Pullman

In the year 1880, George Pullman started building a town just south of Chicago. By that, I don't mean that he built the first building in a remote location hoping others would follow and settle in a similar spot. I mean he started building a whole town from scratch. With his own money. And not so he could sell those properties to others at a profit or something like that. He intended to hang on to every last building he built.

In the 20 years or so before 1880, George Pullman had a pretty good run in business. In the late 1850s he had an idea that folks might need a comfortable rail car to ride around in for days while exploring the United States by means of the rapidly expanding railroad network. He was right. That first car, the Pullman Old No. 9, featured a wood-burning stove, some comfortable seats and a series of bunks for sleeping overnight. The success of that first car allowed Pullman to start his own company, which he named after himself. 

Pullman rolled out a new and improved version of the Old No. 9 in 1865. The Old No. 9 was an adaptation of an already existing railroad car. The 1865 Pullman car, The Pioneer, was built from scratch as an overnight sleeper car. Gone were the wood burning stoves and added were folding bunks that allowed more space for traveling in comfort during the day. 

He kept working. An improved, longer Pullman sleeper car was rolled out in 1876. 

They kept selling. The railroads were expanding quickly. The amount of track in this country tripled between 1870 and 1890 from 53,000 miles to more than 160,000 miles. That translated into a booming business for George Pullman. Very booming. 

It is difficult to understand in the year 2021 how successful these sleeper cars were. While Amtrak still has overnight accommodations on their trains today, I can't believe they drive anything about the industry. But in the 1860s, Pullman sleeper cars were a significant and important mode of transportation. So much so that when The Pioneer was introduced with a wider body than all previous rail cars, platforms were re-built and bridges widened so The Pioneer could serve stations and fit under bridges. Pullman was a mover.

1955 Pullman Car.

So sometime in the 1870s, Pullman decided the next step for the company was to build a new factory and headquarters. Since he was going to all that trouble, he decided he may as well build housing for all his workers while he was at it. And supply them with all the conveniences that they may need in life to live in a town at that time some travel distance from the city of Chicago. After all, they would pretty much need to move out of town to keep their jobs. Welcome to Pullman!

Reaction to Pullman's gesture of building a town for his workforce was mixed. Pullman himself saw his endeavor as altruistic, giving his loyal workers a safe, family oriented community free of danger and temptation. Others saw it as a method for Pullman to exercise an unnatural level of control over the people he employed to build his sleeper cars. There is perhaps more than a kernel of truth in the latter point of view. 

In some ways, Pullman was doing for his employees just what medieval landlords and former plantation owners had done to serfs and freed slaves: giving them protection and a place to live, but setting the cost of that lodging (Pullman did charge his employees rent to live in his company housing, after all) and certain conditions about their lives. After all, you could only do in Pullman what George Pullman had put in his town. Church? Yes. Library? Sure. Stables and railway station. Umm...yeah. How else are you going to get in and out of town? Shops and a theater and a hotel? Yes and yes and yes. Saloon? No. Hard pass on that one. Pullman didn't believe in it.

Still, as long as Pullman was profitable and happy and everyone (mostly) agreed with him, I suppose it could have worked out fine forever. I mean, how badly do you need a saloon if your boss is like the ultimate philanthropist and greatest guy in the world?

The Pullman headquarters, now the Pullman National Monument Visitor Center.

Greenstone Church, Pullman.

Of course, that's not what happened. Eventually all booms bust, at least a little. And sure enough, the boom times for the Pullman Company eventually hit a snag.

In 1893, a nationwide depression hit, and demand for Pullman's sleeper cars dropped. For the first time in a long while, George Pullman was faced with a losing business situation. And his reaction was not good. 

You'd think someone who could afford to build an entire town with the profits from his company and who saw himself as a father figure of sorts for the people that he employed might be inclined to bend over backwards to keep those people who had built him a fortune safe and secure. Not so much. Not here. He decided he needed to lay off some of his workforce (who at this point lived miles from any other real viable source of employment, remember). For those that remained, working hours would increase and wages would be cut by 25%. 25% is a lot. I guess it's better than not having a job but, let's face it, it's a big cut.

And rent? Well that didn't change. George Pullman was going to pay you less to work in Pullman but still charge you the same amount to live there.

Now maybe I don't know all the factors that drove Pullman's reaction to this downturn in business but I do know this: in 1898, just half a decade after he made these decisions relative to his workforce, the Pullman Company was valued at $63.5 million. That's $2 billion in 2021 money. I have to believe Pullman had enough in the bank to ride this one out a little without taking it out of his employees. But then again, this was also the 1890s. 

