Wingspread
Wingspread is a conference center and house in Wind Point, Wisconsin, United States. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it was built between 1938 and 1939 for the businessman Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., the president of S.C. Johnson. With a floor area of, it is one of the largest residences designed by Wright, who also called the building the last of his Prairie style houses. Since 1960, the property has been a conference center operated by the Johnson Foundation. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a National Historic Landmark.
Wingspread stands near the center of the Wind Point peninsula on Lake Michigan north of the city of Racine. The facade is largely made of brick, with stucco and sandstone courses and red roof tiles. It consists of a central hub, from which four wings radiate. The living room at the center is a domed structure, with clerestory windows on the sides, a central elliptical chimney, and a viewing platform at the top. There are separate wings for the master bedrooms, children's rooms, service rooms, and guest bedrooms. All of the wings are one story tall, except for the master bedroom wing, which has a mezzanine level.
The house was built between 1938 and 1939. The Johnson family donated the property to the Johnson Foundation in 1960 as an international educational conference facility, which is also open to the public for tours. The conference center was dedicated on June 24, 1961, several months after hosting its first conferences in November 1960. It was hosting 100 conferences a year by the 1980s, with meetings focusing on education, family affairs, society, and international relations. The roof was repaired in the 1990s following deterioration.
Site
Wingspread, built for the family of businessman Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., is at 33 East Four Mile Road in Wind Point, Wisconsin, United States. It occupies a peninsula extending into Lake Michigan north of the city of Racine. The grounds cover. The house is surrounded by green space and a ravine, overlooking a series of ponds. Some parts of the estate are lawns that are mowed frequently, while other sections are left as wild marshland to attract migratory birds. When the house was built, a stream separated the site from the surrounding farms. There are also numerous ponds and a stream draining into Lake Michigan.The estate includes several pieces of sculpture by artists such as David Aronson, Robert Cook, Jose de Creeft, Emilio Greco, Milton Hebald, Berto Lardera, Carl Milles, and Abbott Pattison. Hebald's sculpture Amanti is a depiction of two young lovers. Within the garden is Primavera by Greco, which consists of a bronze figure of a woman surrounded by three limbs. Quartet by Cook, located on the house's cypress terrace, is a larger bronze sculpture with four abstract figures. Other works include Lardera's Amour des Etoiles and Pattison's Homage to Van Gogh.
The grounds also include a building called The House, an office building, and structures for storage and maintenance. In 2002, a 40-room hotel called the Guest House was built for people attending conferences at Wingspread. The Guest House, containing about over two stories, was designed to complement the architecture of Wingspread., the Guest House is operated by Benchmark Resorts & Hotels.
Architecture
The house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who called the building the last of his Prairie style houses. According to the writer Brendan Gill, this comment was likely facetious, since the architect was known to compliment his own work and then downplay the remark "in seeming modesty". The house's first story is mostly located near the ground, except for the eastern portion, where Wingspread overlooks a pond. Wright said the building enhanced the appearance of the otherwise "undistinguished" site. The house is one of five buildings that Wright designed around Racine, the others being the Johnson Wax Headquarters' Administration Building and Research Tower, the Keland House, and the Hardy House.Exterior
The house's shape prompted Wright to nickname it Wingspread; as he wrote, "We called the house 'Wingspread' because spread its wings it did." The floor plan consists of a central octagonal hub, the living room, from which four wings radiate in a pinwheel configuration. The radiating wings contrasted with the layout of the Johnson Wax Headquarters, in which the interiors were arranged tightly around a core. Wingspread's wings are perpendicular to each other, extending off the corners of the living room. Each wing has a similar length, and, except for the double-story master-bedroom wing to the north, are all one story high. To allow each wing to receive sunlight, the entire building is rotated slightly from due north.The facade is largely built of Cherokee red brick, which was made in Illinois. The brick is slightly concave, creating small shadows throughout the day. The facade also includes horizontal courses made of stucco and sandstone, and the roof tiles are painted red. There are siding boards and vine-covered pergolas made of cypress. Red cypress from Tidewater was used because it was more resistant to rotting than other types of wood. Wingspread has about 500 windows on its facade, which were positioned to maximize views of the surrounding landscape. Among these are windows on the living room's exterior, interspersed with alternating narrow and wide brick piers. There are three levels of clerestory windows on the roof, which have a total of 190 window panes. These clerestory windows divide the roof into three tiers. The rest of the facade has windows with thick wooden frames. Since a restoration in the 1990s, one-quarter of the roof beams are made of carbon fiber, a material that had not existed when Wright built the house. The entrance to the house is hidden, like in many of Wright's houses. It is also smaller than the primary living spaces inside, an example of the compression-and-release principle that Wright espoused. The house's chimney is elliptical and rises. The shape of the chimney differs from the chimney stacks in Wright's other houses, which tended to have angles. There is a "crow's nest", a glass observatory above the chimney, which was used by Johnson's children. In addition, there is a swimming pool next to the house, which has an outdoor fireplace. The pool measures across and have pink walls that give the appearance of disappearing into the pool. Wright, who considered swimming pools to be "outdoor bathtubs", reluctantly included the pool at the Johnson family's request.
