Johnson Wax Headquarters
The Johnson Wax Headquarters is the corporate headquarters of the household goods company S. C. Johnson & Son in Racine, Wisconsin, United States. The original headquarters includes two buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright: the Administration Building, completed in April 1939, and the Research Tower, completed in November 1950. The headquarters also includes the Golden Rondelle Theater, relocated from the 1964 New York World's Fair, in addition to Fortaleza Hall and the Commons, a memorial to Samuel Curtis Johnson Jr. Both of the original buildings were widely discussed on their completion, and they have been depicted in several exhibits and media works. In addition, the original headquarters received the American Institute of Architects' Twenty-five Year Award and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
S. C. Johnson's chief executive, Herbert Fisk "Hibbert" Johnson Jr., hired Wright to design the Administration Building in 1936 after rejecting an earlier plan by J. Mandor Matson. Construction began that September, though work progressed slowly due to Wright's attention to detail and use of novel construction methods. The Administration Building was well-received upon its opening, undergoing minor modifications over the years. S. C. Johnson rehired Wright in 1945 to design the Research Tower, construction of which began in late 1947. After the Research Tower opened, S. C. Johnson used the structure for research and development. The Golden Rondelle Theater opened in 1967 as a visitor center for the headquarters. The Research Tower was closed in 1982 due to safety concerns. The Fortaleza Hall was finished in 2010, and the Research Tower partially opened for tours in 2014.
The Johnson Administration Building is designed in a variation of the streamlined Art Moderne style, with a curved brick facade and Pyrex glass-tube windows. The Administration Building's primary interior space is a great workroom with concrete shell columns topped by large "calyxes". The Administration Building also includes offices on a mezzanine and penthouse, in addition to an overpass connecting with a carport; these spaces contain furniture designed by Wright. The Research Tower, a 15-story structure with a brick facade and Pyrex-tube windows, is next to the Administration Building and is surrounded by a courtyard. The tower has alternating square floors and circular mezzanines, cantilevered outward from the structural core.
Site
The Johnson Wax Headquarters is located at 1525 Howe Street in Racine, Wisconsin, United States. The original headquarters comprises two structures, the Administration Building and Research Tower. These occupy a city block bounded by 16th Street to the south, Howe Street to the west, 15th Street to the north, and Franklin Street to the east. The Administration Building occupies a square site measuring on each side. The Research Tower is immediately to the north of the Administration Building, connected to it by a footbridge. The two original buildings are among five that the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed around Racine, the others being Wingspread, the Keland House, and the Hardy House.Related structures
Just north of the original Johnson Wax Headquarters campus is the Golden Rondelle Theater, near the intersection of 14th and Franklin streets. Designed by Lippincott & Margulies as a 1964 New York World's Fair pavilion, the theater has a saucer-shaped, gold-colored roof supported by six concrete columns. The Golden Rondelle Theater was moved to the Johnson Wax Headquarters after the fair closed. The modern theater has 308 seats and functions as a visitor center for the Johnson Wax Headquarters. Flanking the theater are two brick structures with glass-tube windows, designed by Taliesin Associated Architects; one is a lobby and display area, while the other structure is an exit.Immediately to the east of the Golden Rondelle Theater, and northeast of the original headquarters, is Fortaleza Hall, which opened in 2010 and was designed by Foster + Partners. The structure was built as a memorial to Samuel Curtis Johnson Jr. the president of the household goods company S. C. Johnson. Its name refers to Samuel Johnson's 1998 trip to Fortaleza, Brazil, which replicated a journey that his father Herbert Fisk "Hibbert" Johnson Jr. had made in 1935. Fortaleza Hall consists of a spherical atrium with a disc-shaped roof. The facade is made of 85 glass panels measuring across. Inside is a replica of the Sikorsky S-38 plane that Hibbert had flown, a cafeteria, a waterfall, a precast concrete wall with forest motifs, a green wall, and a reading room. There is also a gift shop. Next to it is Waxbird Commons, an office building that opened in 2021; named after S. C. Johnson's Waxbird airplane, it includes green energy features such as a solar roof and geothermal heating.
