The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Text and photos (c) Mark Hertzberg, except as noted

    Time does not stand still for Frank Lloyd Wright’s commissions. The buildings, the clients, and the context in which the buildings were designed, evolve. That is the case, concurrently, with three of his commissions in Racine. Two were built, one was not. There is also news about Edgar Tafel's first private commission.

Foster joins Wright in Racine

    The most dramatic change will be at the SC Johnson campus, near the landmark Administration Building (1936) and Research Tower (1944).  British architect Lord Norman Foster and his Foster + Partners have been commissioned to build Fortaleza Hall, a building that will showcase the Spirit of Carnauba, a replica of an airplane that is as significant in company and family history as the decision to hire Frank Lloyd Wright. About a half dozen architects were invited to submit proposals for the commission. It is not known who the others were.


   
Renderings above, and map below, by Foster + Partners, Courtesy of SC Johnson

   H.F. Johnson Jr., who was then president of the company and who hired Wright in 1936, flew to Fortaleza, Brazil in 1935, in a magnificent Sikorsky S-38 amphibious plane, in search of a renewable source of the carnauba wax palm that was important to the company’s wax manufacturing process. The expedition was a turning point in company history because it helped ensure a supply of an important natural resource, during the Depression.  H.F. kept a journal during the trip, for his son, Sam.


Sam Johnson, before a 1998 test flight.


  The airplane was eventually sold, and was lost after it crashed near Indonesia. Sam, who was also an avid pilot, reprised his father’s trip in 1998 with his own sons, Curt and Fisk, as he prepared to become Chairman Emeritus of the company.  He had commissioned a replica of the plane because the original one could not be found. He He also commissioned a moving film about the 1998 trip. “The Spirit of Carnauba” is shown at the company’s Golden Rondelle guest relations center.  Sam talks about the trips to Fortaleza in the film, in the context of their importance to the company, and in terms of how he reconnected with his father during his trip with Curt and Fisk.

    Sam died in 2004. Fisk, who succeeded his father as chairman and president of SC Johnson, wanted to showcase the replica plane both as a memorial to his father, and as a significant part of the company’s history.  Fortaleza Hall will be built on the campus as the centerpiece of what is called Project Honor. The plane will be the centerpiece of the Foster building, which will also have a fitness center, branch bank, concierge, and other amenities for employees. The restaurant and dining area can seat up to 400 people for special functions.

    The wreckage of the original plane was identified at the bottom of the ocean in 2006. It is not known if any of it can, and will be recovered, for the exhibit. When H.F. told Wright that he was concerned about the cost overruns on the Administration Building, Wright presciently told him that the building would one day be a great destination point for visitors. Fisk envisions that the new building will be as much of an important attraction as the Administration Building.

The wreckage of the original plane and the marker placed by Sam's family in July, 2006. Courtesy of SC Johnson

    I interviewed Sam, below left, twice about the importance of the iconic Wright buildings to the company. This fall I photographed Fisk, below, right, as Michael Burke, our business editor, interviewed him about Project Honor. I was struck by the similarities in the three interviews. Fisk has his father’s features, and shows the same enthusiasm for issues he is passionate about. Indeed, Fisk talked about the Spirit of Carnauba and how it symbolized the spirit of adventure and inventiveness at SC Johnson, in much the same way that his father had told me what the Wright buildings mean to the company.




   

    There are Frank Lloyd Wright devotees who have expressed concern about any new building on the campus, but Lord Foster was well aware of the architectural context for this commission. The Golden Rondelle, another non-Wright building, already sits on campus with no distraction to Wright’s landmarks, and that will be the case with Fortaleza Hall (The Rondelle, as it is known locally, was designed by Lippincott and Marguiles as the Johnson Wax pavilion at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair. It was brought back to Racine and seated on Cherokee red brick entrances and exits designed by Taliesin Associated Architects, in place of the futuristic ramp and canopy that were part of the World’s Fair site).

Fortaleza Hall is just right of center. The Administration Building is bottom center, and the Research Tower above it. The Golden Rondelle is top center, and 14th St. above it, or north.   

