On a recent August Saturday morning I met up with a group of architecture aficionados - by design, so to speak. We’d gathered in the lobby of the Golden Rondelle, a plush futuristic auditorium, in order to see a pair of marvels from the inside. Built to show an inspiring avant-garde documentary film called To Be Alive at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the Rondelle is Racine’s counterpart to Gaudì’s Sagrada Famìlia basilica in Barcelona, a weird flying saucer of a theater.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Racine is a city of 80,000 located on Lake Michigan, about 30 miles south of downtown Milwaukee. Hundreds of extra tourists have been coming to the Belle City this summer to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces for Johnson Wax, a globally successful company now called SC Johnson (known to most locals as J-Wax). Among my group of 23 enthusiasts, the excitement was palpable. We were not disappointed.
Herbert Fisk “H.F.” Johnson commissioned the renowned Wright, a Wisconsin native, to design two commercial structures. Seventy-five years into its working life, the details in the Administration Building (1939) - such as the polished kasota limestone stairs & the curving glass-and-brass-enclosed elevator - are exquisite.
Wright’s first work for Johnson, the Administration Building was among the first air-conditioned offices in the United States. A polymath perfectionist, Wright also designed the terra cotta-hued desks (outfitted with swing-out drawers & waste-baskets off the floor for easier cleaning), the matching steel-frame padded tilt-backed chairs & the geometric stained-light fixtures.
SC Johnson is a privately held corporation, advertised with pride as a “family company.” The heirs who now own it form a small yet powerful clan of billionaires. Their companies - which include the Johnson Financial Group (banking & insurance) & Johnson Outdoors (kayaks & other outdoor recreational products) - have subsidiaries in scores of foreign countries, from the United Kingdom (since 1914) to Japan, Australia & South America.
The pair of Wright buildings, examples of the elegant “organic” modernist style favored by the self-confident master, are located between Fourteenth & Sixteenth Streets, rising above the otherwise ordinary neighborhood a mile from the shore of Lake Michigan. They are dazzling inside: the Great Workroom is awash in natural light, thanks in part to the forest of dendriform columns supporting the broad translucent ceiling.
With their streamlined edges & smooth Cherokee-red brickwork, these two Johnson Wax buildings are unobtrusive, pleasing to the eye. Wright reportedly wanted to erect them in a more natural setting, as part of a utopian workers’ village. He only agreed to the current location when H.F. Johnson, the client who was paying the bills at a time when Wright was nearly broke, insisted that they be situated alongside the company’s ugly cluster of structures just east of Racine Street (state Highway 32).
The 150-foot tall Research Tower (1950), a cantilevered beauty, is shaped like a giant electric solenoid. Yet it still manages to seem warm & mysterious: lit from within on summer nights, its curved bands of glass walls - comprising seventeen miles of Pyrex tubing - make it glow like a lightning bug in the humid air. The tower was evacuated in 1982, partially due to handicap inaccessibility.
With a single narrow winding staircase & tiny toilets within curved concrete walls, the building’s interior access feels confining. This may explain why the company only opened it to public tours beginning in May 2014. The research & development department workers who toiled in it had reportedly long complained about the heat & draftiness of Frank Lloyd Wright’s impractical take on an industrial high-rise for a modest Midwestern city.
Among the (mostly) men & (few) women who developed new products in Wright’s bright tower was Allen “A.C.” Buhler, an in-house lawyer & marketing manager who laid claim to naming Off! According to the late Buhler’s son Tom, one of a trio of brothers who now run Butter Buds, a dairy-products firm based on J-Wax research, his father came up with the insect repellent’s catchy name in a brainstorming session with a Navy aviation vet.
“We could call it Wave Off - a term used on aircraft carriers,” the ex-sailor suggested. “Why not just Off?” Buhler countered. It was one of many eureka marketing moments at Johnson Wax as they expanded their product line in the 1950s & ’60s.
This tour was especially welcome to Wright fans due to the addition of access to the Research Tower. The two floors we were permitted to inspect have been professionally curated with artifacts from Johnson’s mid-century heyday. Among the used microscopes & beakers, old J-Wax advertisements, company magazines & newsletters, and that red 45-rpm vinyl recording of “The Wassail Song” by the Johnson Wax Men’s Glee Club (1951), I traveled happily backwards in time. The future looked pretty bright in Harry Truman’s America - apart, of course, from the atom bombs & the Korean War.
“When the announcement went out about this tour, our office email went crazy,” said Sheri, a young architect from Chicago who was joined on the tour by friends & colleagues from the Windy City. She acknowledged the continuing influence on contemporary architects of the portfolio - albeit not necessarily the esoteric theories - of the eccentric Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).
