A Change of Landscape at SC Johnson

Posted on June 21, 2026 by Mark Hertzberg

Photos and text © Mark Hertzberg (2026)

SC Johnson is almost finished demolishing the former St. Mary’s Hospital building (1933) on their campus in Racine. Why take up space on a Frank Lloyd Wright site about the demolition of a building that Wright had absolutely nothing to do with?

The former St. Mary’s Hospital building, repurposed as SC Johnson’s Louis Laboratories, on the east edge of the company campus, next to the smokestack, Tuesday July 28, 2015.

The answer is that there is a direct connection between the hospital building and Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower, which was designed in 1943/44 and opened in November 1950.

When Dr. J.V. Steinle, the company’s research and development director proposed in 1943 that the company build a new R&D facility after the war, his site sketch included dotted lines marked “Future Expansion.” H.F. Johnson Jr. balked at giving Wright the commission even though it would be next to Wright’s landmark SC Johnson Administration Building. Wright eventually won Johnson over (the story of the commission is in both Jonathan Lipman’s book “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings” and my “Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower.”). Wright’s dramatic design lacked that critical room for “Future Expansion” and was designed for only 50 chemists. The company began to outgrow it by 1957 and opened “carport labs” below the soaring structure. St. Mary’s sold the hospital building to SC Johnson in 1977 after moving to a new campus on the west side of Racine. SC Johnson repurposed the old hospital as their new R&D facility and closed the Research Tower in 1981. The new labs bore the name of the Louis Laboratories.

The Tower stood unused until 2014 when two floors were restored after the company got permission to bring tours there. Fortunately the company is privately held, because one can imagine how many publicly held companies would have demolished an unused building in spite of its architectural significance and its place in the company’s DNA as a symbol of creativity. By 2019 another company building close to Waxdale, the company’s manufacturing complex west of town became their new R&D facility, and it was St. Mary’s turn to stand empty. With high costs to maintain the empty building which had no foreseeable use to the company, demolition began in March.

There are no immediate plans for the site.

The former St. Mary’s Hospital building is almost completely reduced to rubble in this photo taken June 19.

As a sidelight, some years ago I profiled Ken Dahlin, a well-known contemporary architect (Genesis Architecture). I wrote that he must have been pre-destined in his career because he was born in the old hospital, overlooking Wright’s landmark buildings.

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Wright’s Unrealized YWCA For Racine

Posted on December 24, 2025 by Mark Hertzberg

Frank Lloyd Wright had a commission from H.F. Johnson Jr. to design a new YWCA building in Racine, Wisconsin in 1949. I first wrote about it in 2004 in my book Wright in Racine (Pomegranate). It came to mind again last week when http://www.racinecountyeye.com, a local news website published a news story about a zoning controversy involving the non-Wright building which is now for sale again. The zoning controversy involves a social services agency that wants to buy the building that was last used as a church. I told them about the Wright angle to the story, and they published my piece, updated. I am posting a link to the story because that way you can see two of Wright’s drawings. I cannot independently post the drawings to this website because of copyright considerations, which cannot be addressed during the holidays. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Avery Library kindly gave permission for these two drawings to be used with the piece on Eye:

https://racinecountyeye.com/2025/12/22/wright-design-racine-ywca-building/

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Hardy at Sunrise / Photo Workshop

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Mark Hertzberg

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Why in the blazes would I set the alarm for 6 a.m. on a Saturday a week ago? Really, why? We are in the midst of moving (after 47 years!) and sleeping in would have been swell. So, yeah, well, why? To help Andrew Pielage who was conducting one of his photo workshops in Racine.

Hardy Pielage 10.25.25 016.JPEG Andrew had 18 photo guests arriving shortly after 7 a.m. to photograph Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy house inside and out, top to bottom. Andrew had asked me a year ago to tell the photographers about Hardy and about the house. Tom Szymczak, the steward of the house, had two kringle and a pot of hot coffee waiting. I got there at 6:48 a.m. Before I could get the goodies out and turn on the lights, I had to take my own photos of the house at sunrise. So, first my photos, and then my photos of the photographers.

