Skip the city skyline. Wisconsin’s wildest architecture sits inside an office park: Officials say

Wikimedia Commons/Daniel X. O'Neil
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Only Working Headquarters
You can walk through the only corporate headquarters Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed that a company still uses today. It sits in Racine, Wisconsin, and once you step inside, nothing about it looks like a regular office. Columns shaped like giant lily pads hold up a ceiling that seems to float, and the walls aren’t made of ordinary windows at all. A slim tower next door hangs its floors from a single core sunk deep into the ground, and that’s just the start. Wikimedia Commons/Daniel X. O'Neil
The Only Working Wright Headquarters Left
SC Johnson’s global headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, is the only corporate headquarters Frank Lloyd Wright designed that remains in operation, according to the company. Two Wright buildings anchor the campus: the Administration Building and the Research Tower. Free guided tours take you inside both, so you don’t need an architecture background to walk through. The site holds National Historic Landmark status and earned the American Institute of Architects’ Twenty-five Year Award. Lake Michigan sits just blocks away, and Chicago sits about 90 minutes south. Wikimedia Commons/gillfoto
H.F. Johnson Bet Everything on Wright
In 1936, third-generation company leader H.F. Johnson Jr. hired Wright to design a new office building. Johnson had a more conventional plan already lined up, but he scrapped it to bet on Wright’s modern vision instead. The Administration Building opened in 1939, and it helped revive a career that had slowed. Wright came back years later to design the Research Tower, which opened in 1950. Together, the two buildings became one of Wright’s boldest experiments in workplace design. Wikimedia Commons/Jeff dean
Walk Into the Great Workroom
The heart of the Administration Building is the Great Workroom, a single open hall that spans more than half an acre with no interior walls breaking it up. Wright wanted the space to feel, in his own words, as inspiring as a cathedral. You stand under a ceiling that seems to float free, resting only on rows of tall white columns. Natural light pours in from above, so the whole room glows instead of gleams. Nothing about it feels like a typical office. Wikimedia Commons/Daniel X. O'Neil
Meet the Famous Lily Pad Columns
Wright called these columns dendriform, meaning tree-shaped, but you’ll probably reach for a simpler word.

Most visitors call them lily pads, mushrooms, or golf tees, and once you see them, you won’t unsee it. Each column starts just 9 inches wide at its base, then blossoms at the top into a broad circular pad about 18.5 feet across. Set on a grid, the pads nearly touch each other overhead, and together they form the ceiling itself. You’re standing under a concrete forest. Wikimedia Commons/Carol M. Highsmith
The Sandbag Test That Made History
When Wright proposed these slim columns, the state industrial commission doubted they could hold the roof at all. The columns needed to support 12 tons of weight before officials would approve them. So in 1937, Wright staged a public test, piling far more weight than required onto a single column while a crowd watched. The column held well past the required load before anyone called the test off. That single afternoon cleared the way for construction to begin. Wikimedia Commons/Daniel X. O'Neil
Walls Built From Glass Tubing
Instead of ordinary windows, the building uses about 43 miles of Pyrex glass tubing stacked in bands along the walls. The tubes let in soft, diffused light while blurring your view of the street outside. Wright designed the building to look inward, shutting out the industrial surroundings that once sat just beyond the property line. You’ll find the tubes running beneath the mezzanine and wrapped around the tops of the columns. The effect gives you a bright interior without a trace of glare. Wikimedia Commons/Carol M. Highsmith
Cherokee Red and Furniture Built to Match
Wright chose a warm reddish tone called Cherokee Red as the main color across the whole campus, and it shows up everywhere you look. He also designed the office furniture himself, down to the desks and chairs, so they’d fit the flow of the open workroom. The original chairs had three legs, and workers kept tipping them over, so Wright reworked the design with four legs instead. Furniture and building were meant to read as one connected idea, not two separate projects layered together. Wikimedia Commons/Carol M. Highsmith
Look Up at the Soaring Research Tower
The Research Tower rises 153 feet, making it one of the only tall buildings Wright ever designed. It holds 15 floors and ranks among the tallest structures ever built on the cantilever principle. Square floors alternate with smaller round mezzanine levels as the tower climbs, wrapped in the same brick and glass tubing you saw on the main building. From the ground, the slim tower almost seems to hang in the air rather than stand on it.

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The post Skip the city skyline.

You’ll want to look twice. Wikimedia Commons/dwhartwig
The Taproot Holding It All Up
Every floor of the tower extends outward from a single central core that Wright called the taproot, comparing it to how a tree anchors itself through its roots. That core measures 13 feet across and sinks about 54 feet into the ground below you. It carries the stairs, the elevator, the pipes, and the wiring, and it holds the building’s entire weight on its own. Nothing supports the outer edges of the floors, so the walls around you carry no load at all. Wikimedia Commons/Michael Barera
Where Raid, Glade, and Pledge Began
The tower served as SC Johnson’s research lab for decades, and well-known products including Raid, Glade, OFF!, and Pledge all got their start inside it. The lab was left much as it was when scientists worked there, with test tubes, scales, and gas ports still in place. Touring the lower floors feels like stepping straight into a 1950s laboratory rather than a museum exhibit. The tower closed as a working lab in 1982, and two lower floors reopened to the public in 2014. Wikimedia Commons/gillfoto
Fortaleza Hall and the Plane Hanging Inside
Fortaleza Hall, designed by Foster + Partners, opened in 2010 as a glass-walled gathering space at the edge of the campus. At its center hangs Carnauba, a replica of the Sikorsky S-38 amphibious plane. Company leader Sam Johnson flew the original aircraft to Fortaleza, Brazil, with his sons in 1998, and the replica now floats where everyone can see it. A tall living wall of green plants fills one side of the hall, and the sweeping glass front makes the plane visible from outside. Wikimedia Commons/dwhartwig
The Golden Rondelle’s Space Age Detour
The round, gold, disk-shaped Golden Rondelle Theater stands at the edge of the campus, and it looks nothing like the brick buildings nearby. It began life as the Johnson Wax Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair before the company moved it to Racine, where it reopened in 1967. You can still watch SC Johnson films here, including the Academy Award-winning short “To Be Alive!” Its space-age shape gives the whole campus one more surprise before you leave. Wikimedia Commons/Carol M. Highsmith
Book a Tour of the Racine Campus
You can tour the SC Johnson Administration Building and Research Tower yourself, starting at the Golden Rondelle Theater at 1525 Howe Street in Racine. Tours are free, but you’ll need a reservation, since spots fill up and groups run about 24 people. You can photograph the building exteriors, though interior photos aren’t allowed. Look for two giant Wright-designed stone sculptures, Nakoma and Nakomis, near the base of the Research Tower, and ask about touring Wingspread, the Wright-designed Johnson family home just north of the city. This article was created with AI assistance and human editing. Read more from this brand:

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