Photos and text (c) Mark Hertzberg

  Darwin D. Martin. Aline Barnsdall. Herbert F. Johnson Jr. Edgar Kaufmann. Herbert and Katherine Jacobs. Solomon R. Guggenheim. These are some of the names that come to mind when some people think of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous or most important clients of the 20th century. Add Arthur Richards of Milwaukee to the list. 

   Many of those people may think of Wright only as an architect of homes for the wealthy, and recognize only his Prairie-style designs. Part of Wright's genius was that there were so many dimensions to his work, including decades of focus on affordable housing. His work evolved from the Prairie-style to his Usonian homes in the 1930s. Richards became a client of Wright's in 1911, after Wright returned from Europe. His work for Richards is part of his interest in housing for the working class.

      His first executed design for Richards, the Prairie-style Lake Geneva Hotel was an early design for the motoring clientele (1911). It was demolished in 1970. Five years after the hotel design came an explosion of "American System-Built Homes" for Richards, many of them in Milwaukee. Richards' scheme for these pre-fabricated homes was stymied by economic conditions during World War I.

      Milwaukee's six Richards American System-Built homes are in one block - perhaps the greatest concentration of Wright work in a small area other than Forest Ave. in Oak Park and Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla. The American System-Built Homes, Model C3 (sometimes known as the Richards Bungalow) is to the east, at the corner of Layton Blvd. and W. Burnham St. Then, continuing to the west, are the American System-Built Homes, Model B1 (sometimes called the Richards Small House) and then the four American System-Built Homes, Model Flat C (sometimes known as the  Richards Duplex Apartments).

From right to left: Models C3 (Richards Bungalow), B1 (Richards Small House), and the four Flat C (Richards Duplex Apartments).    

 

     The Frank Lloyd Wright ® Wisconsin Tourism Heritage Program (Wright in Wisconsin), which I am on the board of, owns the Richards Small House and two of the duplexes. We have been fortunate to receive a Save America's Treasures and other grants to restore the house to its original design.

Board meeting to discuss Burnham Street properties: April 16, 2005. The porch of  the Richards Small House was enclosed in 1939. The restoration will have an open porch, like the one Wright designed. The home will be come a house museum. Tours are regularly offered. There are no immediate plans for restoration of the two duplexes the group owns. They have apartments which are rented out.

 
   The most noticeable change in the appearance of the house will be the porch: enclosed by a later owner of the home, it is now open again. The exterior of the house was taken down to wood studs, and is now being re-stuccoed to very exacting specifications, to match the original finish. All of the original wood lathe was replaced with a wire mesh lathe because the old wood lathe had a lot of asbestos between the lathe slats (for adhering the old stucco).

A model of the Richards Small House.   

 
    The final coat of stucco is expected to be applied the week of June 20. Slide shows of various stages of the work until now are below.

Exterior of the house - The house was enveloped in white covering earlier this year during asbestos abatement. The wood framework of the new porch, and the new concrete for the planters, are at the front of the house.

    

Stucco refinishing - A cement base coat is applied June 10 to an overhang on the north side of the house, a physically challenging space to work in.




Inside the Richards Small House


Archive Slide Show of Removal of the Porch Roof: October 20, 2008



Archive Slide Show from September 16, 2008




Archive Slide Show: Inside the Richards Small House January, 2005, shortly after we bought it. We did not acquire the two of the four duplexes until later.



You are invited to stop by the house to watch the work, and to follow our progress at: wrightinmilwaukee.org We also welcome your membership: wrightinwisconsin.org

Many thanks to Mike Lilek and Patrick Meehan for their help with this article.  

Photos and text (c) Mark Hertzberg

    Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday does not go unnoticed in Wright circles. Wright in Wisconsin's annual Wright & Like house tour is held on the weekend closest to June 8. This year's tour was in Madison.

    I am on the board of the organization, and we worried about the dismal weather forecasts, especially in view of last year's tour which was threatened by tornadoes and rains that produced significant flooding. I had to settle for a dry day under gray skies for shooting photos.

 
    After the tour, Cindy and I went to Spring Green, where we had been invited to join in a special birthday celebration at Taliesin. Guest included former apprentices and members of the board of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

 

    An enormous birthday cake was served for dessert. And then, as is customary, we went to the theater at Hillside School for the evening's entertainment. It is jarring to see a white sheet in place of the centerpiece of the theater, Wright's famous curtain, which is on display at the Guggenheim show (see previous article).

