SC Johnson Administration Building

The SC Johnson Administration Building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the S.C. Johnson and Son company in Racine, Wisconsin, opening in 1939 as the headquarters of the family-owned wax and cleaning products manufacturer. Wright organized the vast open workroom around slender, tapering columns he called dendriform or lily-pad columns, cast in reinforced concrete, wide enough at their tops to support a load but so slender at their base that Wisconsin state building inspectors initially doubted their strength; Wright answered by publicly loading a test column with sand and scrap iron until it held roughly sixty tons, several times the code requirement, before construction proceeded. Rather than conventional windows, Wright ringed the building's walls and roof with bands of Pyrex glass tubing, admitting a soft, even light while screening views of the surrounding industrial neighborhood. The building's warm brick, in a custom shade the company called Cherokee red, and its rounded corners give the exterior a streamlined profile distinct from Wright's earlier Prairie-style work. Wright later added an adjoining laboratory tower to the complex in 1950, and the Administration Building itself was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for its innovative structure and lighting.