The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Starting over
SCJ confronting legacy of leaky roof

The Administration Building in 1939, with Wright's glass-tubed skylights. (c) SC Johnson

Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy includes famously leaky roofs. The landmark SC Johnson Administration Building, 1525 Howe St., which he designed in 1936, is no exception. The Great Workroom in the center of the building has been likened to a forest with a canopy of trees, formed by the dramatic slender dendriform or mushroom-shaped columns. Today there is a different forest in the room, a maze of iron scaffolding, which surrounds the columns.

Wright's design filled the Great Workroom with light on nice days, and with rain on other days.

The Great Workroom is filled with scaffolding during the restoration work. Some workers are in a low (4-6' high) room at the ceiling level.

While aficionados of Wright’s work sometimes minimize such shortcomings as leaky roofs in his designs, SC Johnson is confronting the problem head-on. A major repair project will repair the leaks, as well as improve the quality of light in the Great Workroom, and improve the building’s energy efficiency.

Copper flashing - the first ever on the building- is installed.

The building’s streamlined design is accented by Wright’s 47 miles of Pyrex-glass tube clerestory windows, which are in bands that wrap around the building at ceiling height. Wright used the same glass tubes to fill the Great Workroom with natural light. There were two layers of glass tubes, one in roof skylights that encircle the top of each of the dendriform columns, and one below, at the ceiling. Artificial lighting was added between the layers, after Wright was asked how well workers would see on cloudy days. He suggested that they use desk lamps, but was overruled.

The new skylights, like the first replacement ones, are sloped. Wright's Pyrex-glass tube skylights were flat.

There was no effective way to seal the joints of the glass tubes at the time. Silicone caulk was not invented by Dow until the 1950s (in an effort to curb leaking of the glass tube windows in Wright’s Research Tower, which opened in 1950).

The skylights encircle the tops of the dendrifom columns.

The glass tubes on the roof of the Administration Building leaked so badly that they were replaced by aluminum-frame skylights, which were also sloped to better shed rain and snow, The glass tubes at the ceiling level were later replaced by panels of acrylic tubes (mimicking Wright’s glass tubes) to give maintenance workers better access to the lights above. Metal halide lights, which have a green cast, were installed between the skylights and ceiling panels.

The goal of the current project was simple: “Let’s start completely over, and do it right,” says Tracy Lutterman, Construction Project Manager in Johnson’s Corporate Facilities division.

The first new skylights were put in over the lobby in 2006-2008.

Planning began in 2005. The first restoration was in the lobby, a small area that could serve as a test area for the larger challenge above the Great Workroom. The work was done in 2006-2008. Planning included building mock-ups of the ceiling. New insulated skylights were installed; compact fluorescent bulbs, on timers, were put in the original light fixtures; and new acrylic tubes were installed in panels over the reception area. The area was immediately brighter and visually more pleasing, as the color of the light went from pale green to white. The Great Workroom then looked like “a cave” in contrast to the lobby, says Lutterman. People in the Great Workroom asked, “When are you going to do ours?”

While workmen on the roof replace brick parapets, install copper flashing - the first flashing ever on the roof - and install the new skylights, workmen atop the Great Workroom are painting and preparing the area for installation of the new lights and panels of acrylic tubing.

It is only 4' high in most of the small work room built above the Great Workroom for restoration workers; 6' high between the columns.

The scaffolding in the Great Workroom leads to a small room that has been built for the repair workers, just below the ceiling. It places the workers at the top of the dendriform columns. The floor consists of two layers of plywood, with insulation in between, to deaden construction noise for the office workers below. Some workers move around on little carts they sit on, because it is only four feet between the tops of the columns and the floor. The room is 6’ high below the skylights, between the columns. It is anticipated the work will be done this fall.

Work continues in the Great Workroom, amidst the scaffolding, and work above it.

Energy-efficient lights will be installed on the original sockets at the top of the columns.

Scaffolding on the outside of the building will remain in place into next year, when the clerestory windows on the west side are taken out to be cleaned and resealed. The east windows have already been worked on.

These clerestory windows will be worked on in 2011.

The company’s commitment to its stewardship of the Wright buildings on campus was underscored with the opening of the Frank Lloyd Wright Library and Research Center in the new Fortaleza Hall in January. The roof project speaks to that commitment, as well.

The Administration Building is more than the company’s headquarters office building. It not only helped relaunch Wright’s largely moribund career in 1936, but it also became a symbol of the company’s dedication to innovation, along with the Wright-designed Research Tower which opened in 1950.

H. F. Johnson, Jr., the company president who hired Wright during the Great Depression, fretted about the construction delays and cost-overruns. Wright assured him that the extra dollars would be more than offset by the attention the building would bring to the company. The building opened concurrently with the opening of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. An article in Life magazine praised the fair, but added that if people wanted to see something really special, they should visit the Administration Building in Racine. Today, as an internationally-known architectural landmark, it draws some 4,500 visitors every year.

Amenity for workers during construction work: a popcorn machine to lessen the inconvenience.

The new lobby skylights

See more photos in two photo galleries:

http://www.journaltimes.com/collection_4a84b4ee-a174-11df-9e6f-001cc4c002e0.html

http://www.journaltimes.com/collection_967d39bc-a173-11df-9dfc-001cc4c002e0.html