   The evening ended with Mark Schmitz showing the 3-D animation of Taliesin that was created for the Guggenheim show.  We did not realize that we had not seen the real thing in New York. Schmitz, one of the principals of the production showed the version with color imagery and music that apparently did not survive the Guggenheim editing. I began my career with black and white film, rather than color, and liked the black and white version we had seen at the Guggenheim. The color version is stunning, however.

 

 

   Below are slide shows from our tours of Jacobs 1 and 2, and of the Pew House, three of the eight stops on the tour. Only exterior photos are permitted at our house tours. We are indebted both to the tour homeowners and to the volunteer docents and house captains. Next year's Wright & Like is scheduled for June 5 in Racine.                                                                                   

 

    In the next few days I will post a slide show that updates the progress on our restoration of the Richards Small House at 2714 W. Burnham St. in Milwaukee.

 

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House 1 (1936) - "Jacobs 1" is considered by many people to be Wright's first Usonian house, although others give that distinction to the Willey House in Minneapolis (1932-1934).

 

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House II (1944) - Wright designed a solar hemicycle home, a passive solar home, for the Jacobs family six years after his first striking design for them. The two-story home is open to the west. Most of the east side is built into an earthern berm.

 

 

The Pew House (1938-1940) - The house is built over a ravine, and overlooks Lake Mendota.

Links:

Wright in Wisconsin

wrightinwisconsin.org

Burnham Street project updates:

wrightinmilwaukee.org

   

 

"Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward" at the Guggenheim

Photos of exhibition models by David Heald / (c) The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.Text and all other photos(c) Mark Hertzberg


    The Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City on May 15 is like many of Wright’s buildings. It succeeds in some spectacular ways, and falls short in some others. “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward” marks two 50th anniversaries. One is the 50th anniversary of Wright’s death (April 9, 1959), and the other is the anniversary of the opening of the Museum (October 21, 1959). The celebration also marks the completion of a three-year renovation of the Museum.

 The museum was shrouded in scaffolding for much of the renovation. 

  The exhibition is not designed as a retrospective show, but, rather, to use Wright’s work as an example of how to meet the challenge of designing not only aesthetic and functional buildings, but also ones that improve the quality of our lives.

    The title of the exhibition is a paradox, when we consider the nature of the museum building itself. Wright was famous for bringing the outside environment into many of his buildings, as curator Margo Stipe notes in her introduction to the exhibition. But, when it came to some of his most famous public buildings, including the Guggenheim, he turned the building inwards.
    
    That was also the case with Unity Temple and the Larkin Building, two of the first buildings we encounter in the show, and with the SC Johnson Administration Building which is prominently featured in the exhibition. Wright disliked the neighborhood in which the Johnson company was located in Racine so much that he tried to persuade H. F. Johnson Jr., his client, to move the company outside Racine. Mrs. Wright finally told her husband that if he did not drop the argument, he would lose the commission. Wright’s solution was 47 miles of Pyrex glass tubing in lieu of windows. This enabled light in, but did not expose workers to the outside. Instead, Wright brought the outside-in with a canopied forest of dramatic dendriform columns in the Great Workroom.

                                               The Great Workroom

    It is ambitious to seek to cover Wright’s life and career in one museum show that will be visited by a cross-section of people. While the exhibition is not a retrospective, it cannot help but be regarded as just that by many of the people who will see it. It is, after all, presented in a chronological overview of his career.

    Arguably, no architect has had as many books and papers written about him, and no architect has had as many ties, pieces of jewelry, and other gift shop items inspired by his designs. There will be many layers of visitors to the show, and therein lies the challenge of mounting a show such as this one.
    
    Visitors will range from scholars, to the man we once overheard telling his companion about the installation of the living room from Wright’s Arthur Little House at the nearby-Metropolitan Museum of Art, “It was designed by one of the Wright Brothers who invented the airplane.” They will range from people who have memorized Wright’s lexicon and his writings forward and backwards, to those who may be introduced to him for the first time by the newly-announced LEGO sets of Fallingwater and of the Guggenheim.

    Although Wright meant for Guggenheim exhibitions to be viewed as the visitor descends his spiral ramp from the top floor to the ground floor, visitors to the Wright show are surprisingly led up the ramp.

