Wright in the Abstract

Photos © Mark Hertzberg (2022)

I had to edit 34,575 Frank Lloyd Wright building images (or 185.62 GB) down to 30 photos for an exhibit.

Here’s the backstory: Lake Forest (Illinois) College, my alma mater, honored me with two concurrent exhibits this month for my 50th anniversary Homecoming. Rebecca Goldberg, Lecturer in Art and Director of the Gallery in the Romanesque Durand Art Institute building, initially asked me just to include a handful of my Frank Lloyd Wright work in an exhibit of my career in photojournalism. I found it hard to edit the Wright work down to just four or so photos. Fortunately there was enough space in two galleries to mount two separate exhibits, each with 30 prints. I decided to pick mostly abstract interpretations of Wright’s work than show perhaps predictable building photos. My selection is below, in alphabetical order of the commissions:

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, 1956

Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, 1938

Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, 1938

Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, 1938

Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 1943

Hillside Drafting Room, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1933

Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, 1919

Imperial Hotel entry way, Tokyo, 1915, as rebuilt at Meiji Mura near Nagoya, Japan

Lindholm Service Station, Cloquet, Minnesota, 1956

Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California, 1957

Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California, 1957

Meyer May House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1908

Meyer May House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1908

Meyer May House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1908

Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952

Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952

Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952

Romeo and Juliet Windmill, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1898

SC Johnson Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936

SC Johnson Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936

SC Johnson Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936

SC Johnson Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin, 1943/44

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, 1925

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, 1925

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, 1925

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, 1925

Thomas P. Hardy House, Racine, Wisconsin, 1904/05

Wingspread, Wind Point, Wisconsin, 1937

Wingspread, Wind Point, Wisconsin, 1937

Now, as for those 34,575 images…if I had time to go through them, a good chunk could be deleted. But who has time to do that?

Hours for the gallery…the show runs through October 30:

https://www.lakeforest.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/art-and-art-history/art-galleries

Keep scrolling down for previous posts on the website…

Vox: SCJ and Hardy

© Mark Hertzberg (2022)

Phil Edwards, who makes wonderful Wright multi-media pieces at Vox, contacted me this summer about a piece he was going to produce about the SC Johnson Administration Building in August. He asked about the Hardy House, which is just five blocks east of SC Johnson. Hardy House steward Tom Szymczak graciously gave me permission to take Edwards inside the house and film there when he came to Racine.

The piece just went live and it has an interesting perspective at the end. I welcome your comments. You do have to bear with some ads…which pay the bill , making Edwards’ endeavors possible. It is very, very, very well produced as is a previous piece he did about the Pope-Leighy House. Here is a link to the SCJ / Hardy piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb-kYt1lpnI

I leave you with a photo I took when we were in the Hardy House…a reflection of one of the front hall windows seen in one of the living room windows, across the house. What a brilliant detail!

A man, his camera, and Wright

© Mark Hertzberg (2021) Vintage photos © Estate of Al Krescanko. Portrait of Krescanko by Mark Hertzberg / The (Racine) Journal Times

Frank Lloyd Wright likely would have had conniptions if anyone had dared alter one of his drawings, but he thought nothing of altering one of photographer Al Krescanko’s negatives before signing and returning it to him. What had the architect retouched? He thought his hair looked too long, so he shaded it in on the negative.

Krescanko was one of those quiet guys who said he was just doing his job when he photographed Wright some 60 years ago, but his insightful 1957 candid photos of the master architect have been republished in at least two landmark books about Wright. Yet, Krescanko’s byline has remained largely unknown. Among photographers of Wright, it has less name recognition than the work of Pedro Guerrero, Balthazar Korab, and Ed Obma.

Krescanko photographed Wright during the course of his work as a photographer for SC Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin. He also extensively photographed the construction of the Wright-designed Keland House (1954) for Willard and Karen Johnson Keland (later Karen Johnson Boyd), and took pictures for Willard Keland’s unrealized Wisconsin River Development Corporation in Spring Green.

