Project Information
Administration Building for S. C. Johnson and Son Company, "Johnson Wax Building" [Racine, Wisconsin] (1936)
Note: The following information concerning this project represents original research and analysis by John Geiger, and is based in his long and detailed study of the Frank Lloyd Wright literature as well as personal contacts with members of the Taliesin Fellowship and architectural historians. In addition, he added his own categories of building type and compositional form, as well as other points of consideration that he deemed important to understanding of the design. As with any primary archival source material, the references and sources of attribution should be consulted where possible to affirm the data provided. Sometimes there is an indication of attribution for which there is no matching footnote recorded. Some understanding of the intended source may be discovered in remaining notes or frequently cited publications which appear in the comment field.
Name of client: Johnson, S. C. and Son Company.
Sobriquet or alternative place name: Johnson Wax Building.
Design Status (as of 2011): Executed.
Occupancy form or use: COMMERCIAL/Office/office building.
Principal building materials: MASONRY/Brick, concrete.
Number of drawings for this project detailed in the database: 46.
Drawing Number and Description
Individuals recorded as contributing to project:
Note: Not everyone who contributed to a project may be named; only those whose participation has been confirmed from a source appear above. Occasionally names presented as contributors to a project may seem chronologically anomalous. This usually occurs when an individual prepared drawings for publicity, exhibition, or publication long after the original date of a commission.
Individuals recorded as producing drawings for this project:
Howe, John
Wright, Frank Lloyd
Specifications writer: Wiltschek, Ben
Structural engineering: Peters, William Wesley
Structural engineering: Glickman, Mendel
Construction supervision: Tafel, Edgar
Construction supervision: Peters, William Wesley
Roof type: Flat.
Note: Records a category devised by Geiger to classify the types of roof structure found in Frank Lloyd Wright projects. These terms were applied consistently through a choice list on Column [
ROOFTYPE] in Table MMTFDRAWINGS FILE, and may be searched.
Project Drawing Date Range
Note: Dates for preliminary and working drawings, as well as the start and completion of construction, appear here only when present in the database. Through careful study of original, reproduced, or published Wright drawings, John Geiger developed an elaborate granulation for design process dates and their attributions. Such information is largely available only for Wright projects dating from the mid-1930s until 1959.
Preliminary drawings date: 8/9/1936.
Notes and References
Comments by John Geiger and/or sources of attribution: (1) Lipman, FLLW and Johnson Wax, p. 9. Wright awarded contract to design building in a letter from Johnson, dated July 23, 1936. Ibid. p. 184, Chapter 2, 15. (2) At Taliesin. p. 242 (3) Friedland, Roger, and Zellman, Harold. The .
Note: The information shown above is collected from a series of data table columns intended originally to record not only comments or notes, but also to cite sources of attribution for dates assigned to the various stages of drawing preparation in the design process. As with any primary archival source material, the references and sources of attribution shown here should be consulted where possible to affirm the data provided.
This commission is referenced and/or illustrated in the following publications:
Cleary, Richard (editor). Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward. New York: Skira/ Rizzoli. [ISBN: 978-0-8478-3262-0].
Drexler, Arthur. The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Horizon Press. [ISBN: 0-8180-0019-8].
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly: 2002, Vol. 13, No. 1. Phoenix, Arizona: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Frank Lloyd Wright Quarterly: 2009, Vol. 20, No. 2. Phoenix, Arizona: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. In the Nature of Materials: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright 1887-1941. Boston, Mass.: Da Capo Press.
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell. In the Nature of Materials: The Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright 1887-1941. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Kaufmann, Jr., Edgar. Frank Lloyd Wright: Drawings for a Living Architecture. New York: Horizon Press.
Lipman, Jonathan, and Levine, Neil. The Wright State: Frank Lloyd Wright In Wisconsin. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Milwaukee Art Museum.
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks. New York: Rizzoli. [ISBN: 0-8478-1715-6].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings: Masterworks from the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives. New York: Harry H. Abrams Inc.. [ISBN: 0-8108-1773-4].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1924-1935 (Volume 5). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-516-8].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph Preliminary Studies, 1933-1959 (Volume 11). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-522-2].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph, In His Renderings 1887-1959 (Volume 12). Tokyo: A. D. A. Edita. [ISBN: 4-87140-523-0].
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works 1917-1942 (Volume 2). Cologne, Germany: Taschen. [ISBN: 978-3-8365-0926-8].
Riley, Terence and Reed, Peter (editors). Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect. New York: The Museum of Modern Art. [ISBN: 0-87070-642-X].
Wright, Frank Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings Volume 3 1931-1939. New York: Rizzoli. [ISBN: 0-8478-1699-O].