The Golden Rondelle

According to the SC Johnson web site, "the Golden Rondelle was originally designed by Lippincott and Margulies as the SC Johnson Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1964-65... At the Fair, the Golden Rondelle had a soaring superstructure of 90-foot high columns that arched inward to form a partial canopy over the rest of the building."

It's a little hard to find an image of the Golden Rondelle as it appeared in '64, though there's a rendering here toward the bottom of the page. These days, the theater is in Racine, Wisconsin. At 2:50 pm on April 2, 2010, it looked like this:

"Taliesen Associate Architects, the architectural group founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, was commissioned to redesign the structure to compliment [sic] the company's existing Wright designed Administration Building and Research Tower," SC Johnson continues. "Construction began in 1966 and the new building was officially dedicated and opened to the public in July 1967. Only the theater portion of the original structure remained; it is now suspended between two auxiliary buildings with curved, Cherokee red brick walls and horizontal bands of glass tubes similar to the other Wright designed SC Johnson facilities. These auxiliary buildings house the administrative offices for the company's guest relations and public tour program."

So it does. If you want to tour any of the SC Johnson buildings, you go to the first floor of the Golden Rondelle structure -- not the theater itself, which is accessed on the second floor -- and wait there for your tour to begin. On display in a large glass case in the waiting area are an astonishing variety of familiar products by SC Johnson -- Johnson's Wax when I was growing up -- such as Drano, Glade, Pledge, Scrubbing Bubbles, Shout, Windex, Saran Wrap, Ziploc, Off!, Raid and more. I looked at the display thinking, "They make that? And that?" Clearly the company knows a thing or two about maintaining brand loyalty in a retail environment that never sits still.

We were able to take a peek inside the theater before we left. The seats are arrayed stadium-style, like they might be at a planetarium or IMAX theater, and the curving ceiling is a golden color. Interesting, but not actually what we came to see. Last week, when I got the urge to visit Racine, I called SC Johnson to make reservations to tour the Administration Building and Great Workroom, a well-known work by Frank Lloyd Wright. Those tours were all booked, but SC Johnson was happy to show us around Fortaleza Hall.

I made the reservation without actually knowing what that was. But I looked it up and found out we were going to see a spanking-new building by Norman Foster and partner-in-charge Giles Robinson, completed only last year and opened to the public only in February 2010. More about that tomorrow.