Racine’s SC Johnson company legacy: Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces & more

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:  

http://www.photographicdesignltd.com/artist.asp?ArtistID=7646&AKey=2C782FMS

Racine vs. Kenosha: rival cities on different paths in the 21st-century

This month’s ballyhooed announcement of the proposed $65 million Machinery Row project in Racine left me sceptical.  The Iowa developers’ plan, the latest of several big ideas for the Belle City’s redevelopment (most of which have failed due to lack of financing) might someday bring shops & loft dwellings to a pair of decrepit asbestos-coated buildings along the Root River downtown.  If it were planned for Kenosha, I’d be more hopeful about this optimistic notion coming to fruition.  

For much of the last century, Racine & Kenosha were similar industrial & trading ports of modest size.  They also had a relative lack of sophistication in common, despite being located within easy train or driving distance of two metropolises, Milwaukee to the north & Chicago to the south.  As a person raised in Racine I hate to admit it, but over the past 20 years Kenosha has outgrown its shrinking neighbor to the north.  Lest it decline into a city housing a majority of poor people amidst privileged pockets of wealth, Racine can’t afford to fall farther behind.

In transforming itself from a primarily factory-based (hence dangerously polluting) economy into a bantamweight cultural dynamo, Kenosha has become an attractive place to live & to visit.  These sibling cities on Lake Michigan have benefitted from -  and sometimes been hindered by - the gravitational pull of their metropolitan neighbors.  As they struggle to establish a new identity in the early 21st century, Racine & Kenosha are diverging - one for the better, the other for the worse.

Racine regularly has the state’s highest unemployment rate (now around 12 percent) as well as crime & poverty rates that rival Milwaukee’s sad “misery index.”  A 2012 United Way Indicator Report stated that Racine has a 24.6 percent poverty rate, above the national average.  As part of its Industrial Cities Initiative, a 2012 study of ten Midwestern cities by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (FRBC) assessed why some manufacturing hubs are thriving while others struggle.  The report named Racine a “fading city” while praising Green Bay as a resurgent industrial center.   Green Bay, by the way, replaced Racine as the third most populous city in Wisconsin several years ago, while Kenosha is now fourth.  

In reaction, Racine Mayor John Dickert claimed that the FRBC study didn’t entirely capture all the nuances of the city’s efforts to attract manufacturers.  As a matter of fact, the Belle City is having trouble retaining even some of its well-established companies.  For example, InSinkErator, a waste-disposer manufacturer (founded in Racine in the 1920s) recently decided to expand production by leasing a 160,000-square-foot property in the Business Park of Kenosha rather than building in Racine County.

By contrast, Kenosha is clearly a city on the rise, a community that is successfully managing the difficult transition from an American Motors Corporation (later Daimler-Chrysler-Jeep) company town into one that has diversified its economic base & added several new reasons to relocate there.  The mostly friendly competition between these local rivals, located just 10 miles apart along the western shore of Lake Michigan, offers hope that neither will fall too far behind the other.

In terms of population increase, an indicator of a city’s attractiveness to migrants, Kenosha is home to about 100,150 people - up over 20,000 residents since 1980.  In that same 34-year period Racine’s population declined, from over 85,000 to just 78,303 residents.  Yet, with its beautiful sandy beaches & historic Wind Point lighthouse (1880), Racine beats Kenosha in lakeshore aesthetic appeal.  Even so, Kenosha’s commercial as well as residential property values have leaped ahead of Racine’s.  

This is partly due to Kenosha’s proximity to the Illinois border & Chicagoland’s wealthy north shore.  But credit should also be given to Kenosha’s more practical political leadership, which extended sewer & water service along Hwy. 50 all the way to I-94 decades ago (a feat Racine has yet to accomplish on either Hwy. 11 or Hwy. 20).   Many middle-class Illinoisans have recently moved to Kenosha in order to take advantage of the lower cost of living in Wisconsin.  This influx of migrants provides welcome tax revenue for Kenosha - far more than Racine has been able to capture so far.  Moreover, during the summer boating season, you’ll see more Illinois-tagged vehicles cruising downtown Kenosha than you will in Racine. 

