FLW in Canada

Banff National Park Pavilion, Alberta, Canada, circa 1913.³

Banff National Park Pavilion, Alberta, Canada, circa 1920.³

E. H. Pitkin Cottage, Sapper Island, Ontario, Canada, 2010.1

I recently took a trip to Canada to attend the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and stayed with a friend who graciously gave me a place to stay. Knowing my love of architecture in general and Frank Lloyd Wright in particular, he asked whether or not Wright had ever built anything in Canada.

While I had the magic "532" number in my head (that would be the current known number of structures built by FLW), I couldn't recall when or if Wright had ever been to Canada. I remembered there was a single structure that Wright built and that it was a cottage. I couldn't recall where it was, what it looked like, or even when it was built. For the first time in a long time, someone had asked me a Wright question I didn't have a ready answer for.

In the interests of my own FLW knowledge and a desire to give my Canadian friend his very own Wright structure to brag about, I decided to produce my very own History Detectives episode and find out what I could.

The initial search for the lone structure north of the border told me that it was known as the E. H. Pitkin Cottage and was located on Sapper Island in the province of Ontario.

I also found a well-written article from The Sault Star in Sault Ste Marie that gives an excellent overview of the home. Long story short, E. H. Pitkin was a businessman from Chicago who visited the then remote islands in 1899 and was so taken with them that he asked his Oak Park neighbor, Frank Lloyd Wright, to design him a home there. Wright was still an apprentice at the time and not yet well known.²

This is one of Wright's lesser known works and indeed, it seems that most of the locals either do not know about the connection to Wright or if they do, aren't willing to help you get there. It is still a private home (only on its third owner) and the current owners value their privacy. Happily, the home is still reported to be in excellent condition.

In the interests of completism, it should also be noted that Wright did build a second structure in Canada. The Banff National Park Pavilion in Alberta was built in 1914 but lasted only a few years as it was demolished in 1939 because of structural damage. ³

^1,2 Last of a master’s Canadian designs stands in Algoma, Frank Dobrovnik, The Sault Star.

³ Wikipedia, Banff National Park Pavilion, Alberta, Canada.

Private Wright Homes in Chicago

Charles A. Brown House, Evanston, Illinois, November 2009.

Willits House, Gardener's Cottage, Renovation underway, November 2009.

Willits House, Highland Park, Illinois, November 2009.

Emil Bach House, Rogers Park, side view, Chicago, Illinois, November 2009.

Emil Bach House, Rogers Park, front view, Chicago, Illinois, November 2009.

During his lifetime, Frank Lloyd Wright designed and supervised the construction of 532 architectural works of which approximately 400 are still standing. Of those, many are not open to the public and their interiors (and exteriors, in many cases) have not been seen for decades. The opportunity to see a privately-owned Wright-designed house from the inside out is a rare gift.

Last November, eighty members of FLWW were given that unique opportunity to tour three privately-owned Wright residences in the Chicago area. Members were also treated to the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition, Apostles of Beauty: Arts and Crafts from Britain to Chicago.

In response to the Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Arts and Crafts movement sought to re-establish the great handcrafting movement in furniture and other household items. The movement’s credo was to integrate art into daily life and look to the natural world for inspiration in design. The movement’s chief practitioners were a who’s who of design and architecture and included such luminaries as Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley, and William Morris. The Arts and Crafts movement had its beginnings in Great Britain but was soon widely embraced in the United States, most notably in New England and Chicago.

The Apostles exhibition highlighted a wide range of objects including furniture, paintings, photographs, metalwork, ceramics and textiles. Several objects designed by Wright were shown in the collection including his furniture, windows , building fragments, textiles and architectural plans.

The first home on the tour was the Emil Bach House in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Built in 1915 for Emil Bach, the owner of a local brick-making company, the house is representative of Wright’s late Prairie house style. It is one of his few projects that was built in the period between Wright’s return from Europe in 1911 and his leaving for Japan to build the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The house was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on January 23, 1979.

