JUNE 2020 Volume 25 Issue 2 WRIGHT in WISCONSIN MEMBER NEWSLETTER \ CELEBRATING THE LEGACY OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT Drawing Frank MICHAEL PIPHER EXPLORES WRIGHT’S ARCHITECTURAL VISION page 4 PAGE 2 PAGE 3 PAGE 11 PAGE 13 News & Notes: Wright in Wright in Wisconsin finalizes Robert Hartmann revisits the The Atom Brick Co. is set to Wisconsin items of interest reorganization, looks ahead Geneva Inn in Lake Geneva offer a model of SC Johnson © Michael Pipher News & Notes Remembering Jane Kinney • Taliesin Reopens for 2020 Tour Season with Special Guidelines President’s Message In May, we said goodbye to Jane this Usonian home involved active by GEORGE HALL Kinney, of Madison. Jane, long-time family participation. Patrick Kinney, owner of J. Kinney Florist, was the a local lawyer, quarried and hauled daughter of Patrick Kinney and Mar- the necessary limestone. More re- garet (Murrish) Kinney, who commis- cently, Jane and her astrophysicist sioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design sister, Anne, opened the family home a home for them in Lancaster. for overnight stays. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin last toured the Wright Foundation: “Margaret had home in 2018. We will very much © Joan Hall © Joan initially experienced Wright’s archi- © Anne Kinney miss Jane, her wonderful, outgoing tecture firsthand while working at personality, the stories she told about Hertzberg © Mark Taliesin as an assistant to Wright’s Completed in 1953 using a double In our February newsletter, I alluded to rebuilding the or- nual Wright and Like tour, is on indefinite hold. If you can sister (Jane Wright Porter).” hexagonal module, construction of NEWS & NOTES CONTINUES ON PAGE 10 ganization. Now that the board is nearly finished with the respond favorably to our forthcoming membership appeal, details, I can elaborate. we thank you. We were organized and incorporated in 2017 as a suc- Meanwhile, our Madison office remains closed, although WRIGHT IN WISCONSIN VOLUME 25 ISSUE 2 cessor corporation to Wright in Wisconsin Inc., for which we continue to monitor messages left by phone, email, our WRIGHT IN WISCONSIN is published three times annually by the IRS had issued a not-for-profit-organization 501(c)(3) website and our post office box. Our newsletter, website CONTENTS Wright in Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization designed to determination in the 1990s. Last December we discovered and social media platforms remain available for Wright promote, protect and preserve the heritage of Frank Lloyd our new Form 1023 filing, mailed last July, had been lost. sites in Wisconsin to use, as we try to keep you up-to-date Wright, his vision and his architecture — as well as the work of his apprentices, Taliesin Associated Architects and like-minded In the course of a thorough look-back, we also discovered with individual site information as it is shared with us. architects — in his native state of Wisconsin. Membership other issues we’ve since addressed by filing restated ar- When it becomes possible for the Frank Lloyd Wright benefits include discounts at the Monona Terrace Gift Shop and ticles of incorporation and corrected annual reports. Trail to resume, we’re there to aid travelers with our office on Wright and Like™ tour tickets, this newsletter, volunteer From our network of friends in the Frank Lloyd Wright and website. ARTICLES opportunities and more. Donors of $100 or more receive reciprocal membership benefits at Wright sites nationwide world, we’ve received marvelous cooperation — along (benefits vary by location). To join, visit us at with helpful suggestions. It took countless hours to fix the Wright and Like Update 03 President’s Message www.wrightinwisconsin.org or contact us at the number or problems, but we also adopted board policies and bylaw address below. changes that assure that something like this doesn’t occur While the coronavirus pandemic continues to intervene 04 Drawing Frank Wright in Wisconsin Member Newsletter in the future. Given the current economy and the role of and affect us all, we’re postponing Wright and Like 2020 the hard-pressed IRS, we don’t expect to hear anything for in Madison. Like most of us, the owners of our tour 13 SC Johnson Headquarters Editor Mark Hertzberg Designer and copy editor Brian R. Hannan at least six months. Wags among us suggest that Wright homes, as well as our event partners (Monona Terrace, the Special thanks to Patrick J. Mahoney for the vintage postcard would have well understood the many difficulties, as we Wisconsin Historical Society and Madison School and and to Robert Hartmann for his vintage pictures. do our best to follow the rules and seek to perpetuate his Community Recreation), are all observing “safer at