Hotel Florence, named after George Pullman's daughter.

The former stables, Pullman.

The reaction to Pullman's cost cutting measures was a strike, with the American Railway Union (ARU) supporting Pullman's employees. And then things really devolved from there.

Pullman doubled down on his decision and refused to give an inch, which predictably resolved nothing. Eventually, the ARU extended the strike in support of Pullman's workers to include no longer staffing any trains nationwide that pulled a Pullman car. Some of those trains also served the United States Postal Service so not moving Pullman cars meant not moving the mail. That got the federal government involved. Troops were deployed in 1894 (on the side of Pullman, of course), a few incidental deaths happened and eventually the strike was busted. 

I can easily imagine George Pullman thought he had won, but in many ways the strike of 1893 was the beginning of a series of events that ultimately spelled the end for the Pullman Company. George Pullman died in 1897, just one year before the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the charter issued to the Company allowed the construction of company offices, factories and support buildings but not housing. That decision forced the sale of the housing in Pullman, and not all sales were to employees of the company.

The 20th century brought more trouble for the Pullman Company. Antitrust legislation. Another labor dispute, this one with the porters who worked on Pullman's cars (we'll get to that...). The decline of the railroad and the rise of the automobile and of air travel. Despite all of that, the Pullman Company rolled out a new Pullman sleeper car model at least once a decade all the way through the 1950s. But ultimately, it was too much and then end came on January 1, 1969.

George Pullman and the company he founded are long gone. But Pullman still exists. Or at least a lot of it does. Sure, the factories are gone or abandoned; the market building is burned out; the railway station has been replaced; and the community center called the Arcade that housed the library, theater and shops is no longer there. But Pullman is not abandoned. It's a living, breathing neighborhood that carries the legacy of the Pullman Company and its founder, but has also moved well beyond George Pullman. And it's well worth a visit. We penciled it in on the last day of our recent Milwaukee to Chicago via Iowa swing over Labor Day weekend.

Now as luck would have it, it was the grand opening weekend of the Pullman National Monument on the weekend we visited. The former Pullman administration building and what's left of the adjacent boarded up and burned out factories form the initial stage of the National Monument created by presidential decree by President Obama way back in 2015. Being there for the grand opening was a blessing and a curse. While it was awesome to be a part of the event, access to both the Visitor Center (they moved us through in 15 minutes total, including the gift shop) and the Hotel Florence (we couldn't get in at all) was extremely limited.

I'm assuming the restoration of the factories may be on the horizon somehow as funding becomes available, although that's honestly a bit of a guess. Otherwise there's not a whole lot to see there beyond the Visitor Center (on the ground floor of the administration building); a landscaped plaza near the old rear erecting shops; and the Hotel Florence just to the south. Admittedly, we would have spent at least twice as much time in the Visitor Center if we weren't on the clock and being reminded every five minutes of how much time we had remaining.

If what remains of the company part of the town of Pullman is pretty cool (and it really is), the rest of the town blows it away with both quantity and quality. While the Pullman Company was in decline, the town itself was anything but. The factories are shells of what they used to be and most of the buildings built by Pullman to serve the community are gone, but the houses are (to the untrained eye at least) all still there and gorgeously cared for by people who seem to love living there.

The details of these Victorian houses are incredible and they don't look any worse for wear for the 140 years since they were built. This was not a community built with expediency and the lowest cost in mind. It is a testament to the people who built the town and the people who have lived there and cared for it that there are this many perfect looking residences in one place. There are literally blocks upon blocks of these things. It's impressive. If you can stand to walk around a town and gaze at and take pictures of strangers' houses (I clearly can), I would highly suggest a walk through the neighborhoods of Pullman in addition to visiting the National Monument.

Then before you leave, make one more stop, please. At the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum on the north end of town. In a lot of ways, the story of the Pullman Porters is more remarkable and important than that of the company that hired them.

Back in the 1860s when you purchased a Pullman sleeper car, it came fully staffed. Call it a service contract, if you will. A way for George Pullman to offer a consistently high level of service that was expected of the Pullman brand. No matter where you traveled on a Pullman car, you would received the exact same level of personal attention and pampering that you would on any other Pullman trip. It provided Pullman a lot of control over his customers' experiences, while at the same time bringing a consistent stream of revenue to his bank account.