The style of the house is a geometric cube with a slab roof and is the only house of this style still extant in Chicago. Originally built on a piece of lake property with view of Lake Michigan, it is now surrounded by commercial development and apartment buildings. Fortunately, a historic preservation easement prevented the Bach house and its adjacent yard from being torn down and built over with commercial developments. The current owner of the house has made much progress toward restoring the house to Wright’s original vision and plans further work towards that goal.

The second home featured on the tour was the Charles A. Brown house in Evanston. Built in 1905, the house was originally designed as the “Evanston Model Home” (similar in concept to Wright’s Burnham Street model homes). The house originally occupied its own and the corner lot but is now completely surrounded by other residential lots. The present owners have completed renovations including a landscaped garden in the front of the home in keeping with Wright’s vision of building in harmony with nature. The owners have further plans to extend the home’s second floor on the exterior of the home.

While the Bach house showcased Wright’s late Prairie Style, the last home on the tour represented the first of the great Prairie houses. The Willits House in Highland Park has the distinction of being the first Wright home to be designed in the Prairie Style (although not the first one built). The two story house is laid out in the classic Wright design of a cruciform with four wings spreading out from a central hearth.

Wright also designed most of the original furniture for the home. Like most Wright homes, this furniture has been lost but the present owners have made a real effort to locate and return the original furnishings to their home. The present owners have also undertaken a very extensive renovation since their purchase of the home and future plans include a complete renovation of the adjacent gardener’s cottage with stables which stands directly behind the main house. The Willits home is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin and its membership would like to extend our thanks to the homeowners of these three residences for graciously inviting us into these amazing houses.

Wingspread Green Initiatives

“Going green” and environmental responsibility are trendy watchwords that have only lately caught on in the last decade. For some forward thinkers, though, “going green” was part of their life and philosophy before many of us were even born. Two of those forward thinkers, Frank Lloyd Wright and H. F. Johnson, came together to create the last of the great Prairie houses: Wingspread. Wright is of course well known for his philosophy that a building should be in harmony with and grow organically out of its environment. Rather than espouse a particular architectural style, Wright chose to let a building’s environment guide him to its final form.

On the other hand, it is probably not as well known that Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr. was also a proponent of the environment and sustainability long before it became socially acceptable. For example, in 1927, H.F. Johnson traveled to Brazil to study the sustainability of the carnauba wax forest from which S. C. Johnson Wax obtained its chief raw material for its products.1 After his return to Wisconsin, Johnson published a book about the trip and his findings.

Johnson had originally commissioned Wright to build the S.C. Johnson & Son headquarters in Racine beginning in 1936 and during its construction, asked Wright to also design a private home for himself and his wife. Located on 30 acres in Wind Point, the 14,000 square foot house was finished in 1939. Wright himself christened the home “Wingspread” because of its four wings extending from the central Great Hall. H.F. Johnson and his wife eventually donated Wingspread to The Johnson Foundation in 1959 and moved into a smaller home on the property known simply as “The House.” (This home was designed in the mid-50’s by Californian architect Henry Eggers, not Wright.)

Today, Wingspread, as well as “The House” and the Guest House built in 2001, are home to The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, an organization whose primary mission is to promote, discuss and help provide solutions for the environmental dilemmas the world is currently facing. From its founding in 1959, conferences held by the Foundation have also been instrumental in the formation of the National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, the International Criminal Court, and The Presidential Climate Action Plan.

Because of its dedication to its primary mission of environmentalism, the Foundation practices what it preaches by initiating and sustaining green practices anywhere and everywhere it can at the Wingspread campus. Those projects include making eco-friendly changes to Wingspread itself, LEED certification for the Guest House, Green Seal certification, renewable energy through solar energy and a geothermal field for water management.