Krescanko died in 2005, at age 78. A few of his photos of Wright have previously been published, but the Keland House photos were unknown until recently, when the Organic Architecture + Design Archives were lent Krescanko’s photos to digitize by Mary Jo Armstrong, his daughter, for a magazine article. The Keland House photos include the only known view of the original carport which became the master bedroom after a garage was built and the house modified by John (Jack) Howe in 1961.

I would be delighted to tell you more and share more photos, but I will instead direct you to OA + D’s website where you can buy Vol. 9 No. 2 of their excellent thrice-yearly journal. Each issue is devoted to a single topic. Eric O’Malley at OA + D has long been intrigued by Krescanko’s story and photos. Armstrong readily agreed to share her father’s photos with him when he proposed devoting an issue of the Journal to him.

The full story of Krescanko’s career and 41 of his photographs of Wright at Taliesin and at SC Johnson, and of the Keland House construction are in this 40 page issue. Bill Keland, Willard and Karen’s son, helped write the captions for the construction photos as he viewed them for the first time. (I am the “Guest Editor” of this issue of the Journal and wrote the profile. It is a much more extensive profile of Krescanko than the one I wrote in 2002 when I worked for the Racine newspaper. The profile includes interviews with his brother and his two surviving children).

If we have whet your appetite to see and read more about quiet, unassuming Al Krescanko and his not-unassuming subject, follow the link below. As they (whoever ‘they’ are!) say on late night television, “Operators are standing by to take your call!”

https://www.oadarchives.com/product/journal-oa-d-9-2

A New Take on Wright’s Work

© Mark Hertzberg (2021)

Most of the hundreds of thousands of words written about Frank Lloyd Wright’s work are about his design aesthetic, his life, or are histories of the homes and public buildings he designed. A new book by Joseph M. Siry offers a new analysis of his work. Siry puts the mechanical engineering of four of Wright’s landmark buildings – the Larkin Building, the SC Johnson Administration Building and Research Tower, and the Rogers Lacy Hotel – in a broader context of American architecture. 

Siry, who teaches art history at Wesleyan University, has just published his fifth book, Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890-1970  (University Park: The Penn State University Press;, 2021). His previous Wright books are Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012) and Unity Temple – Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Siry, left, accepts a Wright Spirit Award from Scott Perkins and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in 2015.

The Larkin Building in Buffalo (1903) was one of the nation’s first air conditioned buildings. Wright, of course, eschewed traditional design. One of the building’s signature features was its large central atrium work space. Wright put the building’s mechanical systems in the four corner stair towers and in four adjacent towers. Russell Sturgis, a contemporary critic, was flummoxed by the design. He wrote in a 1906 article in the Architectural Record wondering why there were “no chimneys, giving an opportunity for an agreeable breaking of the masonry into the sky and the sky into the masonry?” 

The SC Johnson Administration Building was designed in 1936. Air conditioning had already proven to be economically beneficial in a variety of factories – including at the Ford Motor Company – in improving efficiency not only in terms of workers’ comfort and morale, but also in processes where precise temperature and humidity controls were vital in machining and for ink-drying in printing. A growing number of hotels, offices, retail shops, and movie theaters were incorporating the new technology which was also displayed throughout the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. An unanticipated benefit was that hay fever sufferers no longer felt the need to call in sick when working in air conditioning (including Congressmen and U.S. senators when the U.S. Capitol was air conditioned in the late 1930s). Later, the economic growth of the South after World War II was spurred by companies’ abilities to air condition their factories, hotels, and stores.

Wright called the Larkin Building “the male sire of its feminine offspring,” the SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine, designed in 1936. H. F. Johnson Jr. was the company president. He famously gave workers the day off if it were 90 degrees or warmer outside. Johnson charged both J. Mandor Matson, his first architect, and Wright with designing what was then commonly called a “windowless” office building.