home” legacy. practices. We will not set an event date until everyone in- Wright in Wisconsin Board of Directors and Staff Please contact me through our office if you have ques- volved is able to safely resume group contact, especially Interim president George Hall tions. given the at-risk age group most of us fall into. Vice president, operations Open Like you, I’m receiving heartfelt pleas for donations We are actively participating with the Frank Lloyd Vice president, communications Brian R. Hannan from Wisconsin and other Wright sites open to the public, Wright Building Conservancy’s public sites group, receiv- Director, at-large Ken Dahlin Director, at-large Henry St. Maurice as keeping critical staff on board, paying bills and continu- ing current information from various sources, such as the Secretary Mark Hertzberg ing site maintenance, while making plans for re-opening, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on best prac- REGULAR FEATURES Treasurer Curt Szymczak are important considerations. When you consider those ap- tices for when and how to access sites. Through all of this, 11 Vintage Photos Office administrator Bill Swan peals, please keep in mind that our own membership re- while giving thanks to everyone in the medical and social 14 Tours & Events Wright in Wisconsin newal forms and annual request for donations — which we service community caring for the sick and keeping us safe, 1 6 Vintage Postcard P.O. Box 6339, Madison, WI 53716-0339 normally mail in December but which have been on hold we also need to give hope for the future as we continue to (608) 287-0339 www.wrightinwisconsin.org until now, pending the refiling of the requisite paperwork advocate and educate on behalf of Wright and historic with the IRS. preservation. Our financial needs are no less critical than other organi- zations’, especially because our major fundraiser, the an- PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE CONTINUES ON PAGE 10 © Brian R. Hannan LEFT: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa ON THE COVER: SC Johnson Administration Building, (1936), Racine. Courtesy of Michael Pipher 02 WRIGHT IN WISCONSIN MEMBER NEWSLETTER VOLUME 25 ISSUE 2 JUNE 2020 03 YWCA (1949), unbuilt, Racine Drawing Frank Artist Michael Pipher Explores Wright’s Architectural Vision with Ink-and-Paper Renderings INTERVIEW with BRIAN R. HANNAN These days, one of the toughest intended to be used. While you can tickets in town is for a tour of a Frank take a tour of a Wright public site, Lloyd Wright-designed property. you mostly cannot sit down or touch While a few sites have opened in the anything, so you’re truly not getting midst of the current pandemic, other the full experience he intended. sites will remain indefinitely closed. Wright would frame the landscape So we sat down with Michael with the placement of windows; he Pipher, a New Jersey artist, for a chat lowered ceilings to force the eye out- about the more than 5,300 ink-and- ward to nature. Here we get into a paper renderings he’s made of area that transcends what architecture Wright’s work over the course of is and what it truly can be. I think nearly four decades — the buildings when you hear stewards of a Wright- we know and love, lost along the way designed home talk about their house, or never built. He agreed to offer you hear them say how the home Wright in Wisconsin members a vir- changed their lives for the better. You tual tour via several of his rarely seen have just another part of the genius © Brian R. Hannan interior drawings. that was Wright. I believe he wanted Pipher said he began drawing Michael Pipher at the Seth Peterson Cottage not only the owners but also their “from a young age, mostly freehand guests to sit and think of their place stuff like cartoons. I had a love of Wright understood about interior in nature. Disney and the buildings there. I was space — for its own sake — that I know it is very philosophical to intrigued by them. enhances its beauty and utility? think that a building can truly touch “Having a mom in real estate, I was something deep inside us; provoking exposed to homes I knew — the ones The sense of space in any Wright thought is very far removed in res- I liked, I would start drawing those structure is so much a part of the idential architecture today. You look for fun.... Wright entered my life a whole design. This has been the case at new housing developments today, short time after that with images of since the early days to the last proj- and you see that what Wright called Fallingwater, SC Johnson, Annunci- ects he designed. The spaces devel- “the paper box boys” are still doing ation Greek Orthodox Church, Robie oped over his career, but the main things the way they did back in House and the Marin County Civic concept remained.