© Mark Hertzberg (2025)

Today I had the rare (and arguably unfortunate) opportunity to photograph Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House in Racine, Wisconsin from the lake, without getting wet. Climate change is playing havoc with Lake Michigan (as it is with the world). In 2020, the water level was so high that the stewards of the house, and neighbors, had massive hunks of stone brought in to protect their property:

Today, well, I was able to walk out onto what had been part of the lake:

The photograph below, taken through the two story living room windows, shows how much the water has receded:

Taking my photographs today gave me the idea to show this view of the house through the years, in historic drawings and photos. First, we have Marion Mahony’s drawing, reproduced in House Beautiful magazine’s 1906 story about the house:

© 2025 Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

Then we have the earliest known photograph of the house, taken in 1906, as it neared completion:

A 1908 photograph from the OA + D archives, shows significant growth of trees on the hill:

The dining room terrace, which ended in a stucco wall, was demolished after World War II at the behest of the Sporers, second stewards of the house. There was a public beach, the 14th Street Beach, just south of the house (to the left of it in these drawings and photographs, until the 1970s. The Sporers asked Wright to give them a recreation room under the dining room terrace. Edgar Tafel sketched plans on Mahony’s drawing before leaving the Taliesin Fellowship in 1941. The work was not done until after the war. Full-length windows, including a door, opened to the outside:

© 2025 Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York), from Jim and Margaret Yoghourtjian’s collection

Next, is from David Archer’s collection. He grew up in the house between 1947 – 1957:

Schuyler and Peterkin Seward were stewards of the house from 1957 – 1963:

Jim and Margaret Yoghourtjian were the final stewards (1968 – 2012) before the late Gene Szymczak who bought, and rehabilitated the house in 2012. Margaret took these photos:

The beach was lost in the 1970s when the City of Racine closed off a breakwater across from the house. Jim Yoghourtjian told me that they lost about 125 feet of property when the lake filled in below the house. While the Yoghourtjians used to share the house with interested parties, as they sensed people were taking them for granted and not respecting that they lived in a private home, rather than a public site, they let the landscape grow wild, to shield them from boaters on the lake and people walking the lakeshore:

A week after buying the house, Szymczak had the hill cleared:

And that, brings us to today:

There is no telling what the lake will do next.