| Additional Information: | 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, State Historic Preservation Office.
HABS WI-284. NHL.
[B] After hard-earned inverstments failed both in railroading and bookselling, Samuel Curtis Johnson came to Racine from Kenosha in 1882, when he was nearly 49, to start a new career selling "wooden carpets"- parquet flooring that was then being made by the Racine Hardware Manufacturing Company. Only four years later he bought the flooring business from the hardware firm and established his own company. In repsonse to customer requests, Johnson eventually developed a paste wax to protect his decorative floors and sent a sample of it along with each "carpet" that he sold. By the turn of the century, sales of the wax- along with the other wood finishes and fillers he had begun to manufacture as a sideline- surpassed the sales of his floooring. Johnson's products were then being sold throughout the Midwest. They would later be sold across the nation and around the world. Johnson joined Case and Horlick as one of the three great names in the industrial history of Racine.
Johnson built the two most famous and architecturally important buildings in the city- its administration building and research tower. These masterpieces are the products of the architectural genius for Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) and they have been designated by the American Institute of Architects as two of only seventeen American buildings designed by him that ought to be retained at all cost as examples of Wright's architectural contribution to American culture. The are also the only buildings in Racine that have been declared National Historic Landmarks by the National Park Service.
The Research Tower was designed in 1944, but wartime restrictions and postwar controls delayed construction, and the tower was not completed until November of 1950.
[C] Wright’s Johnson Wax Building ranks as one of America’s architectural masterworks. Its curving lines embrace the industrial aesthetic of the Streamline Moderne style, but whereas most Moderne buildings relied on a few curved corners and metal ornaments to achieve an aerodynamic look, everything from Wright’s small elements (streamlined furniture, Pyrex tubing) to his large ones (sinuous exterior lines, curving interior walls, flowing spaces) demonstrates an extraordinary grace and consistency of thought.
Although Wright was famous for bringing the outdoors into his buildings, here, facing a drab industrial setting, he turned the building inward, away from its surroundings. In fact, he made outside views impossible by eliminating conventional windows and sealing work spaces behind bands of brick and translucent (not transparent) Pyrex-tube glazing. These walls reflect Wright’s penchant for experimenting with new materials. The brick forms two layers, sandwiching cork insulation. Less successful was Wright’s insistence on using the Pyrex tubes, even though no caulk had been developed to prevent leaks. Eventually, the company had to cover some tubes with protective glass and replace others with sealable acrylic.
The famous focus of the building is a huge, airy Great Workroom for clerks and typists. Tapered concrete columns sprout from mere nine-inch-diameter bases, rising three stories, then suddenly flaring to form wide concrete discs, like lily pads, which support the roof. Between them, Pyrex-tube skylights admit generous natural light (and rain too, until their replacement with acrylic). An office mezzanine surrounds and overlooks the workroom floor where clerks were subject to supervisors’ observations. The clerks sat at integrated chair-desks designed by Wright, who repeated the building’s themes of straight and curved lines in their design. Another dramatic space--a long, narrow walkway with Pyrex-tube barrel vaulting--connects the mezzanine to an annex that once housed the firm’s legal and marketing departments.
Stunning, too, is the 153-foot Research Tower, begun in 1947 and completed in 1950. It soars over a courtyard, surrounded by contemporaneous one-story office and carport wings. The tower’s 13-foot-diameter concrete core starts 54 feet below grade and rises centrally through the structure, emerging at the top. Wright called this core the “tap root,” since its interior, hollow above ground, carried wiring, pipes, an elevator, and other utilities, just as a tap root nourishes and waters a tree. But the tap root is also a trunk supporting the tower’s entire weight. Thirteen floors--square levels alternating with circular open mezzanines--cantilever from the tap root. The tower exterior is wrapped with non-load-bearing curtain walls of brick bands alternating with Pyrex tubing. |
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| Bibliographic References: | WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL 4/10/1994, P. 3C.
Milwaukee Daily Reporter 2/20/1997.
"A Tower of Glass," Corning Glass Works Gaffer, Melt 8, Run 10, November 1950.
[B] Southside Historic District Walking Tour Guide. Racine Landmarks Preservation Commission, May 1993.
[C] Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript.
Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin Heritage Tour Guide
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).
Renewing Our Roots: A Guide To Racine, Wisconsin, Central City, Southside, Preservation-Racine, 1977. |
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