  They start by viewing one of the highlights of the exhibition, the newly-restored stage curtain from Hillside Theater (1952) at Taliesin, and finish with drawings and a model of the museum itself. The curtain restoration was arranged by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, a former apprentice to Wright, who is Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives at Taliesin West, and who helped curate the show.

The Hillside Theater Curtain at Taliesin

    There are models, photos, and 201 drawings of Wright’s work, many on exhibit for the first and, perhaps, last time. The museum skylight has been shielded to lessen the impact of light falling on these rare drawings.

  Many of the drawings have often been reproduced in books, but it is a treat to see them firsthand. Perhaps the best known drawing is the famous color perspective of Fallingwater. Some drawings of Taliesin West are on butcher block paper, which Pedro Guerrero, Wright’s photographer, once noted was all Wright could afford at the time.

    There are also animated videos of his work, including a 3-D visit through Taliesin III, Wright’s home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I had been asked to contribute photos to the latter, and was anxious to see the final result. I was pleased to see that it is in black and white rather than in color. Color would arguably have distracted from this engaging, fast-moving tour of the house.

    Some visitors who are not deeply immersed in Wright said that their eyes glossed over from the drawings, after a certain point, and that they wanted to see more about Wright’s personality and personal life. Scholars may be tired of talk about Wright’s persona and private life, but those are an inextricable part of his work. Those subjects are more part of a retrospective than a challenge for building for the future, but this exhibition will attract not only architects and scholars to the Guggenheim. Recent books, such as The Fellowship, Loving Frank, The Women, and the not-always-accurate Death in a Prairie House have exposed a new audience to his work. We are given nouns and verbs about his career, but are missing some of the adjectives and adverbs that would help tell his story.

    One of the challenges of the Wright World is to diversify. The audience at most Wright functions is generally homogeneous. Some Wright scholars have scoffed at the notion of popular or anecdotal histories of him and his work. They should not. Living spaces and working spaces are for everyone, and there should be no exclusivity in enjoying Wright’s work.

    We see Wright’s drawings for the famous desks and desk chairs he designed for the SC Johnson Administration Building, but there is not an example of either in the exhibit. Indeed, other than the Hillside curtain, there are no materials, furnishings, or other architectural artifacts. Wright famously often designed the furniture and windows of his buildings and it would have been beneficial to have even one of his famous leaded glass windows on display.

Wright's original design for SC Johnson was for 3-legged chairs.

    The models take us into some of Wright’s designs in ways that no drawings and photos can. We look into the sanctuary of Unity Temple and Meeting House in Oak Park (1904) in three dimensions. We see the SC Johnson Administration Building (1936) and Research Tower (1944) in Racine with lights glowing through the first-story clerestory windows of the office building and of the Tower. 

The model of the SC Johnson buildings is lit from within.

    There are models of unrealized projects, including the Gordon Strong Automobile Objective (1924), which may certainly be the most unusual name of any Wright project; Crystal City (Washington D.C., 1940); the aquarium for the Pittsburgh Point Civic Center (1957); and his Plan for Greater Baghdad (1957). The model of the futuristic Jetsons-like Huntington Hartford Sports Club/Play Resort (1947), shows an ambitious project which pre-dates the space-age television show by 15 years.

  Huntington Hartford Sports Club/Play Resort  

  One of the most ambitious and eye-catching models is the exploded view of the Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin (1937), one of Wright’s first Usonian homes. The Jacobs model is suspended from the ceiling, and shows the layers of the house as it was constructed, with rock and the pipe for the radiant floor heating below the floor, the sandwiched board and batten walls, up to the roof. 

   We are treated to views of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1912-1922), but then skip in large part over some 20 years of his career before getting to Jacobs 1 and the Johnson building. These are some of what Prof. Anthony Alofsin calls “the lost years,” in Wright’s career, from 1910-1922. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer recognizes the importance of this period, as well, in his new book, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Heroic Years, 1920-1932.

    Although there are drawings and photos of Hollyhock House (1916) in Los Angeles in the exhibition catalogue, there is no mention of it in the exhibition itself. Hollyhock House is one of Wright’s most famous designs. It was one of the few completed buildings on Olive Hill, a ambitious project which was abandoned because Wright feuded so much with Aline Barnsdall, his client.  