The Administration Building opened in April 1939, concurrent with the opening of the New York’s World’s Fair. An article in LIFE magazine previewing the fair noted that while it was certainly wonderful, people should travel to Racine to see the streamlined new SC Johnson office building if they wanted to glimpse the future. The Research Tower, designed in 1943/1944 and constructed between 1947 and 1950, was the coda to Wright’s office building. The mechanicals in the former are in the “nostril” atop the tap root tower, just as they were in the two “nostrils” (Wright’s term) atop the Administration Building. 

Ventilation grills are visible on the face of the mezzanine of the Great Workroom.

The Tower’s exhaust plenums are the two kidney shapes.

Ceiling ventilation in the Research Tower was built into ceiling light fixtures.

The Rogers Lacy Hotel in Dallas (1946) was not realized because Lacy died in December 1947. I had little awareness of Wright when I was in high school (1964-1968) but one of my classmates was Lacy’s grandson. My classmate’s father was one of the architects of the Houston Astrodome, the world’s first air conditioned stadium, which opened in 1965.

Siry concludes, “In the Johnson buildings, Wright reinvented the windowless type, creating workspaces that were better illuminated and apparently more open to the outdoors than many windowed buildings. His client, Johnson, had provided the impetus to devise optimal air-conditioned interiors. But Wright reinterpreted that aim to create unprecedentedly inventive architecture, an his integration of mechanical systems into his aesthetic inspired such later modernists as Louis Kahn.”

Siry’s book was an outgrowth of the section of his 2009 course on contemporary world architecture focusing on sustainability and energy conservation. “It gradually was clear that HVAC systems had a vast history in relation to modern architecture that had only been touched on, but those systems had been a huge factor in buildings’ energy demands. So I thought it would be useful to try to lay out the history of air-conditioning from its origins through into the 1970s, before energy consciousness took hold in architecture.” He is now focusing on developments since the early 1970s, “to trace the history of conservation methods and thinking about sustainability.” The new book took nine years of research and writing. There is no timeline for a succeeding volume.

If readers burst out of their Wright bubble, they will find the book as a whole is captivating. I wrote Siry that as a layperson (and someone who did miserably in science classes) I never thought I would be entranced by a book about air conditioning. But I was. The book can be ordered from the publisher or through your favorite local bookshop. I urge people to support local book shops and book publishers, rather then reflexively order from you know where.

https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08694-1.html

Siry is Professor Art History and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.  

Addendum on April 29:  Radiant floor heating was used in the Administration Building. Wright also used it in Wingspread, the home he designed for Johnson in 1937. Karen Johnson Boyd, H.F.’s daughter, who grew up in Wingspread, told me that it was unpredictable whether one might freeze or burn their toes on the floor in the morning. When she and her then-husband Willard Keland commissioned Wright to build the Keland House in 1954, one of the conditions was that Wright let a radiant floor heating expert from Indiana handle that aspect of the job, she said. He agreed to do so.

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Rainy Day Post #3 – A Wright Potpourri

Photos (c) Mark Hertzberg (2020)

I have promised you one more “rainy day post,” cleaning up pictures that have been waiting on my desktop for the right context to post them in. This is a smattering of photos of Frank Lloyd Wright sites I have visited in one context or another since July 2018. While I shoot literal photos of Wright buildings (“head shots” we called them in the newsroom), I also look for photos of details of Wright’s designs. I am generally not sharing interior photos of private homes. I try to avoid looking at other photographers’ interpretations of Wright buildings before I visit them so that I see the structures through my own eye and lens, rather than possibly copy another photographer’s vision.

The photos are in chronological order, beginning with a wonderful trip to the Detroit area that July two years ago. We were with our good friends Bob and Jeanne Maushammer from Virginia. Jeanne’s exposure to Wright began when she was a teenager, hired to babysit at the Thomas P. Hardy House in Racine for Schuyler and Peterkin Seward, stewards of the house between 1957 – 1963. The Maushammers dutifully chronicle their Wright adventures in a well worn copy of William Allin Storrer’s The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. I will copy and paste Jeanne’s recollections of the Hardy House from my 2006 book about the house at the end of this blog post.