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People sometimes ask my about what brand of camera is best. My answer is that the photographer’s eye is more important than the nameplate. I use Nikons because I am looked into their lens system. I have long carried a new go-to camera in my pocket…my smartphone. I recently upgraded to the iPhone 17 Pro. My friend Harvey Riekoff asked me what I thought of the camera…all the photos in this post were taken with the phone. It makes me think of cartoonist Aaron Johnson’ What the Duck t-shirt that I was given a few years ago: “Your camera takes great pictures!” To which the duck answered, “Your mouth makes nice compliments!” And, now photos of Andrew’s guests:

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(My wife has a collection of photos of me on my back taking photos in Wright homes and other historic sites…I had to take this photo!)

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For more information about Andrew Pielage’s Photo Workshops;

https://www.apizm.com/events-calendar

Please scroll down to read previous posts on this website.

Hardy Reflections and Shadow Play 8.5.25

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Mark Hertzberg

Photos © Mark Hertzberg (2025)

Hardy Shadow Play 8.5.25 001.JPEG One of the entry way hallway windows is reflected in the two story living room windows that overlook Lake Michigan.

One of the aspects of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House that continually fascinates me is the shadow play from the seven windows in the entry hallway. I had the opportunity to have fun with the reflections and shadow play again when I met at the house with Sam Lubell yesterday. Lubell and photographer Andrew Pielage are working on a book about 50 Wright homes for Rizzoli (more about that in a future post).

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As Robert McCarter has pointed out, the floor plan of the house is delineated in white in the windows: the square in the middle represents the public areas, the two story living room and the dining room one floor below. When I lead tours of the house I remind the guests that the only computer Wright had when he came up with such designs was the one between his ears.

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The rectangle that bisects the square represents the bedrooms at either end of the two main floors. We now add to the drama of the seven Wright-designed windows the leaded glass inserts in the two sliding entry doors (one north, one south). They replicate the design of Wright’s living room windows, which were taken out by the second stewards of the house (1938 – 1947) because they leaked. They were replaced by clear windows.

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These quick happy snaps were taken with my phone camera…elapsed time, except for the top photo, seven minutes. Every time I turned I saw another photo. Thank you Gene and Tom and Joan Szymczak, for rehabilitating the house for us to enjoy!

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Hardy House Views: 1904 – 2025

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Mark Hertzberg

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:

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

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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:

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

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

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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:

Terrace sketch PPT.jpg © 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:

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

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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:

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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:

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

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And that, brings us to today:

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There is no telling what the lake will do next.

The Coda to Hardy House Rehabilitation

Posted on August 28, 2024 by Mark Hertzberg

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When the late Eugene (Gene) Szymczak considered buying Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House in Racine, Wisconsin in 2012 he told me, “I don’t have children. This is something [save the house] I could do for Racine.” Indeed he did. He undertook a heroic rehabilitation and stabilization of the house.* Gene, left of center in the photo below, was awarded the prestigious Wright Spirit Award by the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy for his work on the house in 2015. He died unexpectedly a year later after an illness.

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The house stayed in the family after Gene’s death. Tom Szymczak is one of Gene’s brothers. Tom recently completed a project which, he told me, was the last thing Gene wanted to accomplish at the house. The house was built with two pocket doors. They were replaced by conventional, hinged plain wood doors by the third stewards of the house, David and Mary Archer, between 1947 and 1957:

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Gene decided to put pocket doors back in the house in 2013. He chose sliding glass patio-style doors so he could look into the two courtyards from the entry hall. The heavy metal arms that opened and closed the pocket doors were left in place, and were found in 2013:

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The house was built with leaded glass windows throughout, including in the dramatic two-story living room overlooking Lake Michigan. Anne Ruetz, whose parents were second stewards of the house (1938 – 1947) told me her parents replaced the windows with plain glass ones because the original ones leaked. When Gene put in energy efficient windows he jokingly told me that the next owners of the house could bear the expense of replicating Wright’s window design. Little did he know, of course, that he would be shifting the burden to his brother. 1908 photographs, which are used courtesy of the OA + D Archives, show the original leaded glass living room windows:

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Instead of replicating the design in the living room, Gene intended to have the design fashioned for the pocket doors. The work was completed earlier this month, with window inserts made by Oakbrook Esser of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The installation photos show Tom Szymczak, left, and master craftsman Chad Nichols:

Thank you, Gene, for your gift to our community and to the World of Wright!