Interior
The house has a floor area of, making it among Wright's largest house designs. The interiors are decorated with Cherokee-red brick and pink sandstone; the mortar between the brick is deeply rusticated. The plaster walls have a wax finish, which was then colored rust-rose. Parts of the ceiling are also made of plaster with a mustard-yellow wax finish. The house includes furniture from Gillen Woodworking, which also manufactured furniture for Fallingwater, the residence of Edgar J. Kaufmann in Pennsylvania. The woodwork in the house is made of American oak and is oriented horizontally to emphasize the architectural details. There are notches carved into the wood. In addition, there are sandstone and stucco walls within each wing.The four wings originally had separate functions, creating distinct zones. The zoned plan had been Johnson's idea; it contrasted with Wright's earlier Prairie-style houses, in which separate rooms appeared to blend with one another. One wing each was devoted to the master bedroom, service rooms, guest rooms, and children's rooms. As designed, the entrance doorway is only about high, and there are seven fireplaces. Wright also designed furniture for the house, such as lamps, some of which were built in. One of the house's pieces of furniture, a barrel-shaped chair, was sold for $33,000 in 1988. In addition, replicas of the house's rhombus-shaped cocktail tables have been sold over the years.
Living room
At the center of the building is the living room, sometimes known as the Great Hall. The living room may have been inspired in part by the Palm Room in Chicago's Drake Hotel, with which Johnson had been impressed. The living area measures. It has a concrete floor and originally had a radiant heating system embedded underneath the floor slab. The floor is covered with Cherokee red tiles measuring. Glass doors on all four sides of the living room lead to outdoor terraces. When the house was built, the living room had a phonograph system produced by the Seeburg Corporation, which could accommodate 200 records. The living room also has several built-in couches, as well as octagonal pieces of furniture that are not built in. There are some barrel-shaped chairs, similar to those built for the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York.The spaces surround the chimney, with five fireplaces extending off it on two levels, a layout partially derived from the design for the unbuilt Nakoma Country Club in Madison, Wisconsin. There are fireplaces on all four sides of the chimney at ground level, while the fifth fireplace is on the mezzanine level. The fireplace mantels are made of Kasota stone from Minnesota, and Wright also added a hanging kettle next to the fireplace, in case visitors wanted hot beverages. Wright referred to the living room as a "wigwam", given how the chimney's rooftop opening resembled the smokestack of a Native American wigwam. Next to the chimney is a spiral staircase, which was not included in the original plan and leads to the building's glass observatory. Within the observatory, Johnson's children could watch their father work, or they could observe the surrounding landscape and Lake Michigan.
Low partitions divide the living room into multiple zones, which surround the chimney. The house's original dining area, within a portion of the living room, adjoins the servants' wing; it has a movable table that can be slid back into the kitchen, although this feature was impractical because it required the servants and occupants to coordinate with each other. The mezzanine extends off one side of the living room, leading to the master bedroom wing; it is clad with sculpted oak. In addition, Wright included several smaller spaces, which he described as "different holes to crawl into". For example, underneath the mezzanine is a sitting room with a low ceiling, which includes an alcove with a library. Also under the mezzanine is a set of doors leading to a terrace where the house's occupants could plug hot plates into the wall. The ceiling of the living room is domed and is high.