To staff his cars with porters, George Pullman turned to a group of people who in the 1860s had little economic opportunity. He decided he would only hire black men to perform this job for him. Another altruistic move from the Pullman Company? Maybe. Or like the housing he built for his workers miles away from anything else, maybe not. Pullman had a very specific thought process when it came to hiring black men (including many recently freed slaves) for these positions. He knew he could pay them very little, could work them long hours (up to 400 hours a month in some cases) and could expect an appropriately servile attitude likely ingrained in their psyche based on their standing in mid-nineteenth century American society. I am also sure that all sorts of abuse came with the job, which he also needed someone to take well.

Now, despite George Pullman's motivation for this decision, he did end up giving unprecedented opportunities to a lot of men. At a time when few employers would even consider hiring people of color, the Pullman Company did it regularly. In the early 1900s, they were the largest employer of black men in the nation. And the opportunity did allow some men to live lives that they couldn't have imagined 20 or 30 years prior. At a time when there were few other opportunities other than sharecropping, with its cycle of perpetual poverty, out there, being a Pullman Porter was not the worst employment opportunity to take.

The Pullman Porters display in the Pullman National Monument Visitor Center.

Having said that, they were clearly separate from the other employees at the Pullman Company, and that separation extend to union representation. When Pullman's workers went on strike in 1893, they were welcomed by the American Railway Union. But...not the porters. They were excluded, not that it would have done them any good if they had joined that strike anyway. If the Pullman Porters were waiting for an invitation to join the ARU after that, it never came. Not 10 years later, not twenty years later. Never.

So in 1925, A. Philip Randolph and Milton P. Webster helped the porters form their very own union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), to start to advocate for the rights of the underpaid and overworked porters. It didn't work. Not at first, anyway. But the union kept at it, particularly Randolph, and eventually, 10 years after the formation of the BSCP, the Pullman Company recognized the union and began negotiation of a collective bargaining agreement that was signed two years later, improving working conditions for the union members.

The Pullman Porters had genuine status within their communities. They represented a different career track and a way out of what was pretty much no more than legalized ecomonic slavery that came in the wake of the end of the Civil War. But come 1937, they were also civil rights pioneers. 27 years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a major manufacturing company negotiated better working conditions with a union set up specifically to represent the rights of black employees.

If you are in Pullman, don't visit without stopping at the Pullman Porter Museum and understand their story a little better. It won't take you long to walk through and read every word (not kidding) in the Museum but it's well worth a stop. Their story includes a significant step towards being closer to equality for people of color. Although let's face it, we are not really close to being all the way there some 80 plus years later.

No pics allowed inside the Pullman Porter Museum, so I had to be satisfied with this exterior shot.

Now on a regular visit to Pullman, our day would have stopped there. We would have headed back to Chicago to eat at one of Rick Bayless' restaurants or go look at Edward Hopper's Nighthawks in the Art Institute of Chicago or hit up a blues club. But opening weekend offered us a different kind of Pullman experience: we got to walk through some genuine Pullman sleeper cars. 

Visit today and you won't have that opportunity, but to celebrate the Grand Opening, Amtrak hitched three privately owned cars to one of their engines and brought them to their birthplace for a weekend. I can't express how fortunate we were to have this opportunity, not to mention the foresight we had to get up early and get in line for some tickets that were all gone before 9:30 in the morning. I have never been in an overnight car of any train, whether historical or modern or built for sleeping or not. To do this in this place was special.

The three cars we walked through that day (in the order we walked through them) dated from 1953, 1955 and 1927. All three are privately owned and are all available for rent for short or long distance travel. All you need to do is pay a little money and make arrangements for Amtrak to hook up your rental car to one of their trains. I'll assume they don't come with porters.

The lounge area of the 1955 Pullman sleeper car.

Tight quarters: bunkbeds from the 1927 model.

I think it's fascinating to understand a little bit about how people used to travel. These days we hop on a plane or in the car (or both) and head out to where we need to go. We don't (generally) sleep in our cars and if you are a budget traveler like me, I'm sure you've had the pleasure of sleeping sitting up in a seat in coach on some overnight flight somewhere 30,000 feet or more over the globe at one time or another. But a multi-day journey over land without staying in a hotel? I've never done it. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Just that I've never done it.