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The first people outside of family and friends to see the new windows will be 17 members of a Road Scholar Wright tour next Wednesday. They will be followed by several hundred people attending Wright in Wisconsin’s “Wright and Like” tour Saturday September 7.

*The term “rehabilitation” is appropriate, rather than “restoration,” because there were some changes to the house. “Restoration” would infer house museum status, accurate to either the day Hardy moved into the house (1906) or left it (in 1938) after losing it at sheriff’s auction because of monies owed on the house.

Links:

Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy:

www.savewright.org

Wright and Like Tour:

https://wrightinwisconsin.org/wright-and-2024

Road Scholar Architectural Masterworks of Frank Lloyd Wright Tour (run 4 or 5 a year)

https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an-adventure/22976/Architectural-Masterworks-of-Frank-Lloyd-Wright

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Tower Tumult in Bartlesville

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Mark Hertzberg

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The future of Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is uncertain. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy has initiated legal proceedings against Cynthia Blanchard, the owner of the building, over her sale of Wright artifacts from the building, including one of the office chairs Wright designed, to a mid-century design dealer in Dallas. The Building Conservancy has an easement on the property, which, it says, prohibits the sale of any of the artifacts.

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Wright designed the tower in 1952 as a combination office and apartment building, and it opened in 1956. The exterior and two-story pinwheel floor plan are derived from Wright’s unrealized design for the St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery apartment buildings in New York City (1927-1929).*

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The Inn at Price Tower hotel opened in 2003. Blanchard said in a television interview that it was no longer profitable to operate the hotel and its Copper Bar and Restaurant. She announced the closure August 9. Hotel and restaurant employees were laid off and tenants of the building were given notice to move out within 30 days. She said in an interview that the closure is not necessarily permanent, and that she hopes to find a buyer for the building which, she says, is no longer profitable for her to operate.

The photographs are from our stay at the hotel in April 2011. Scott Perkins, who was the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions and at the Price Tower Arts Center, was our host, graciously allowed me to photograph every nook and cranny of the building (he is now Fallingwater’s senior Director of Preservation and Collections).

Oklahoma Frank Lloyd Wright Price Tower 014.JPG This photograph and the one below were taken looking up on the external staircase.

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Oklahoma Frank Lloyd Wright Price Tower 019.JPG The living room of one of the original apartments

Oklahoma Frank Lloyd Wright Price Tower 018.JPG The sitting room on the lower floor of one of the two-story hotel rooms

One can only hope that my sunset photo of Price Tower was not a harbinger of things to come.

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*While Price Tower was designed around Wright’s idea of a taproot tower, the late Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer told me that it is not a taproot tower because it is tied into the foundation of the adjoining two-story office building. He told me that the SC Johnson Research Tower in Racine is Wright’s only realized taproot tower.

Author’s note: Thank you to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy for their attention to the tower, and to the Building Conservancy’s John Waters for his editing notes on this article.

Please scroll down for previous posts on this site.

Links:

Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy coverage:

https://savewright.org/endangered-price-tower-in-bartlesville-oklahoma/

Local television coverage:

https://www.newson6.com/story/66b6bcf3e64a7a286feca72e/price-tower-in-bartlesville-closes-due-to-financial-struggles-future-uncertain

Windows on Main Street

Posted on August 2, 2024 by Mark Hertzberg

I have written before that I always challenge myself to see something new even on my umpteenth visit to a given Frank Lloyd Wright – designed building. I was blasé today as I took my friend Robert Hartmann on a tour of the Thomas P. Hardy House on Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin, as he prepared for Wright in Wisconsin’s forthcoming “Wright and Like” tour scheduled for September 7. Hartmann expects between 300 – 500 guests and wanted to figure out the best way for guests to wind through the compact house, and how many docents he would need.

