Historic Frank Lloyd Wright Tower In Racine To Open For Public Tours

A corporate research building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright opens to the public Friday at the S.C. Johnson headquarters in Racine: the Research Tower. The unique building shows one of Wright’s central design goals: to create an inspiring and practical place to work.

In 1936, a leader of the S.C. Johnson company, H.F. Johnson Jr., visited Frank Lloyd Wright in Spring Green in hopes of getting Wright to design an administration building for the company in Racine. To hear Johnson company Global Community Affairs Director Greg Anderegg tell it, the two titans did not exactly see eye to eye.

“Mr Johnson,” Anderegg said, “came back and wrote in his journal: ‘He insulted me, I insulted him. He did a pretty good job of it.’”

Johnson did, however, respect Wright, and the two men also bonded over a model of automobile they both drove.

Eventually Wright designed the Johnson administration building, with its famous “lily pad” columns. There’s also the well-known home for the Johnson family, “Wingspread,” which is now a conference center. Both have long been open to the public, but a third building, constructed on the Johnson company grounds in 1950, the Research Tower, is about to make its public debut.

Anderegg led a visitor up a narrow stairway to one of the two floors in the 15-story Research Tower that have been renovated for people to see. It looks like a lab from the 1950s, complete with venting hood.

“It would have had gas coming into it, and power and water, and then air evacuated out to be filtered before it was released,” Anderegg said, “so you’ll find these on every floor, these venting hoods.”

Sean Malone of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation says it’s extraordinary that S.C. Johnson is opening the Research Tower for free public tours. Malone says the site shows off a side of Wright that one don’t see in his homes, places of worship or other types of buildings.

“This is the only research tower, yet there were other significant office buildings,” Malone said. “The Larkin office building in Buffalo was very significant but from almost half a century earlier, and so this is the opportunity for people to see that.”

Malone noted that the Larkin building has since been torn down.

About thirty years ago, S.C. Johnson moved its research to a nearby building. At Wright’s tower, the firm now displays some of its well-known pesticides, cleaners and other chemical products that were developed there.

Though these days some people may be trying to cut back on using household chemicals, Greg Anderegg says it’s justified to show off where some items were created.

“I don’t think we make any bones about the fact that we make chemicals,” Anderegg said, “but we try to be a environmentally-conscious, sustainability-conscious company.”

The Research Tower has another meaning to Brady Roberts of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Roberts says the numerous windows of the tower help show how environment influences work.

“You can’t help understand that a beautiful workplace with connection to nature is going to be a more pleasant place to spend time,” Roberts said. “The opposite would be if you’re in a workplace that’s dark and dingy and unpleasant: you’re going to not be inspired.”

Roberts is curator of a Wright exhibit called The Two Taliesins, also opening tomorrow on the S.C. Johnson property. According to the company website, the tour slots for the Research Tower seem full for the first few weeks.