The Johnson Wax Administration Building, completed in 1939 for S.C. Johnson and Son in Racine, Wisconsin, replaced conventional windows with a great glowing skylight of Pyrex glass tubing and an open floor of desks Wright called the Great Workroom, roughly 130 by 210 feet, supported entirely on his own invention: sixty tapering dendriform concrete columns that flare at the top like lily pads, an engineering solution the Wisconsin building inspectors would not approve until Wright had a full-scale prototype column loaded to destruction on site, where it held sixty tons before finally failing. Wright designed the building's desk furniture as well, his first office furniture commission in more than thirty years, in matching streamlined red-brown metal.
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Location1525 Howe Street, Racine, Wisconsin, United States 1 Architectural StyleStreamline Moderne, with rounded corners and continuous glass-tube banding rather than punched windows. 1 Structural SystemSixty slender dendriform, or mushroom-shaped, reinforced concrete columns spaced twenty feet apart, their expanded tops distributing the roof load across the open-plan Great Workroom; a prototype column was tested to sixty tons before Wright's design was accepted. 1 Primary MaterialCherokee red brick, reinforced concrete, and roughly 43 miles of Pyrex glass tubing used for the facade and skylights. 1 Building Type Commissioned ByS.C. Johnson and Son (the household-goods maker known as Johnson Wax), under Herbert F. Johnson Jr. 1 ConstructionAdministration Building 1936-1939; a separate Research Tower designed by Wright was added 1947-1950. Current UseActive S.C. Johnson corporate headquarters, with the Research Tower open for public tours since 2014 1 Visitor AccessPublic tours available by reservation 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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