But even if you have done it, I'm sure it's not quite like riding the rails in a Pullman car. Each car is like a mini bed and breakfast of sorts. Although one that, practically speaking, you can't really leave until you get to where you are going. In the meantime, as you travel across the country, you are sequestered in a cabin with (in all likelihood) a group of folks that you don't really know and can't really get away from. Days most likely would have been spent in the communal lounge areas of the cars (like the one in the second photograph above) because the bedrooms are too tiny to do anything other than sleep.

It's a bit of a crazy way to get from one place to another. But I guess considering the alternative would have been either wagon, horse or foot, all of which take a lot, lot, lot longer (and are a whole lot less comfortable), the Pullman cars probably represented absolute luxury that if you could afford, you did.

It's also like something out of an old movie. I could imagine as I sat in the lounge area in my cheeseburger shirt and J. Crew shorts, a cast of characters all dressed in their best clothes to travel across the prairie or some other place in the American west for days with nothing to do except get to know your fellow passengers or look out the window at countryside that you don't likely see very often. I guess air travel was around in the 1950s but this impression for sure applied when the 1927 Pullman car was first pulled across the country.

It is unlikely I will ever travel in a Pullman sleeper car. While I would love to take a rail journey across the United States someday, it would have to be when I have way more time than my current employer's time off policy allows on my hands. And of course, it wouldn't be in anything like a Pullman car, I'm sure. 

Like everything else we went through during the Pullman National Monument grand opening (except walking through the town, of course), we were rushed through these things. There was barely enough time to register exactly what you were looking at, but I guess in the end there was enough. I loved the 1927 car the best. Maybe it was because it was the least modified of the three or maybe it was because, for a few seconds, we got to step out onto the back platform of the car and imagine we were riding across what would be (even in the late 1920s) a country that was largely undeveloped west of the Mississippi River. It must have been pretty amazing, even if it might have tried my patience. I think we were quite fortunate to visit exactly when we did. Sometimes things work out like this.

More tight quarters. Maybe people weren't as big back then?

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How We Did It

Pullman is about a 20 to 30 minute drive south of downtown Chicago. There is tons of street parking and the town is super walkable. I appreciate all the "hellos" and "thank you for visiting" comments we got from residents while we were walking around the neighborhood. Maybe it was just because it was the grand opening of the National Monument but I kind of think it was more than that. This is a community worth being proud of and it shows.

The Pullman National Monument Visitor Center is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, when the National Monument is closed. Check their website for full details of what there is to do on site. I am sure our visit was as atypical as it gets. 

The A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is open from Thursday to Saturday. I would check their website to make sure these hours hold. Like I mentioned in the post itself, it's not going to take that long to walk through but supporting museums like this one that tell these sorts of stories is important. Just like in the main town, we found parking plentiful near the museum.

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The Farnsworth House

There is an undeniable and absolutely visceral thrill in visiting a famous work of architecture for the first time. At least there is for me. I'm talking butterflies in the stomach, fanboy type stuff. You turn a city corner or drive down a lane or walk thorough a garden and it's there. That work. Those walls. Those spaces. Those materials. That thing you have looked at in books or magazines or guides and suddenly it's right there in front of you for you to take in. To touch. To feel in your soul. It never gets old. No matter how much or how often or how infrequently I do it. It's exhilarating. 

I've experienced this feeling a lot in my life. I made a promise to myself when I graduated architecture school in early 1994 that I would spend my vacations at least once a year doing this. Seeking out the works of architecture I'd admired most in school and taking everything in. Paris. Finland. Amsterdam. Brussels. All over the United States. Each time, a thrill. A discovery. A confirmation that what I felt looking at pictures in a book was even better in person. Or most times anyway; sometimes (and not often) they disappointed me. But then again sometimes they made me drop to my knees in awe, which is probably a little melodramatic, but it did actually happen once.

I kept this stuff up for a while. I was pretty diligent and committed from 1994 to about 2007. I read guidebooks. I made maps. I lugged a camera all over the place that was way heavier than I would even think about carrying now. I filled eight 3" binders with slides that I rarely look at even though I DO still own a slide projector. Then I ran out of stuff to see. Or got interested in something else. Or maybe a little bit of both. OK, maybe more the latter.

In the years since 2007, I've traveled way wider and further than I ever had before. And in between safaris and walks to ancient Incan citadels and birdwatching and everything else I've been up to, I've managed to pick up some buildings that I missed between '94 and '07. The Maison de Verre in Paris. All of Antoni Gaudí's work in Barcelona. The Pantheon in Rome. Maybe some others.

Talk about a weak knees moment, by the way. My heart about stopped with joy when I found the Pantheon.