The campus also includes a plastic globe, the first version of which was built in 1954. The globe contained plastic markers denoting the locations of S. C. Johnson's offices and distributors around the world. According to the Racine Journal Times, the globe was the largest of its kind in the world when it was built, with a circumference of. The globe, designed by Rand McNally and built by the Steiner Plastics Company, was tilted at a 23.5-degree angle and is illuminated by neon tubes. The outer portion of the globe was supported by a steel frame measuring across. The current globe, installed in 1986, is similar in design to the original globe, rotating once every 24 minutes.
Development
S. C. Johnson & Son was founded in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1886 and expanded rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1936, some of the company's executives worked in a wooden house and a series of annexes next to the company's existing factory and warehouse. Hibbert Johnson initially wanted to expand the existing buildings before deciding on an entirely new campus. Samuel Johnson later reflected that his father "was tired of us being seen as a little old family enterprise in a little town in the Midwest".Original building
Design
Before starting his new building, Hibbert visited The Hershey Company's headquarters in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for inspiration. At the time, Hershey had just completed an air-conditioned office building, and S. C. Johnson's existing building lacked air conditioning, forcing the factory to close whenever temperatures exceeded. Upon his return to Racine, Hibbert hired J. Mandor Matson to design an office building near S. C. Johnson's existing headquarters. S. C. Johnson bought land immediately to the east of its existing headquarters and razed the houses there. Matson's first proposal from 1935 called for a T-shaped building, with the stem of the T running south toward 16th Street. The plans called for a Beaux-Arts structure with six niches depicting the history of S. C. Johnson's wax products. The initial drawings had few windows, if at all, and a revised blueprint from 1936 included windows. Hibbert was unimpressed with the plans, as was S. C. Johnson's general manager Jack Ramsey, who said Matson's plan "isn't good enough, it's just another building". Ramsey and S. C. Johnson's advertising manager, William Connolly, were also unable to suggest suitable revisions.Hibbert and Ramsey decided to expand their search for an architect. Hibbert gave Matson's drawings to his brother-in-law Jack Louis, an executive at the public-relations firm that handled advertisements for S. C. Johnson. Louis's colleagues Melvin Brorby and E. Willis Jones, who also disliked the design, recommended another architect, who in turn recommended that Hibbert and Ramsey reach out to Frank Lloyd Wright. Jones visited Wright's Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin, twice in July 1936 to discuss the proposed building, whereupon Wright characterized Matson's design as a crematorium. That month, Hibbert went to Taliesin to talk with the architect. Despite their personal disagreements, Hibbert asked Wright to design a headquarters for S. C. Johnson & Son in Racine, The architect offered to design a building costing $200,000, and he charged a commission equivalent to 10% of the construction cost.
Wright promised that "the Johnson Administration Building is not going to be what you expect", and he sought to design a structure that would stimulate workers, rather than being merely satisfying. Wright replaced Matson as the architect in late July 1936, less than a month before construction was supposed to begin; it was the first major commission given to Wright's Taliesin Fellowship. Hibbert's daughter Karen reported being elated that her father had decided to hire Wright. Shortly afterward, Wright visited the site that S. C. Johnson had acquired in Racine. At the time, the site had a series of wood-frame houses, a few small stores, and a cinema. The site of the new headquarters had been cleared by late August 1936. Wright's plans for the Johnson Administration Building were based on his earlier, unbuilt design for the Capital Journal offices in Salem, Oregon, which included a series of mushroom–shaped columns and translucent walls.
Wright tried to convince the company to relocate to the Racine suburbs, as he wanted to incorporate his proposals for Broadacre City into the S. C. Johnson complex. Ramsey and Connolly were vehemently against the idea, but Wright continued to promote it until his wife Olgivanna warned that S. C. Johnson might fire him, too. Instead, Wright's team drew up plans at Taliesin for an Administration Building in Racine. Two of Wright's apprentices, John Howe and William Wesley Peters, recalled that Wright rushed to draw his ideas but that he also focused on perfecting the building's geometry, particularly the grids of columns. Wright allocated space to each of S. C. Johnson's departments based on what each department needed. On August 9, 1936, ten days after he was hired, Wright went to Racine to show the plans to Hibbert and other S. C. Johnson officials. Hibbert requested two changes to the plans, although he retained Wright's draft plan for the most part. By the end of the month, Wright asked three apprentices to create a model of the building.