building on one side with a covered carport on the other. The carport is supported by short versions of the
steel-reinforced dendriform concrete columns that appear in the Great Workroom.
The low carport ceiling creates a compression of space that is released when entering the main building, where the dendriform columns rise over two stories tall; the interior space thus appears larger than it is. Compression and release of space were concepts that Wright used in many of his designs, including the playroom in his
Oak Park Home and Studio, the
Unity Temple
Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the home of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built between 1905 and 1908. Unity Te ...
in
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated in ...
, the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, and many others.
Throughout the Great Workroom, which has no internal walls, the thin, white dendriform columns rise to circular "lily pad" tops that form the ceiling, with the spaces between the circles consisting of skylights made of
Pyrex
Pyrex (trademarked as ''PYREX'' and ''pyrex'') is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded to include kitchenw ...
glass tubing. At the corners, where the walls usually meet the ceiling, the glass tubes continue up and over and connect to the skylights, creating a
clerestory
In architecture, a clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both.
Historically, ''clerestory'' denoted an upper l ...
effect and admitting a
soft light
Hard and soft light are different types of lighting that are commonly used in photography and filmmaking. Soft light is light that tends to "wrap" around objects, projecting diffused shadows with soft edges, whereas hard light is more focused and ...
. The Great Workroom is the largest expanse of space in the building, and was intended for the secretaries of the Johnson Wax company, with a
mezzanine
A mezzanine (; or in Italian language, Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft ...
for administrators.
Construction
In the Great Workroom, the columns expand from 9 inches (23 cm) in diameter at the bottom to "lily pads" 18 feet (5.5 m) in diameter at the top; skeptical building inspectors required that a test column be built and loaded with twelve
ton
Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses.
Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean
* the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds
...
s of material. After the test column proved capable of supporting the specified load, Wright had the load progressively increased. Only at sixty tons load did any crack appear.
The building was completed in 1939, considerably over-budget.
[ It proved very difficult to properly seal the glass tubing of the ]clerestories
In architecture, a clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both.
Historically, ''clerestory'' denoted an upper l ...
and roof, and leaks occurred. The problem was not solved until the company replaced the top layers of tubes with skylights consisting of angled sheets of fiberglass and specially molded sheets of Plexiglas
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...
with painted dark lines to resemble the original joints in a ''trompe-l'œil
''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...
'' when viewed from the ground.
Wright designed not only the building but its furniture. His chair design originally had only three legs, supposedly to encourage better posture (because one would have to keep both feet on the ground at all times to sit in it). However, the chair proved unstable, tipping very easily. Purportedly, Wright redesigned the chairs after Herbert Johnson asked him to sit in one, and he fell out of it. Johnson Wax has continued to use Wright's furniture.
Despite these problems, Johnson was pleased with the building and later commissioned the Research Tower and a house (known as Wingspread
Wingspread, also known as the Herbert F. Johnson House, is a historic house in Wind Point, Wisconsin. It was built in 1938–39 to a design by Frank Lloyd Wright for Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., then the president of S.C. Johnson, and was consi ...
) from Wright.
Research Tower
The Research Tower was added in 1950 to the Administration Building, and provides a vertical counterpoint to its horizontality. It is one of only two existing high-rise buildings by Wright. Cantilevered from a giant stack, the tower's floor slabs spread out like tree branches, providing for vertical segmentation of departments. Elevator and stairway channels run up the reinforced concrete core, which Wright called a tap root
A taproot is a large, central, and dominant root from which other roots sprout laterally. Typically a taproot is somewhat straight and very thick, is tapering in shape, and grows directly downward. In some plants, such as the carrot, the taproo ...
. This single core was based on an idea that he had proposed in 1929 for the St. Mark's Tower, and which he used again in 1952 in the Price Tower
The Price Tower is a nineteen-story, 221-foot-high tower at 510 South Dewey Avenue in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. It was built in 1956 to a design by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is the only realized skyscraper by Wright, and is one of only two verticall ...
in Bartlesville
Bartlesville is a city mostly in Washington County in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 37,290 at the 2020 census. Bartlesville is north of Tulsa and south of the Kansas border. It is the county seat of Washington County. The Can ...
, Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
. Freed from peripheral supporting elements, the tower rises from a garden and three fountain pools that surround its base while a court on three sides provides parking for employees.[Robert Sharoff]
"A Corporate Paean to Frank Lloyd Wright"
''The New York Times'', April 29, 2014.
The Research Tower was taken out of use in 1980 because it no longer met fire safety codes; it only has a single 29-inch wide twisting staircase, and originally had no sprinkler
Sprinkler may refer to:
* Irrigation sprinkler, a device for watering lawns or crops
* Fire sprinkler, a device for fire suppression
* Sprinkler (dance), a dance move
See also
*
* Feynman sprinkler
A Feynman sprinkler, also referred to as a F ...
s because Wright thought them ugly. SC Johnson considered proposals to retrofit the tower to meet these codes, including one submitted by apprentices from Taliesin, but all were ultimately rejected out of concern it would mar the appearance of the tower.[ The company is committed to preserving it as a symbol of its history. In 2013, an extensive 12-month restoration was completed. The tower was relit on December 21, 2013 to mark the winter solstice, and S.C. Johnson & Son announced that it would be opened for public tours for the first time in its history. The research labs shown on the tour have been set up to appear frozen in time, including beakers, scales, centrifuges, archival photographs and letters about the building.][Blair Kamin]
"Frank Lloyd Wright's tower worthy of debate, and a trip"
''Chicago Tribune'', April 23, 2014.
Legacy
The Johnson Wax buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
, and the Administration Building and the Research Tower were chosen by the American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...
as two of seventeen buildings by the architect to be retained as examples of his contribution to American culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...
. In addition, in 1974 the Administration Building was awarded a Twenty-Five Year Award
The Twenty-five Year Award is an architecture prize awarded each year by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) to "a building that has set a precedent for the last 25 to 35 years and continues to set standards of excellence for its architect ...
by the American Institute of Architects and in 1976, both were designated National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...
s.[, with ]
See also
*List of National Historic Landmarks in Wisconsin
This is a list of National Historic Landmarks in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. National Historic Landmarks are designated by the U.S. National Park Service, which recognizes buildings, structures, districts, objects, and sites which satisfy certain ...
*
References
Literature
* Lipman, Jonathon: ''Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Building''. New York. Rizzoli. 1986.
* Storrer, William Allin: ''The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion''. University Of Chicago Press, 2006.
External links
SC Johnson architecture page
includes links to tour information for the Johnson Wax building.
is a page from an independent website
concentrating on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Includes photographs.
at Great Buildings Online
{{Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright buildings
National Historic Landmarks in Wisconsin
Office buildings completed in 1939
S. C. Johnson & Son
Buildings and structures in Racine, Wisconsin
Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin
Tourist attractions in Racine, Wisconsin
National Register of Historic Places in Racine County, Wisconsin
Office buildings in Wisconsin
Headquarters in the United States
1939 establishments in Wisconsin