Our first stop was at the Affleck House in Bloomfield Hills, where Dale Gyure graciously gave us a private tour:

We were fortunate to next get a private tour of the Melvin Smith House. The light was not as subtle as the architecture in the early afternoon:

Then we were off to the Turkel House, lovingly restored by our good friends Norm Silk and Dale Morgan. Jeanne has wonderful stories of having seen the then-distressed house ca. 2004 right after a questionable tenant had been evicted. We had bid on a dinner at the house, to benefit the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Norm went above and beyond shopping for us in a Middle Eastern market, and we had a lovely meal in the garden. The Maushammers, Cindy (Hertzberg), and Norm:

We planned to stay only a couple of hours and not overstay our welcome, but we were like family enjoying the house in the living room after dinner until past 11 p.m.! The light was harsh when we arrived at 5 p.m., and I wondered how it would change through the evening:

Our next adventure was when Bob and Jeanne treated us to a stay at the Palmer House in Ann Arbor:

I was then on tour in familiar territory in Wisconsin, helping lead tours for Road Scholar, first in Racine at SC Johnson and at Wingspread. I have visited and photographed these wonderful spaces umpteen times, and always look for a fresh way to see them:

I climbed these stairs at Wingspread countless times before seeing this photo:

I was then taken, again, by the fixtures at the Annunication Greek Orthodox Church in Wauwatosa (suburban Milwaukee):

After touring Racine and Milwaukee, we take our Road Scholar guests to Madison and Spring Green. First, a detail of the ceiling of Jacobs 1:

Then, a light well in Anthony Puttnam’s interpretation of Monona Terrace:

The trip culminates at Taliesin – of course – after seeing the Unitarian Meeting House in Madison and Wyoming Valley School, with lunch at Riverview Terrace. Our introduction to Taliesin is a pause at the dam:

I finish with Jeanne’s recollection of babysitting at the Hardy House and a “selfie” there:

(From “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House,” written and photographed by Mark Hertzberg, Pomegranate: 2006):

Jeanne (Weins) Maushammer, who baby-sat for the Sewards, recalls growing up nearby. “The house was well-known to everyone in the neighborhood.  People would go to the 14th Street public beach there and see the house just a short distance away.  It did not look like a private residence.  Visitors from outside the area – even across town – would see two openings that could easily be mistaken for bath house entrances, and try to go in to change their clothes.

“Sometimes when you were driving around with out-of-town folks, they would ask ‘What is that?’  They did not recognize it as a house, because it was so different from the other homes around it, and because it was next to the beach.  Neighbors knew what it really was.  The Johnson Wax complex was down the street from us, so the Hardy House seemed to be appropriate.  My folks often told me of their witnessing the construction of the Administration Building and of seeing Frank Lloyd Wright.  The Johnson buildings were understood and accepted by visitors, but not the ‘beach house.’

“My friends and I used to go down to the beach all the time.  We could not get close enough to the property to get a good look at it.  We always had to look through the trees.  We could not see how it blended into the hill side.  That added to the mystery of it.  From the street, all that people could see was just that box.

“I knew it was a Frank Lloyd Wright house before I first went inside.  What I did not realize was how he proportioned houses to his small frame.  I remember thinking when inside for the first time:  ‘I am 5’4” but wow, these doorways are low.’  It was dark and raining that particular day, so I did not get to appreciate the house’s real beauty.  After I had been there several times and had a chance to explore it, to stand in that living room and on the balcony, and to take in the view, I realized it was incredible.