Wingspread (1939), the Johnson family’s pinwheel-shaped mansion on Four Mile Road in Wind Point, is another Wright marvel. It lies just north of Racine in the type of bucolic surroundings that inspired the nature-worshipping Wright. Since 1961 it has served as the home of the Johnson Foundation, which hosts public-policy conferences & allocates grants to non-profit causes that Sam & his widow Imogene (“Gene,” an alumna of Cornell University) embraced, such as environmental sustainability. While the Johnson family’s philanthropy is admirable, it also has tax advantages.
Even during the Great Depression Johnson Wax was a mainstay employer in Racine, boosting its national profile in part by sponsoring the popular NBC radio sitcom Fibber McGee & Molly from 1935 until 1950. The company certainly hasn’t lost its ambition: SC Johnson & JohnsonDiversey keep buying smaller companies, adding to their large roster of janitorial & personal-care products, including Windex glass cleaner, Edge shaving gel, Glade air fragrances & Raid (tagline: Kills bugs dead®).
In the late-summer sunshine the curving Finnish-glass-walled Fortaleza Hall, designed by Foster + Partners, gleams like a pricey monument to an adventurous spirit & a robust ego. A red-&-black replica 1930’s Sikorsky seaplane hangs from the high ceiling. Named after the Brazilian town where H.F. flew from Racine in 1936, on a mission to study the carnaúba palm tree in order to obtain a reliable source of wax, Fortaleza Hall is a glitzy companion to the understated Wright buildings. It contains a cafeteria, a small museum & a gift shop called the Lily Pond.
Imagine having enough resources to (1) commission a Wright-designed tower; (2) close it as a workplace after 32 years; and (3) then spend a small fortune on annual maintenance for a purely aesthetic object. Fellow tour guest Prof. Richard Keehn, a retired UW-Parkside economic historian, explained how it was feasible: the Johnsons are the ninth wealthiest family in the entire USA, he told me. The family is now comprised of Gene & her three children: Fisk Johnson, S.C. “Curt” Johnson III & Helen Leipold, who oversee the J-Wax empire.
Indeed, at times the tour seems hagiographic in its enthusiasm for the business savvy of the Johnson patriarchs. It’s no surprise, since Big Money attracts sycophants like rockstars attract groupies. Samuel Curtis Johnson, Sr., a former bookseller & failed railroad investor, founded the corporation in 1886. It started modestly as a parquet flooring factory that he’d bought from a hardware store. Johnson’s entrepreneurial breakthrough was the decision to sell his proprietary floor-wax to anyone who wanted it.
Samuel Curtis “Sam” Johnson, Jr. (1928-2004) took the company to new heights of innovation & profitability after World War II. Among the many family photos & mementos on display in Fortaleza Hall, you can see Sam Johnson’s US Air Force-issued Civil Air Patrol pilot’s license from the Cold War days. A decade after his death, Sam remains a local hero. In his final years he publicly battled WE Energies over the health hazards of burning coal at its power plants.
For generations, the Johnson family’s philanthropy & support for the arts have given Racine some much-needed sophistication & hope. For example, the annual Animal Crackers live-jazz performance series brings world-class musicians to the Racine Zoological Garden’s natural amphitheater by Lake Michigan. The city that boasts J-Wax’s world headquarters could use a few more employers like SC Johnson & its affiliates.
Nevertheless, I wonder how much SC Johnson’s employee profit-sharing & other benefits have done to help Racine as a whole. Like their publicly owned competitors, J-Wax employs an army of temporary & contract workers in order to reduce costs. Also the home of global tractor manufacturer J.I. Case (now the Italian-owned CNH - Case New Holland), the Belle City has the highest unemployment rate (officially around 10%) - as well as one of the highest crime rates - in Wisconsin.
The impressive Johnson legacy has been tarnished in recent years by court cases. In August 2014, SC Johnson & JohnsonDiversey (a spinoff company that was sold to Sealed Air a decade ago) settled a federal class action by retirees (http://journaltimes.com/news/local/sc-johnson-settles-retirement-plan-lawsuit/article_febb5975-0e99-58da-9ec8-853d32e3b678.html). More shockingly, 59-year-old Curt Johnson pleaded guilty in June 2014 to misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault of a minor (http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/johnson07-b99285933z1-262145461.html). Fortunately, even in this plutocratic era legal rules & moral constraints still apply to billionaires & big corporations.
A quotation from Sam Johnson adorns one of Fortaleza Hall’s shining lobby walls, as though it had come from the potent pen of Abe Lincoln. It does at least offer a provocative insight: “We should not worry about whether we have lived up to the expectations of our fathers, but whether we, as fathers, have lived up to the expectations of our children.”
Amen, Sam.
© 2014 by J.C. Mrázek
Links:
(1) SC Johnson architecture tour information: http://www.scjohnson.com/en/company/visiting.aspx
(2) Photos of Wingspread by Racine-based photographers Brad Jaeck & Carol Hansen:
