Oak Park and Racine May 2007

We spent our 1st year LID on a long weekend trip to Chicago doing Frank Lloyd Wright tours. It was a blast. We stayed in Oak Park but took a day trip to Racine Wisconsin to see the SC Johnson Administration building and Wingspread. Frank Lloyd Wright was hired by Herbert Fisk Johnson, grandson of the founder of SC Johnson & Sons, to build the administration building in 1936. This building is architecturally significant but I found Wingspread more interesting. Wingspread was the 14,000 square foot home the Johnson's hired FLW to design soon after the admin building was completed. Their home was built in 1938 - 39. In 1959 the Johnson's moved to an adjacent home and donated Wingspread to the Johnson Foundation to be used as an international educational conference facility. I found it interesting that NPR was created from a conference at Wingspread. The center of Wingspread is the living/ working area that Wright called the "wigwam". FLW called the brickwork here the best he'd ever seen. The 3rd picture shows me walking towards the front entrance of Wingspread and the 4th picture shows me in the daughter's original bedroom in one of the wings.

After our Racine daytrip we toured FLW's Oak Park home, studio and several of the homes he designed. The 2nd to last picture above is of the Beachy house and the last picture is the Heurtley House. The Heurtley house was built in 1902 and is one of FLW's earliest prairie style homes. This style's main designation is it's horizontal lines, thought to be like prairie landscapes. The Heurtley house's interior was considered unique because it reversed traditional American home layout with the living and dining areas on the top floor of the house.

On Sunday of that weekend spouse and I had just enough time to go to Unity Temple Universalist Unitarian Church (FLW 1905) for service before catching our flight home. This was well worth it. The light, accoustics and seating are just amazing. The unique seating design gives everyone in the congregation optimal proximity to the pulpit. This church was built for around $60,000. FLW used concrete to keep costs down. Because concrete was new as a building material at this time they did not know to allow expansion joints which caused some issues over time. In 2005 a multi million dollar renovation was done to replace the central heating and add cooling using some of the most environmentally friendly technology available today.