   There is also scant evidence of Wright’s four built textile block concrete homes in and around Los Angeles. Hollyhock House and the four 1923 concrete block homes, Ennis, Freeman, Millard, and Storer, represent an entirely different vocabulary for those who may think that Wright’s homes are defined only by his Prairie-style and Usonian homes. We see photos of one of the four, the Freeman House, but those photos need more explanation and context. There is more attention paid to two unbuilt concrete block projects (the Doheny Ranch Resort project,1923, and the San Marcos resort project, 1928-1929) and the concrete block house Wright designed in 1929 in Tulsa for Richard Lloyd-Jones, his cousin than to the better known California homes.

   There are some 27,000 of textile concrete blocks in the Ennis House, the garage and chauffeur's quarters, and the retaining wall, in Los Angeles.

 

        The exhibition also covers Broadacre City (1935) and The Living City (1958), Wright's concepts for decentralizing the American city. Wright was prescient in anticipating the importance of the automobile in decentralizing the city, whether that has been a positive or negative influence on our urban landscape.

   The flow of the crowd was well-managed. This may have been an intentional decision on how many people to admit to the museum at once, or by coincidence because we visited on a holiday weekend. This was in marked contrast to many ‘blockbuster’ museum shows at which one feels pressured to move quickly from exhibit to exhibit. It was surprising to note the paucity of Wright books on sale in the two gift shops during the exhibition. This seems like an ideal time to trade places on the shelves with other art books and sell Wright, Wright, Wright.

    Much of Wright’s work in the exhibition will be familiar to many devotees of his work. Still, the opportunity to see the Hillside curtain, the models, and this unique public exhibition of drawings makes it a show worth seeing. The exhibition runs through August 23. It then moves to the Guggenheim’s museum in Bilbao. A companion exhibition, featuring models, drawings, and photographs of 20 shelters built over 70 years by Taliesin students, is in the museum's Sackler Center for Arts Education. This exhibition is not part of the traffic flow of the Wright exhibition, and is easy to overlook.

By the Numbers:
201 drawings
12 newly commissioned models
4 historical models
9 videos/animations

Bibliography:
Exhibition Catalogue:
The catalogue has a bright cover, featuring Wright’s unbuilt proposal for the Fair Pavilion (1957) for the Marin County Civic Center. Published by Skira/Rizzoli, it is 355 pages. It is filled with black and white and color drawings and photos, and includes essays by Margo Stipe, Joseph M. Siry, Richard Cleary, Neil Levine, and Mina Marefat. Some of the drawings and photos, such as of Hollyhock House, appear in the catalogue, but not in the show. Many of the photos and drawings have been published previously, but the new essays and the voluminous collection of photos and drawings published together here make this a book to consider for one’s library. The book costs $45 for the softcover, and $75 for the hardcover edition.

A new book about the Guggenheim will be released in August:

Hillary Ballon, Neil Levine, and Joseph Siry, The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009). The museum’s press release promotes the book as the “first-ever book to explore the process behind one of the greatest modern buildings in America.” Though at 226 pages it may well be the best such book, it is not the first. A number of books have been devoted to the subject, including the museum’s own The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum  (88 pages, copyright 1995, 1997, 2001). It will retail for $65.

Ballon, Levine, and Siry put the Museum in the context of the City of New York, museums designed by Le Corbusier and by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and the work of other architects, including Frank Gehry, Louis Kahn, and I.M. Pei. The book is a rich collection of photos, letters, telegrams, drawings, and newspaper accounts of the history of the museum, and of other buildings by Wright and other architects. The cover of the softcover edition is inspired by the museum’s design, and is striking. There is a gem of a New York Times headline about the opening of the Museum on page 217:

10,000 Flock to Wright Museum,
But Only 6,039 Manage to Get In
      -----------------------------
Art Lovers, Tourists and Beatniks Jam
Upper 5th Ave.----Some See Just The
Cafeteria From the Outside

There is also this description of Wright in an article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"No, No, Not That.

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architectural iconoclast who is forever designing buildings that look like old pizza curled up in the hot sun, is at it again...We trust (city agencies) will do something to dissuade Mr. Wright before it is too late."