Wingspread itself is a National Historical Landmark and, as such, any changes made to the structure are taken under careful consideration by the Foundation who keep its historical significance in mind at all times. Some of the changes at Wingspread include replacing some of the incandescent lights in the Great Hall with fluorescent lights, replacing some single pane windows with thermal pane and replacing the outdated air handling units from 1959 with air-to-air heat exchangers. Additionally, the climate at Wingspread is now computer-controlled, giving the caretakers of Wingspread the ability to constantly and remotely monitor the house.

One of the most dramatic and measurable actions taken at the Wingspread campus is its water management program. A geothermal field rather than municipal city water will be used to cool the chiller at Wingspread. Wingspread will be able to reduce its dependence on city water by an anticipated 1,539,000 gallons per year. This will result in an anticipated 50% reduction in water consumption over the entire campus. The geothermal field is currently being installed and will be in operation this spring.

Built in 2001, the purpose of the Guest House is to provide residences for and facilitate discussion between conference attendees in order to build an environment of trust. The Guest House was designed with sustainability in mind from its very conception. Its placement on the land ensures that it is sheltered from harsh winter winds and is also able to take advantage of natural light. Much of the guest house is made of natural materials such as wood, stone and brick that originated in Wisconsin thereby saving on transportation and reducing its carbon footprint. All building and waste materials not used in construction were recycled. The displaced dirt from the site was used in the surrounding landscape and fescue grass was planted that requires mowing only twice a year.

Recently, the Guest House received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Existing Building (LEED-EB) certification at the silver level. This certification is awarded to those buildings that meet a stringent list of requirements regarding green initiatives. Buildings with LEED certification have been shown to be healthier living and working environments with the added benefit of savings from making a building more efficient to run.
The Johnson Foundation has also received a gold-level certification for its Guest House from Green Seal, an independent organization that provides environmental standards to the lodging industry in order to both improve the environment and the cost of running a lodging facility. Currently, the Foundation is the only gold-level facility in the United States.

It would be hard to imagine it today, but Frank Lloyd Wright was originally underwhelmed by Wingspread’s surroundings, remarking that it was “not at all stimulating before the house went up.”3 Fortunately, by marrying the design of Wingspread to its environment, Wright not only designed one of the most remarkable of the Prairie houses but also gave a leading crusader in environmental initiatives a permanent home.

Thank are due to Ms. Lois Berg, the Director of Administrative Services, and Mr. Donald Guzzetta, Maintenance Supervisor, both of The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, for providing information in this article about the environmental initiatives being undertaken at the Wingspread campus. For more information on The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread and its programs, please visit their website at www.johnsonfdn.org.

1,2 Johnson Wingspread Foundation

3 Wingspread by Craig Canine, © The Johnson Foundation, Inc., 1977.

Wright and Like 2010 is in Racine!

Wright and Like 2010 provides rare opportunities to access unique architecture in Racine and Kenosha that spans three centuries during the course of three days.

Friday Evening, June 4th - Spend Friday evening on the iconic SC Johnson campus exploring and dining in the new Fortaleza Hall, after a photographic tour of the rarely-seen interior of the SC Johnson Research Tower, presented by Mark Hertzberg in the Golden Rondelle.

Saturday, June 5th - The Wright and Like tour includes two of Wright's most important works, the SC Johnson Administration Building and Wingspread, both of them National Historic Landmarks. An elegant townhouse by Russell Barr Williamson and a mid-century Usonian, both in Kenosha, join a Prairie house in Racine's Southside Historic District, along with three 1950s homes by John Randal McDonald, including one recently enlarged and sensitively upgraded by Racine architect Ken Dahlin. Tour headquarters, a brick Italianate mansion with surprising Art Nouveau interior elements, completes this group of homes—all new to the Wright & Like Tour.

Sunday Morning, June 6th - Step back into the 19th century for a brunch in the Great Hall of the DeKoven Center and a tour of its Gothic Revival Style architecture.

As you explore these remarkable structures, their gardens and sites, we invite you to reflect on the influence of the built environment on the human spirit and to experience the positive effect of these poetic spaces and quiet places on the human soul.

Go to Frank Lloyd Wright Wisconsin for more information and to purchase tickets!