There were still some others out there on a mental list, including a probably pretty impractical house designed by Mies van der Rohe for Dr. Edith Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, just about 60 miles or so west of Chicago. 

I've had the Farnsworth House on my list for years. I've also visited Chicago at least four times since I started traveling in a serious way twenty seven years ago. I never went there. It seemed too far. But with the world seemingly off limits for travel for most of this year, this seemed like the ideal time to pick off some of my longstanding domestic sites that I'd just never gotten around to visiting. 2021 had to be the year I made it to the Farnsworth House. There was really no good excuse for passing this up for another year. And now...mission accomplished!

I made my way to the Farnsworth House with some pretty strong preconceived notions and none of them were flattering to either the house or the architect. The story of the house likely started as a chance meeting between Dr. Farnsworth and Mies at a party of some sort in the mid-1940s. Dr. Farnsworth was tired of staying in the city on weekends in the summers and longed for a country house where she could escape Chicago for a few days every week. Mies had the answer, one that turned out to be a glass box with precious few walls along the banks of a river prone to flooding. I told you there was bias.

Who does this? Who goes along with such a seemingly preposterous idea? And one that, by the way, ended up costing about 75% more than the desired price. A glass house for a single woman in rural Illinois. Are you kidding me? What is wrong with these clients who agree to these ideas kicked around by the famous architects they hire. I get it a little bit. Maybe I don't have enough money to get it completely. 

I'll also say this: I'm an architect and I don't get why Mies van der Rohe is so revered. He often pops up on lists of the very best architects of the 20th century (usually alongside Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier) and I don't understand it at all. I see no warmth. I see spaces that don't move me. I see skyscrapers with structural columns glued onto the exterior of buildings in a non-structural way and I don't get it. I don't want to touch Mies' buildings, and architects are famous (or infamous) for touching buildings; it makes us feel good somehow. 

But since I'd never been in one of his residences, I thought I should give it a shot. 

The approach to the Farnsworth House, the thing that builds that anticipation of that first view, is pretty much perfect. From the visitor center (obviously not in place during the time Edith Farnsworth owned the place), it is a gentle, half mile walk along, but separated from, the Fox River. The trees conceal the house until you reach the front patio and the place is revealed. I can't give Mies credit for this. Or Edith Farnsworth. Because the walkway was installed by Lord Peter Palumbo, who bought the house from Farnsworth. But it is pretty much perfect. A complete "oh my God, there it is (finally!)" moment.

Or it would be, if the fence surrounding the patio under reconstruction weren't there like it was when we visited. You can still get the sense that this reveal is correct. It would have been spectacular without that construction fencing. And one day, the fencing will go away again.

Two things on that first impression. First, the house seemed heavier than I thought it would. It didn't seem like a glass house. This is an impression that I would continue to have while walking through the house. The intent of the removal of the barrier between outside and in didn't seem to me like it worked. From either the outside or in. I felt inside when I was inside the house and I didn't feel space flowing into the house when I was on the exterior. I felt that the house was a heavy object when I was outside. It's the thickness of the floor and roof slabs, I think.

Second, it seemed way higher off the ground than I thought it would be. I expected a couple of feet. We were told 5'-3". If there's a rub with me and this house, it's the whole flooding thing. The house is notorious for being underwater when it shouldn't be (which is never). I expected the reason the place would be consumed by the Fox River so much was that it was so close to the water and it was so close to the ground. Mies apparently tried pretty hard to get the floor of the house high enough to avoid flooding. The problem was he really relied on rumor and folklore as his science when determining the first floor elevation.

The Farnsworth House awaits!!!

The patio under construction.

The story behind the siting of the Farnsworth House is that Mies really wanted it next a venerable maple tree near the river's edge. The tree would provide shade for the house in summer and protect it from getting too hot. He was advised to site the house further inland on the top of the slope to the street side of the property, but the allure of that maple was too much.

I guess he tried to get it right. He asked around with some local dudes about their memory of how high the river would get. They gave Mies their input: three feet was the answer. Mies erred on the side of caution and made it 5'-3". He missed the mark by about five feet. Yes, the river flooded its banks by about 10 feet one year.

That's FIVE FEET above the floor of the house!!! How do you mess it up that badly? I mean I know the answer to that is in the previous paragraph (he asked the neighbors) but how is checking with some locals the way to get to an answer this critical? The Farnsworth House (to me) is as famous for flooding as it is famous for its design. Major fail!

