1939 - Architecture, Real Estate

Architecture, Real Estate

The Johnson Wax Research Tower opens in April at Racine, Wis. Herbert F. Johnson Jr. of the S. C. Johnson Co. has commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design the structure, and it has cost more than $850,000. Its ceiling is supported by 62 tapering concrete columns that resemble giant golf tees or water-lily stems, measuring as little as nine inches in diameter at the bottom and 30 inches at the top. They extend upward to eight disks, each 18 feet in diameter, which form a geometric canopy overhead, but although the tower is an aesthetic triumph it has practical problems.

U.S. motels and tourist courts number 13,500, while the country has 14,000 year-round hotels containing at least 25 guest rooms each (see 1925). The number of motels will increase to more than 41,000 in the next 20 years as America embraces the automobile culture, and the number of year-round hotels will fall to just over 10,000 (see Holiday Inns, 1952).