Another perspective on Wright’s work:

   One can be overwhelmed by the number of new books about Wright’s work, some of which do not break new ground. We take note of Myron Marty’s new book, coincidentally released concurrently with the exhibition, Communities of Frank Lloyd Wright: Taliesin and Beyond (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009). Marty is a member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s Board of Trustees and the Board of Taliesin Preservation, Inc. The book studies Wright and his work, as he related to other people or “communities,” from his early years in Chicago through the Taliesin Fellowship.

    This is an interesting, different perspective about Wright’s work. The book is well researched and it is meticulously footnoted. While there are many wonderful photographs of Wright and people he was associated with, there are not enough photos. For example, we read about Wright’s relationship with Rudolph Schindler, without ever seeing a photograph of Schindler or his work on Wright commissions such as the Freeman House or Hollyhock House. The book is 316 pages, with 75 photos. It retails for $45.

Links:

Guggenheim Museum Exhibition Information:

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view-now/frank-lloyd-wright

Diversity in the world of Wright:

http://my.journaltimes.com/post/wright-in-racine/a_challenge_finding_fresh_perspective_on_wrights_work.html

 

Photo (c) Al Krescanko    

      Frank Lloyd Wright will be honored in Wisconsin Thursday April 9 thanks to a proclamation by Gov. Jim Doyle. The commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his death was at the initiative of Inga Hagge, a member of the board of Wright in Wisconsin.

      The text of the proclamation follows:

Proclamation
Frank Lloyd Wright Remembrance Day
April 9, 2009
WHEREAS the State of Wisconsin recognizes the value of architecture and the built environment to human society in Wisconsin and the nation; and

WHEREAS Frank Lloyd Wright was declared the “Greatest American Architect of All Time” by the American Institute of Architects; and

WHEREAS Wright was born in Richland County, Wisconsin on June 8, 1867, and made his home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin; and

WHEREAS six existing Wisconsin properties designed by Wright are designated as National Historic Landmarks; and

WHEREAS Wright’s legacy continues to attract thousands of tourists to Wisconsin each year; and

WHEREAS Wright is the subject of hundreds of books, and thousands of articles, and scores of exhibitions, including a major exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this spring; and

WHEREAS Wright revived the “Prairie” architectural style, popular with contemporary designers and home buyers; and

WHEREAS Wright’s architectural philosophy known as “Organic Architecture” holds great relevance in today’s world of shrinking resources and growing environmental awareness; and

WHEREAS Wright drew inspiration for many of his designs from the natural beauty of Wisconsin, and he cherished his Wisconsin home, Taliesin, in the valley of his mother’s family;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Jim Doyle, Governor of Wisconsin, do hereby proclaim April 9, 2009, the 50th anniversary of Wright’s death,

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT REMEMBRANCE DAY
in Wisconsin, in memory of Wisconsin’s most famous son.

Wright in Wisconsin will host its annual Wright and Like tour in Madison, Saturday June 6.

Links:

Wright in Wisconsin:

http://wrightinwisconsin.org/

Photo (c) Mark Hertzberg

      The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy announces the retirement of Ron Scherubel, the organization's executive director. Scherubel has been the executive director for eight years, and will stay with the Conservancy until a new director has been hired. I am grateful for Ron's friendship, counsel and support as I worked on my books and on my web site. Best wishes to you, Ron!!!

The text of the Conservancy's press release follows.

Photos (c) Mark Hertzberg. Text (c) Mark Hertzberg and Marshall Jones. Thank you to Eric O'Malley of the PrairieMod web site for suggesting this title for this piece.

    Take a look in the mirror.

    Unless you stumbled on this website by accident, you are likely the typical Wright web site reader. You have a library full of Wright books. You squeeze in side trips to Wright buildings when you travel. Fallingwater, Taliesin, Olgivanna, and Ocatillo are not foreign words or concepts to you, they are part of your vocabulary. You are probably expecting another web article filled with photos from one of Wright's buildings.

 

    Take a look at the people in line with you at the next Wright Plus, Wright and Like, or Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy home tour. Most of us look alike. We are likely white, educated, and have some disposable income.  I am on the board of Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin organization. These characteristics describe much of our membership and the people we see at our events.        

      One of our challenges is to diversify our membership and customer base. One reason is for selfish economic reasons. We need as much money as we can get to help with our restoration of the properties we own on West Burnham Street in Milwaukee. But, a more important reason to diversify is because it is the right thing thing to do.