The light was less than spectacular and there was nothing new to see. I had biked to the house so my only camera was my smartphone. I think phone cameras sometimes oversaturate colors, but that camera was all I had when I unexpectedly saw this in the second floor windows above the south stairs:

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So much for being blasé!

Here is a link for more information about the tour:

https://wrightinwisconsin.org/wright-and-2024

I served on Wright in Wisconsin’s board for 14 years. They are the only statewide Wright group, originally founded in cooperation with the state Department of Tourism to promote Wright tourism in Wisconsin.

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My Wright Eye – May 2024

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Mark Hertzberg

I had a half hour wait before meeting 22 guests coming from coast-to-coast to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Thomas P. Hardy House on their weeklong Road Scholar tour (I am with the group as a Road Scholar guide for three days on these tours, as they travel through Racine, Milwaukee, Madison, and Spring Green). I have been in the house countless times, including leading 14 of these tours. While I try to see something new on every visit to a familiar Wright design, I did not think there was anything new to see in the house. I had already played Wordle and my other daily games phone games. I had already looked at my emails. I plopped down in a chair in the living room and looked up. I looked up some more and then I knew what I had to do…I had to lie down on the floor and start taking pictures of the ceiling.

Then I walked over to the stairs and looked up at the second floor:

When I then went outside to greet the bus, I saw reflections of Wright’s leaded glass front hallway windows and their reflected images in a new way:

Today, as our guests toured Wright’s American System-Built duplex at 2132/34 W. Burnham Street in Milwaukee, I looked down instead of up. The duplex is being restored with help from a Save Americas Treasures grant. These are the back stairs:

On-line links:

Road Scholar’s “Architectural Masterworks of Frank Lloyd Wright tour:

https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an-adventure/22976/Architectural-Masterworks-of-Frank-Lloyd-Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block:

http://wrightinmilwaukee.com

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“Furniture Done Wright” Now on Exhibit

Posted on May 10, 2024 by Mark Hertzberg

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Hiring Frank Lloyd Wright to design a building meant more than just a bricks and mortar job. The entire space – interior as well as exterior – had to be cohesive. His organic designs often included furniture and lighting fixtures he proposed for his clients. Examples of his interior designs are now on display in “Furniture Done Wright” in SC Johnson’s Wright Gallery: At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright in Fortaleza Hall on the company’s campus in Racine, Wisconsin.

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LR SCJ Wright Furniture 007.jpg A dining chair from Taliesin (c. 1925) frames a view of the library table for the Edward C. Waller House Remodeling (1899).

LR SCJ Wright Furniture 016.jpg The library table, in turn, frames the Taliesin chair and an “origami chair” from Taliesin West (1946).

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Chairs from the David and Gladys Wright House (1950):

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LR SCJ Wright Furniture 031.jpg Hanging lamp, William R. Heath House (c. 1905) – the lines are distorted by the camera angle.

While many of the pieces were designed specifically for his clients, he also designed the “Taliesin Collection” for the Heritage-Henredon company in 1955. A number of those pieces are included in the exhibit:

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In 2017 SC Johnson acquired a collection of two dozen models of Wright-designed homes by retired architectural draftsman Ron Olsen from Janesville, Wisconsin. The pieces remain on exhibit in the Wright gallery as “Model Citizen: Ron Olsen and Frank Lloyd Wright.”

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The furniture exhibit is on view until spring 2026.

To schedule a visit to the exhibit:

www.scjohnson.com/visit

Ron Olsen’s models, my story from 2017:

https://wrightinracine.wordpress.com/tag/ron-olsen/

Please scroll down in www.wrightinracine.com to read previous articles on the website.

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