Johnson-Boyd House
The Johnson-Boyd House or Keland house was listed for sale in September of 2022 for sale for $725,000. It recently sold for $300K above its asking price! View the listing on Zillow here. Of Herbert Fisk Johnson’s two children, only daughter Karen truly loved the house that Frank Lloyd Wright had designed for her father; […]
Herbert Jacobs House I
In the early 1930s – at about the same time he was putting together a group of apprentices in Spring Green, Wisconsin – Frank Lloyd Wright was beginning to envision the “ideal city”, where homes could be available for the average family. The “Usonian” homes, as they became known, could be easily constructed, were affordable […]
Herbert Johnson House “Wingspread”
Before there were Lincoln Logs, there was Frank Lloyd Wright. Before there was Frank Lloyd Wright, there was Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel or, more simply, Froebel. He, according to Wikipedia: “laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities.” We now know that particular and important foundational […]
Taliesin
Our chosen tour at Taliesin — the Highlights Tour — consisted of two (very quickly passing) hours, first inside the original architectural school with its huge assembly Hall, and then to Taliesin itself, where we were awed by Wright’s Personal Studio. The tour was devoted to exactly twenty visitors, curious about the architect and where […]
Seth Peterson Cottage
One of the very last Frank Lloyd Wright-designed structures ever to be built, the Seth Peterson cottage was another example of Wright’s Usonian homes, commissioned in 1958 by Seth Peterson while Wright was finishing work on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York — a project that occupied some sixteen years of Wright’s life. […]
John Pew House
Just across the street from the northeast corner of the Blackhawk Country Club and tucked neatly into the woods on a narrow strip of land on the shores of Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin is the incredible, Wright-designed Pew House. It was built in 1940 for John and Ruth Pew by Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship. From […]
Van Tamelen House (1956)
According to Wikipedia, Marshall Erdman (born Mausas Erdmanas on 29 September 1922, in Tverai, Lithuania) “emigrated to the United States at age 17” and, after high school, “studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” After service in the Army Corps of Engineers during WW II (where he helped build the pontoon bridge at […]
Thomas P. Hardy House (1905)
It may be quite difficult to imagine what Racine Wisconsin looked like in 1905. But a Google Maps search for the city at that time period results in an amazing view of an area not far from the SC Johnson campus, where Frank Lloyd wright designed two buildings circa 1936; the Administration Building, which opened […]
SC Johnson Research Tower (1936)
Touring the SC Johnson Research Tower is like taking a giant step back in time… for several reasons. The tour takes you back to the age of test tubes, scales, gas ports and hand-written notes – giving one a real feel for what it might have been like to work in a 1950’s research laboratory. […]
SC Johnson Administration Building
Of the many Frank Lloyd Wright structures that grace the National Register of Historic places, two very special buildings that signify a relationship between the architect and a corporate leader occupy prominent places on that list. That relationship began in 1935 and continues to this day. The Best in the World In 1936, construction was […]