 

                                                   *****

    I grew up in New York City. We didn’t go to the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty as children, because they were part of everyday life in the city. That stuff was for tourists. I have long had the feeling it is the same in Racine, my adopted city. Four thousand people a year tour the SC Johnson Administration Building. I would guess that few people from Racine have been inside the building unless they work for SC Johnson.

         That is what motivated me to push for a program to bring Racine’s school children to visit this great landmark.  I wanted to help expose Racine’s children to our world-famous architecture, and maybe, just maybe, get one student interested in pursuing a career in architecture.

    The program started five years ago, with the help of Leadership Racine (a program though the local chamber of commerce) and SC Johnson. Now all fifth grade classes can tour the Administration Building after viewing the DVD which the company produced for us based on my “Wright in Racine” illustrated lecture. Their visit is followed by several days of classroom activities geared to Wright.

 

   
    The Johnson campus is near what are commonly referred to as “inner city” neighborhoods. I knew we had a winner when a teacher told me that he overheard one of this students tell a friend, “I’ve walked past this building everyday on the way to school. I never knew what it was until today.”

 

Latoya Bell talks to fellow fifth grade students from Roosevelt Elementary School about the Pyrex glass tube windows in the SC Johnson Administration Building as they learn about Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, Wednesday October 20, 2004.

 

                                                *****
    I had not thought about the program for awhile. It came to mind recently after I received a letter from Marshall Jones who had just read my “Wright in Racine” book. Jones’ letter is reproduced below, with his permission.  His thoughts about Wright’s work are insightful, especially for someone without any of the Wright network shared by most readers of Wright web sites.

    I had sent him an inscribed copy of my book after I interviewed him for a book about the criminal justice system. Wright did not come up in our conversation, but I decided to send him the book after he told me how much he enjoys reading. He devours everything he can get his hands on at his local library.

    Jones did not get my book the first time I tried to send it to him. It was termed “contraband” and returned to me because it had been mailed by me, and not by my publisher or a bookstore. You see, there are very strict rules at the Waupun Correctional Institution where Jones is serving two consecutive life terms for a double murder that happened during a tavern robbery.

    Jones is 27,  just a month younger than one of my sons. He was a 3.0 student until he dropped out of high school at the age 15 after a family dispute. He notes, ironically, that he had wanted to be an FBI agent. Jones is an articulate, affable young man. He knows how and where his life took bad turns. He does not duck responsibility for what he did. He knows he will never live outside of Waupun, but he is determined to make the most of every day he serves his sentence. That is why he reads.

 

    Marshall Jones will never be able to join us on a Wright and Like or Wright Plus home tour. That does not mean he cannot appreciate Wright’s work. Put aside the fact that Marshall Jones is behind bars. There are Marshall Joneses in everyone’s community: people, perhaps of color like him, people who are not part of our typical Wright circles of friends. That does not mean they cannot appreciate Wright’s work.

Mr. Hertzberg,

    This correspondence is to thank you for sending me the book you’ve written. I tore into the pages almost immediately and it was a good read. I had no idea that Wright designed so many homes and businesses in Racine. He was quite arrogant and while his work was in a class of its own, his arrogance wouldn’t allow him to produce flawless results. It’s unfortunate that Wingspread is used as everything but a home because it is fabulous.

    What I liked most about Wright was 2 things. First, was his abstract vision. He was destined to see himself apart from other architects, and normal was abnormal to him. Second was his persistence and persuasiveness because he had to “twist arms” a little to get his projects approved. He also had a “me or bust” mentality, perceiving a second opinion or option other than his own was a form of discrediting his capabilities. Wright never seems to take any form of responsibility for his flaws and had a weird  way of responding to complaints about his work.     Overall one could not deny his vision or ability to capture someone’s immediate attention when they observe his works. It makes me look at Racine with a different set of eyes.

    I truly appreciate you for your generosity. I hope success continues to be with you and yours. God  Bless.

Respectfully,

Marshall

    I wrote Jones to get permission to print his letter. His reply follows:

    I appreciate you for selecting my letter to be printed on your website. I also appreciate how well you spoke on my behalf. You were right when you stated that just because we’re not part of the Wright network doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate his work. All it takes is a door to be opened and maybe a seed to be planted to open an individual’s mind to something new.

    Many of us in here have realized at some point in our lives that there is a whole world of beauty we haven’t experienced. That’s why books are very important to me. Not to necessarily look at what I’m missing out on, but to welcome new perspectives and experiences to what I’ve started already.