    The new building is expected to open in 2009.
The Spirit of Carnauba plane flies over the Wind Point Lighthouse before the 1998 Fortaleza expedition.

Sustainability on a Wright campus

    H.F. commissioned Wright to build him a home in 1937. “Wingspread,” which Wright called his last Prairie-style design, is a magnificent 14,000 square foot zoned house. It became home of the Johnson Foundation in 1959, after Mr. and Mrs. Johnson built a new home near Wingspread. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the International Court of Justice all grew out of “Wingspread conferences.”

    Sustainability is one of the important issues that some conferences focus on. Roger Dower, the Foundation’s fifth president, and Lois Berg, the administrative director, have put this aspect of their mission into action with the addition of a 100-foot long solar panel grid to the campus, this fall. The grid will generate renewable energy, which will be sold to We Energies, the local utility. The Foundation will then buy renewable energy back from the company.

    The solar panel array is located well away from the Wright building, behind the Guest House, a lodging facility that was added to the campus about five years ago.





For more information, go to:http://www.johnsonfdn.org/energy.html

The “Y” and a “what if?”

    Johnson gave Wright yet another commission in 1949/50, when he asked him to design a new downtown building for the Racine YWCA. Patrons of Wright’s proposed building presumably would not have suffered if the roof had leaked, because he had placed the swimming pool on the top floor, below a glass roof. The lobby was an atrium, with a spiral ramp leading upstairs.

    Wright angrily withdrew from the commission in March, 1950,  when he learned that the Y board was also considering proposals from two other architects. He explained in a terse letter that he did not compete for work. The Y ultimately hired Fitzhugh Scott, who had designed the Milwaukee YWCA.  Scott’s building, which is across from the Racine County Courthouse, is not a bad building, but it is not bold like Wright’s design. The lobby is enclosed by walls and a ceiling, rather than having an inviting, open atmosphere.

   
The YWCA building is for sale. Renderings of the Wright design cannot be posted on the web site, at the request of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, for copyright reasons. They are reproduced in "Wright in Racine" (Pomegranate, 2004). Photo by Dustin Safranek (c) The Journal Times

    The Y board announced recently that the building is for sale. There are now a variety of other fitness centers in Racine, including SC Johnson’s sprawling employee fitness center, so the Y’s own fitness center is under used, and even sometimes unused. Clearly the organization’s mission has changed from the days when so many people used the gym and pool. The Y’s board has decided to leave physical fitness to others, and concentrate on the national YW mission of  “Eliminating Racism” and “Empowering Women.” They do not need their two-story building, with its under utilized physical fitness facilities, to accomplish those goals.

    The decline in the use of the Y’s physical fitness facilities certainly has nothing to do with the building’s architect. The pending sale of the Scott-designed building begs the question of what would happen to the Y building if Wright’s design had been built.  There would be national attention focused on the building, with Preservation Racine, Wright in Wisconsin, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy paying keen attention to the future of the building. Instead, the story has merited just one front page story in The Journal Times in the month since the announcement was made, and will presumably be mentioned again only when there is word of a possible buyer or other plans for the building’s future. It is known only as the Racine YWCA, because it is not Frank Lloyd Wright’s Racine YWCA.

Edgar Tafel’s first private commission

    Edgar Tafel, one of the original Fellowship apprentices (1932-1941) left Taliesin after tusseling with Wright about his first private commission, the Robert Albert House, which graces the Lake Michigan shoreline in the Village of North Bay on Racine’s north side.

    Mrs. Albert died a year ago. The house, which Rita and Robert’s son, John, opened up to tours for only the second time, during the recent Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy national meeting, is now for sale.
 
  There is a pond below the driveway, along the south end of the house.

  I had the great privilege of bringing Edgar back to the house in 2003, for lunch with Mrs. Albert. Edgar bowed when Rita answered the door, and said, “Madam, your architect is here.”

Tafel greets visitors at the 2004 Wright and Like tour of the Albert House. It was the first time the home had been on tour.



Feature story about Tafel's visit back to the house


Albert House Sale information: