Fortaleza Hall

I bought two packs of marshmallow peeps yesterday, one yellow, one pink; three trays were in each pack, at a post-Easter half price (49¢ per tray). By the end of the day today, no peep had survived. They were as completely vanquished as the Spartans at Thermopylae.

Fortaleza Hall, completed last year on the headquarters campus of SC Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin, has been open to the public for only about six weeks now. That alone made it unusual for me. I'm almost never ahead of the curve when it comes to visiting interesting buildings, or anywhere else, come to think of it. No matter. Most of time, I'd rather see things marked by time and chance.

SC Johnson noted in a January press release that "the 60,000-square-foot facility, which broke ground in September 2007, has two distinct sections: Fortaleza Hall, which provides historical context for the company and the advances that continue to take place through displays and memorabilia, the Frank Lloyd Wright Library and the Legacy Gallery; and a second part, The Commons, which offers employee services like dining, a company store, bank and fitness center in a comfortable environment."

The company's a bit touchy about just anyone taking pictures of the structure, so I had to stand right at an open gate, just a few feet from the entrance to the Golden Rondelle, to take my shot. Not the best vantage, and probably not the best time of day for a photo either. At night, light from inside must radiate through the 85 ultra-clear, inch-thick, curving glass panels that ring the main part of the hall to create a haunting glow and clearly show the airplane hanging from the ceiling inside.

Back in 1935, Herbert F. Johnson Jr., grandson of the founder and head of the company at the time, outfitted a twin-engine Sikorsky S-38 amphibious aircraft and hop-skipped a 15,500-mile round-trip course from Racine to Fortaleza, Brazil, stopping in a good many North American, Caribbean and South American places en route.

"The purpose of this trip was to discover new stands of carnauba palms and whether existing growths could sustain the demand for raw material for Johnson Wax," notes the web site of the Southeastern Wisconsin Aviation Museum. "The model S-38 aircraft was remarkable in its day, flying a number of history-making flights in the 1920s and early 1930s. One of which was Lindberg's 1929 inaugural airmail flight for Pan American Airways from Miami to the Panama Canal. Of the original 100 Sikorsky S-38 planes built, none still exist."

Meaning that the airplane hanging from the ceiling of Fortaleza Hall like the Spirit of St. Louis at the Smithsonian isn't the one H.F. Johnson flew to Brazil. He later sold that plane, and through some mishap it ended up in the ocean off New Guinea, only to be discovered in 2006.

Instead, the plane that hangs over everything in the hall is a replica built in the 1990s by Owatonna, Minn.-based Born Again Restorations. To the casual observer, looking up several floors from the gleaming white floor and bright clear walls of Fortaleza Hall, it looks like Born Again did a swell job. A functional job, too, since H.F. Johnson's son Sam Johnson (d. 2004), who succeeded his father as boss wax man, had it built for more than just hanging in a building. He and his sons flew the thing to Fortaleza in 1998 in a re-creation of the original carnauba-seeking expedition.

Two staircases on opposite sides of the round hall lead from ground level down to a circular expanse of floor directly below the airplane. Carved on the wall next to one staircase are quotes by H.F. Johnson. On the wall next to the other staircase are quotes by Sam Johnson. I don't remember any of the quotes now, but they made me wonder whether I've ever said anything worthy of being carved in stone, literally that is. "Statistics don't apply to individuals"? "Foolish willows don't grow into wise old oaks"? "Every man loves the smell of his own farts"? Maybe not, if those are the best I can do (and that last one is supposedly an Icelandic proverb). Mainly, though, I'm not qualified because I wasn't born into a family of consumer-product industrialists who have the scratch to hire Lord Norman Foster to build something.

The floor of the hall was as amazing as the quote-stairs were silly. The floor features a polyconic projection, mosaic map of the Americas created by one John Yarema of Troy, Mich., nine-time recipient of the National Wood Flooring Association Floor of the Year Award, according to his web site. He ought to get another floor award just for this map, which is made of 19,200 pieces of three-inch by three-inch blocks of wood. Not just any wood, but four different types -- black walnut, American cherry, maple and hornbeam -- to give the map four different colors. Why four colors? To make it a topographical map. The route that the Johnsons flew in 1935 and 1998 is marked in brass, with each stop along the way named. The map alone was worth driving to Wisconsin to see.

In a room next to the floor map were exhibits about the Johnsons and their company. Interesting enough, but I kept wandering back to look at the map until it was time to go upstairs again to see the Frank Lloyd Wright Library, as well as something else amazing in its own right: a vertical garden (mur vegetal) by Frenchman Patrick Blanc, reportedly only one of four such installations in the United States. It's a 49-foot by 18-foot wall of plants featuring 79 species, or about 2,500 total plants. Without the use of soil.

How does M. Blanc do that? The Wall Street Journal wrote about the concept in 2005: "He applies a sheet of PVC to a metal frame and staples a synthetic felt onto the PVC... Seeds, cuttings and full-grown plants -- about 20 per square meter -- are put in pockets cut into the felt, where their roots will take hold and feed from the water and fertilizer absorbed by the felt. Blanc chooses plants for their ability to live together..."

So there are new things under the sun. Or in this case, under sunlight through enormous glass walls.