    I thank you for giving me a voice and I give my permission for you to print my letter.

Respectfully,

Marshall Jones
 

Photo by Mark Hertzberg

Story by Marci Laehr Tenuta

Journal Times

RACINE — Police have ended the investigation into whether a Frank Lloyd Wright chair being sold at auction had been stolen from SC Johnson, and determined there was no theft involved.

It turns out that the particular chair being offered online by an auction house was rescued out of a Dumpster, had been sitting in a Waterford garage for years and was passed up at two rummage sales with a $25 price tag.

"I do not see that a theft of the chairs had occurred in this case," the investigator wrote in his report. "It appears that all of the parties involved did obtain these chairs in good faith."

From exhibit to auction

According to the investigator’s reports, police traced the Wright chair — one of hundreds originally made for the SC Johnson headquarters at 1525 Howe St. — from a Chicago auction house that had put it up for auction back to a Milwaukee antiques dealer. The antiques dealer told police he had bought the chair and two others just like it from a Waterford man who had listed them on eBay.

Investigators tracked down the Waterford man, who asked The Journal Times not to use his name. He reportedly had rescued the chairs from a Dumpster and had been using them in his garage for two years.

The report says the man worked for an exhibit building company that did work for SC Johnson in the 1980s. Some of the famous Wright chairs were part of an exhibit they built. When the exhibit was no longer being used, its contents were put into storage in a Racine warehouse.

In 2003, the Waterford man and co-workers were asked to clean the warehouse out. Police said about five or six of the chairs were tossed.

"(The Waterford man) described the chairs as being dirty, molding, bent and beat up," states the police report.

The man allegedly called his boss a few days later to ask if he could take some of the chairs, and was given permission.

For two years he used the chairs when doing repair work in his garage. The Waterford man said he had no idea what the chairs were or what they were worth.

"I couldn’t even sell them at a rummage sale," he told The Journal Times Friday. "They’re not that attractive."

According to the police report, the man had put $25 price tags on the three chairs he had in his garage. They sat unsold during two rummage sales.

In 2005, the man decided to sell them on eBay and asked a friend with an account for the online auction to list them for him. Reports say they agreed to split the profits.

In April of 2005, the three chairs were sold to the Milwaukee man for $500, who then sold them to Wright Auction House in Chicago.

Bought and sold

When one of the chairs showed up on eBay last month, an SC Johnson employee saw it. The company started looking into whether the chair had been stolen.

In order to stop the online auction, SC Johnson contacted police. Officers called eBay security and requested the auction be stopped because the chair was part of a theft investigation.

When the auction ended, four bids had already been placed. The chair was ultimately bought by the owner of a design company in California for $12,000.

However, the investigation stalled the transaction until recently.

Richard Wright, the owner of the Wright Auction House, said the sale of the chair will now go through. He said he never doubted it would.

"I knew it wasn’t stolen," Wright said. "The buyer knew it wasn’t stolen. A lot of this material has been on the market."

During their investigation, police also learned that the recent sale of the Wright chair is not the first time such pieces have been put up on the auction block. Investigators spoke with three different auction houses that had documentation of selling similar chairs.

A piece of history

"These chairs are a part of a very important culture here," said SC Johnson spokeswoman Kelly M. Semrau. "We want them to always be here for generations to come."

She said they are very grateful that the police department did such a thorough investigation. "It’s important to understand how this happened, so it can never happen again," she said.

The office furniture that H.F. Johnson Jr. asked Wright to design for the SC Johnson administration building in 1936, is a part of the company’s culture and history.

For many years, every employee in the building sat on the Wright chairs and the late Sam Johnson sat on one for 40 years, according to a newspaper story he was interviewed for in 1994.

The metal chairs have simple circular pads on the seat and back. The back support pivots up and down and casters on the four legs allow the chairs to roll across the office.

The 1994 story says the chairs were thought to be the most innovative office furniture in history until ergonomic designs surpassed them. Some still believe it’s the most beautiful office furniture ever made and art collectors covet the furniture.

Much of the furniture is still in use at SC Johnson.

During an audit of the company’s collection for the investigation, it was determined that four chairs out of nearly 500 were missing. Semrau said they are looking for the missing chairs, checking other storage areas and facilities.