In terms of cultural institutions, Kenosha has surpassed Racine.  The volunteer-driven Racine Theatre Guild’s bland mainstream productions are dull compared to the stage shows put on by either Carthage College or the University of Wisconsin - Parkside.  And Kenosha is miles ahead in quality museums.  Its Civil War Museum, Dinosaur Discovery Museum, Kenosha Public Museum, Kenosha History Center & Anderson Arts Center have well-defined educational missions as well as diverse collections.  The contemporary craft objects on display at the Racine Art Museum do draw visitors from far & wide, but the small collection of paintings, drawings, photographs & sculptures at its affiliated Wustum Museum are not very interesting.  Kenosha’s nicely curated historical museums put the low-budget, industry-focused Racine Heritage Museum to shame. 

The Belle City does have the 32-acre Racine Zoo, which opened in 1923 & only started charging admission in recent years.  Depending on your point of view, it’s either an impressive feature for such a small city (zoos help conserve endangered wildlife) or a sad mode of life for the creatures who reside within its walls (zoos are prisons for wild animals).  Personally, I’m not a fan of any cages, unless they contain rabid animals or human psychopaths.  But the zoo grounds do provide a great summertime live-music venue for the Animal Crackers jazz series.

Kenosha has a clear edge in libraries, with four branches of the Kenosha Public Library system - as well as the vast, publicly accessible collections at UW-Parkside.  Although it has just a single downtown branch, the Racine Public Library does offer a panoramic blufftop view of the lakeshore in its main reading room.

In niche enterprises like craft-beer brewing, Kenosha is well ahead with two downtown micro-breweries:  Public Craft Brewing Co. & Rustic Road Brewing Co., both established in 2012.  Racine has only the Reefpoint Brewhouse (at the Reefpoint Marina since 2013), which contracts with Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewing for production of its tasty proprietary beer recipes.  

Yet the news isn’t all bad for Racine.  My hometown leads Kenosha in one critical growth sector of the US economy:  the government incarceration industry, specifically state prisons.  In addition to suburban Sturtevant’s Racine Correctional Institution, there’s the inner-city Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility.  Kenosha probably doesn’t mind losing in that category.  Besides, Kenosha doesn’t need those state jobs as badly as Racine does.  

In other downtown amenities, the competition is closer.  Kenosha has a fleet of colorful vintage streetcars that follow a two-mile loop around downtown & back to the Metra train station that carries commuters & visitors to & from Chicago.  Racine has a more diverse choice of boutique shops & fine restaurants along Main Street & Sixth Street.

Kenosha, however, has more live-music venues (& usually better audiences) than Racine - although the Belle City’s club owners have been hosting more bands lately.  In yet another example of civic backwardness, Racine has no farmers’ market remotely comparable to Kenosha’s spectacular Saturday Harbor Market.  

In terms of sports franchises, at least, Racine remains the equal of Kenosha.  The Racine Raiders semi-pro football team has played at Horlick Field for decades, while the Kenosha Kingfish baseball club, a new addition to the Northwoods League, was launched this May.  On the other hand, Kenosha offers more choice facilities for free recreational sports.  These include a first-class velodrome (bicycle race track) & two outdoor municipal swimming pools.  UW-Parkside is deservedly proud of its wooded cross-country skiing trails, which double in warmer weather as a renowned competitive cross-country running course.

True, the capitalist-philanthropist Johnson family supports numerous projects that have made Racine a more pleasant place to live.  Their main companies, SC Johnson & Son (home-maintenance & personal-care products) & Johnson Financial (insurance & banking) still co-sponsor Animal Crackers, a live-concert series at the zoo featuring distinguished jazz & blues artists, among many other events.   

Furthermore, the trio of structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (who called Racine a “backwater”) for the late patriarch H.F. Johnson still draw architecture enthusiasts from around the globe.  The Wingspread modernist mansion (now home to the Johnson Foundation) in tony Wind Point, the Johnson Wax administration building & the adjacent research tower give Racine a few distinguished landmarks unmatched by any in Kenosha. 

But even the billionaire Johnsons, owners of the largest private corporation in Wisconsin, can only do so much to help Racine on the Lake  (as local boosters have re-branded the Belle City).  Without a more sustainable local economy, and given the cruel vagaries of globalization, the future of Racine does not inspire much confidence.  At least Kenosha is just a short drive away for us Racine residents.   

[© 2014 by J.C. Mrazek]