33 E FOUR MILE RD

33 E FOUR MILE RD

Racine

Wind Point

1937

1975

house

Prairie School

Brick

Frank Lloyd Wright

No

A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Historic Preservation.

The largest residence Wright ever built and, according to Wright himself, the best-constructed, this sprawling house was created for Johnson Wax president Herbert Johnson and his family. Wright christened the house "Wingspread," because its four long wings radiate, pinwheel-like, from an octagonal hub. Originally each wing was zoned for a distinct function: master bedroom suite in one wing, children's rooms and play area in a second, kitchen and servants’ quarters in the third, guest rooms and carports in the fourth, and living and dining spaces at the hub. The wings also define four landscape zones: a swimming pool, a garden and grape arbor, a driveway, and a terraced lawn tumbling down to a pond and a meandering ravine beyond.

In all his houses, Wright took design cues from the natural landscape. Here, he emphasized low, horizontal lines to harmonize the house with its gently rolling site near Lake Michigan. He faced the walls with smooth red brick near the ground and ran lapped cypress siding and long window ribbons higher up. He stretched the horizontal even further by surrounding the house with low garden walls and--most dramatically--by cantilevering a sitting room from the end of the two-level master bedroom wing. As these traits are hallmarks of the Prairie School, Wright often called Wingspread his last Prairie style house.

At the hub, where the wings converge, curving lines and elliptical shapes hint at one of the most spectacular indoor spaces Wright ever created. In an enormous, thirty-foot-high central living area that Wright called the wigwam, light pours in through a three-tiered clerestory, which wraps around the ceiling, and through soaring glass doors on every side. A giant elliptical chimney, with four hearths around its base and a fifth on a mezzanine level, rises through the wigwam center. More zoned spaces--a foyer, dining area, great hall, library, and music alcove--flow around the chimney base, separated by built-in furniture and shifts in floor and ceiling level. Overhead, stairs spiral from the mezzanine to a glass-enclosed tower, offering vistas of the landscape and the distant lake.

Herbert Johnson donated Wingspread to the Johnson Foundation in 1959, and it became a conference center. The rooms in the wings were remodeled and the carport walled in, but the stunning wigwam remains virtually unchanged, a testament to Wright’s mastery of form and space.

A Historic Structure Report of this building can be found in Room 312 at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Racine Landmarks brochure, 2003. Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. Racine Landmarks Preservation Commission, Racine Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie School Architecture Tour Guide, 1994. Perrin, Richard W. E., Historic Wisconsin Architecture, First Revised Edition (Milwaukee, 1976).

Johnson, Herbert F., House

Jan 08, 1975

Jan 01, 1989

Jun 29, 1989