Wingspread — Doug & Travis Are Going Places!

Today is the first of two Frank Lloyd Wright days this week. FLW was from Wisconsin and had one of his two studios here near Madison (we’ll visit it on Friday). This morning we’re visiting the home of Herbert Fisk Johnson, the 3rd leader of the family owned SC Johnson company. Later this afternoon, we’ll see the SC Johnson headquarters. Both of these were designed by FLW in the late 1930s.

The house, Wingspread, is located just north of Racine. It’s the last, and one of the largest prairie school style homes (14,000 sq ft) that FLW designed.

Since 1858, The house is used as a conference center by the Johnson Foundation. It’s the location where a number of organizations were created at meetings, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Public Radio (NPR), and the International Court (housed inThe Hague).

As such, it ends up being quite different than most other FKW property tours we’ve been on. Our tour guide was Cathy, who we assume works primarily with the conference center. They only do house tours on days they don’t have conferences. Cathy does an introduction about Johnson, his relationship to FLW, and construction of the house. She shows us around the main living space, then shows us a video about the house which includes interviews with San and Karen Johnson (Herberts kids, who lived in the house as children). After that, we’re on our own to explore, with instructions not to open doors or sit on any furniture outside the living room.

Ut’s a nice house, and seems to be one of the most livable of the FLW houses we’ve toured.

The interviews with the kids (who were probably in their late 60s for the video) was nice in that they told several amusing anecdotes about living in the house:

As many Wright houses do, the roof leaked. At one dinner party with the Governor and a State Senator, the roof starting dripping on Herbert’s head. He’s furious and calls Wright from the dinner table to tell him that while he loves the house, he can’t have water dripping on his head during dinner. Wright suggested that Herbert should move his chair.
The fireplace on the second floor den was designed to use tall Aspen logs (8 ft or so) arranges vertically (there is a picture below). The first time they lit that fireplace, it worked fine for a while. Eventually, the bottom of the logs burned away and one of them fell into the room. The family had to drag it out and throw it off the balcony. That fireplace has never been lit again.
Wright designed the dining table with mostly hidden wheels so that when a course was done, Herbert could push a button and the wall would open and the table would roll into the butlers pantry to be set with the next course. One dinner, one woman guest had removed her shoes under the table and Herbert’s mom (who didn’t know what was happening) was leaning over to reach her moving plate as the table disappeared. They didn’t use the rolling table option after that.

We didn’t get to see the kitchen, but based on photos and the floor plan, it was much larger than any other Wright home we’ve toured.

Some odd features:

The daughter’s room is only reachable through the mom’s bedroom. The boy’s have their own wing!
There is a built in stereo that holds a ton of 78 RPM records and can be programmed to play in whatever order you like.
The windows in the living room are 16 ft tall and can be opened either as windows or doors.
Wright also did the landscape plan for the house.
There is a glassed-in crows nest that is reachable from a spiral stair from 2nd floor den. Sam and his friends used to love leading war games from up there. Sam would also talk to his dad via walkie talkie, as his dad flew over the house.
Wright designed and installed a pool so that Sam would be happier about moving out of Racine, where all his friends lived.

All-in-all, it was a great tour and a really nice Wright home. It’s a shame that it’s been modified a bit for use as a conference center, but still very much worth seeing.

Front door on the left. On the right are “slots” (now windows) that used to be carports, but have been turned into additional rooms.

Fireplace in Dining Room - Travis suggested this is where they prepared there kettle Potato chips

Sample of a paper bathing suit they offered guests who had come without one

The once used fireplace and staircase to crows nest

Doug in front of kitchen wing. Notice the crows nest above the roof.

A lego model of Wingspread built by a kid in Kenosha. He has info about the 2.5 year build on his website.

He even built a lego QR code to take you to the website!