“My husband has never seen the inside of the house, except in photos, but in our wildest dreams we would like to buy it and come back to Racine.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainy Day Post #2 – Guggenheim Dome Evolution

Photos (c) Mark Hertzberg (2020)

Saturday I wrote that it’s like a rainy day, and I am taking time to clean up my desktop and post some things that have been in limbo. There will be a third Rainy Day Frank Lloyd Wright post – the one with what I referred to as a “smattering” of photos from many Wright sites – possibly tomorrow.

I noted in my 2004 book Wright in Racine that Wright’s initial design for the dome of the Guggenheim Museum in 1943 was identical to the one he later used for the dome built over the advertising department in the SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine. That space was added concurrently with the construction of the SC Johnson Research Tower (designed in 1943/44, constructed 1947-1950). (The space is now home to the company’s Global Affairs and related departments)

The Advertising Department’s dramatic glass dome is now an architectural icon of the company. It embodies the design Wright proposed in 1943 for the Guggenheim Museum.

The dome now has a white cover now to lessen the heat from the sun.

Visitors to the 2017 “Unpacking the Archive” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (MoMA) saw the Johnson version of the dome on the Guggenheim model in the exhibit:

This exhibit was labled: “Tension ring study model for Johnson Wax Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin  1943-50  Steel.” There was no mention of its similarity to the Guggenheim proposal.

Wright’s final design for the dome has been photographed many times:

SC Johnson Buildings

(c) Mark Hertzberg 2020

There is something indescribable for me in Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs of the SC Johnson Administration Building (1936) and SC Johnson Research Tower (1943/44) in Racine, Wisconsin. I gaze at them every day during my daily bike ride.

I found the lighting particularly soft and nice the evening of June 16, riding after spending the day photographing the newly restored curtain at Hillside Theatre and the desolate empty drafting room at Hillside (the two previous posts on this website).

The pictures were taken through the fence at the Golden Rondelle guest relations center which cannot reopen until the COVID-19 crisis passes. This is the first view that visitors have of the buildings, as they come onto campus at 14th Street.

I look forward to being able to once again get past the fence and enjoy – and photograph – the wonderful interior spaces again.

 

SC Johnson Carport

(c) Mark Hertzberg (2019)

These are photos of the carport at the SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine on July 27, 2019 when we were taking a friend from New York City on his first tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings:

Research Tower Rainbow

Image (c) Mark Hertzberg 2018

A rainbow arches across the sky past the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin Wednesday August 1, 2018 (c) Mark Hertzberg

Wright Sites Meeting at Wingspread

Photos (c) Mark Hertzberg, 2018

Three dozen representatives of Wright sites, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, met at the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread in late March for a “Wright Site Directors Summit.” Topics included creating Wright mobile apps, presenting sites in 3-D on tablets, strategies for innovative branding and marketing, and accommodating guests with disabilities. The three-day meeting was sponsored by the two foundations and the Building Conservancy.Libby Garrison of the Marin County Civic Center tells how their mobile app was created.

Michael Ditmer (Still Bend) and Heather Sabin (Monona Terrace) confer. Ditmer is the new president of Wright in Wisconsin. Mike Lilek, left rear, of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block talks with John Waters Preservation Programs Manager of the Building Conservancy. Kathryn Burton (Gordon House) is also at the table.

Stuart Graff, President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, contributes to the discussion after a presentation. Jim Ladwig, center, (SC Johnson and Son) and Don Dekker (Meyer May House) take notes and listen.

Jeffrey Herr (Hollyhock House) and Carrie Rodamaker (Taliesin Preservation)

Mike Lilek of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block in Milwaukee.

“The House,” built in the mid-1950s adjacent to Wingspread, became the home of Mr. and Mrs. H.F. Johnson Jr. before they donated Wingspread itself to the newly-created Johnson Foundation in 1959. It has more space for conferences than the Wright-designed Wingspread. It has been said that Mrs. (Irene Purcell) Johnson was never comfortable in Wingspread because it was designed for another woman…Johnson’s wife who died during construction. National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, the International Court of Justice – and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy – are among the entities that evolved from Johnson Foundation conferences.