Visit These 5 Frank Lloyd Wright-Designed Commercial Buildings

SC Johnson corporate headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin

The buildings Wright designed for SC Johnson, the maker of household brands like Glade, Off! and Windex, made Architectural Digest’s 2017 list of the “100 Most Important Buildings of the 20th Century.” They remain part of a working company headquarters.

Although the roof of the administration building (1939) leaked in the early years, its open office plan, top-lit space and “lily pad” columns were unusual then. The 15-story cantilevered Research Tower (1950), which features Pyrex tubes instead of windows, closed in 1982 because it no longer met safety codes; it was renovated in 2013.

Like many other Wright towers in the Midwest, Research Tower marks “that here is something important, here is something where we transformed the wealth of agriculture or industry into a wider world,” says Aaron Betsky, professor of architecture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. “They also present a different shape to the rolling hills or flatness of the land,” adds the former president of the School of Architecture at Taliesin in Scottsdale.

The company gets about 15,000 visitors a year, says Adrienne Pedersen, a spokeswoman for SC Johnson. On various tours, which are all free, visitors will see the Administration Building, including the Great Workroom, Research Tower (a third-floor laboratory has been recreated to what it would have looked like years ago), and some Wright-designed furniture, including a three-legged chair, she adds. There also is a gift shop, and a gallery offering rotating Wright-related exhibits. Tour times and days change seasonally.

The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel was the first building at Florida Southern ​College.

John Waters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy

Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida

Florida’s oldest private college hosts the world’s largest collection of Wright-designed structures in one place. It also is the only Wright-designed college campus. Of 18 buildings designed, 13 were built over more than two decades starting in the 1930s.

The college offers several tours, including a night tour, ranging from $5 to $125 per person. Members of AARP, AAA and the military can get a 10 percent discount. Don’t miss: the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, with a 65-foot-tall bell tower and vaulted skylights; Fletcher Theatre, the only Wright-designed theater-in-the-round to be built; Wright’s only constructed planetarium; the Water Dome; and the Esplanade, a more than mile-long system of covered walkways between buildings.

​​The Lindholm Oil Company gas station features a cantilevered roof and glass-fronted lounge. ​​​

By McGhiever - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Lindholm Oil Company gas station, Cloquet, Minnesota

This is the only Wright-designed gas station that is still operational. With a cantilevered copper roof, glass-fronted lounge and skylighted garage bays, it’s not your average roadside station.

Tourists visit from all over the world, says Chris Chartier, business owner of the now-named R.W. Lindholm Service Station. He leases the building and lets visitors roam and walk up to the lounge.

Wright “represents a sense of the possibilities and beauty of the landscape that is such a part of this country,” says Betsky, the architecture professor. “I suggest you look at what he did and not the myth he built up around himself.”