The irony is that the tree that located the building is gone. Oh well...

The front of the house and the stump of the maple.

Flooding and heaviness. That's what I got. I know my cynicism is showing through right now.

Then I went inside.

First off, let me say that the tour of this house is awesome. You get incredible information. You get a ton of time. And you get to take as many pictures as you want with so few people on the tour that you can really get all the pics you want without any issue. I'm not sure I can say this quite about any other famous house I've visited. I appreciate the access. No shoes and no touching but that's understandable really. This tour is special.

I am astonished to be writing these next words but the interior of this house was one of the best places I have been in years. The flow, the openness, the views, the light. All of that was so impressive. I continue to maintain that the separation between out and in was clearly there (there was no way we were outside when we were inside the Farnsworth House). I saw the glass and the floor elevation as separators from the landscape beyond. It didn't matter. I'm so in love that I would consider buying one of these (without the flooding, of course, and the leaks and the condensation) to hang out in on weekends. If this is supposed to be a weekend house, I buy it. I totally get it.

I can't afford one of these, for the record.

Admittedly, there are some quirks and some mistakes and a little vanity to the place. The porch echoes. It's noticeable when a tour guide is talking to you in there (although he supposed it might be advantageous to Edith Farnsworth's violin playing). The fireplace lacked a hearth originally; the wood just sat on the floor and the ash tended to blow around the place when the door and the two windows in the place were open at the same time (Palumbo fixed that one just like he did the approach to the house). And the kitchen has a custom light fixture designed specifically to show off the world's largest (at the time) stainless steel counter to people on the outside of the house looking in. I mean, why do you need this? why do you need to show off the kitchen counter at night to people looking at the house?

But the scale in the place is right. It seems way smaller on the inside than it does from the outside and this is a good thing. The furniture fits in the place. There's enough space to sit, to read, to relax and to entertain. This seems like a weekend house. Just ignore the flooding.

The kitchen. Check out that countertop.

And the light fixture. To show off the countertop.

It's right...except for the bedroom. I was honestly OK with the whole thing except for the bedroom. It's a weekend house. You have to sleep there. I'm not sure that Mies was really totally accepting of that concept. 

Bedrooms are inherently private. Glass houses are inherently not private. That stainless steel counter lit up to show it off from the outside of the house? About four feet from the location of the bed. And there's no door between the kitchen and bedroom. Or maybe bed area is a better term.

The design of the bed area was a bit of a bone of contention between Mies and Edith Farnsworth, apparently. Mies had this vision of no walls but eventually caved and agreed on a wardrobe that would stop well short of the ceiling to (in a sort of a limited way) cordon off the bed area from the rest of the house. They argued about the height of that wardrobe (Mies insisted on five feet which was not as tall as Dr. Farnsworth) before she worked around him and agreed to the wardrobe but got one of his associates to design it taller. 

I really can't imagine sleeping in the bed area comfortably, and that's coming from a grown man in 2021. I know it was originally a nine acre estate that was later expanded to triple that size and I also know there was not supposed to be anyone outside looking in (despite the whole kitchen light fixture thing), but there is so little keeping that area private. Maybe it's just me.

Private? Not exactly. The bathroom was way bigger than I expected.

So...overall despite the flooding and the privacy in the bedroom thing, I'm thumbs up on this one. I know..it's crazy. I'm crazy! But I can completely understand why Mies thinks he got this one right. The place is really pretty stunning. I'm actually very impressed. And that was on a visit with the terrace under construction. Not only did that issue affect the entry sequence, it also added the wooden stair shown in the second picture of this post which is decidedly NOT part of the permanent house. I'm on board. I'm shocked.

Now, I wouldn't be an architect if I didn't say a little something about some of the details. So here goes.

One of the more celebrated details of the house is the connection between the vertical columns and the horizontal floor and roof planes. This connection is a welded steel to steel connection and welded connections show. Which of course Mies didn't want. He wanted the column and beam / floor to appear to be magically glued together, so he made the workers grind the welds down until the connection was pretty much invisible. He got his way. It looks the way he wanted.

Detail #2: If we were disappointed by the ongoing reconstruction of the terrace (and we were), at least we got to check out the thickness (or thinness) of the travertine marble slabs laid on the terrace (and throughout the whole house for that matter). They are remarkably thin. We found them stacked on the tennis court. The 70 year old travertine looked way better than the tennis court did.

Finally, there is no picture that I have ever seen of the Farnsworth House that shows how sewage leaves the place. I mean it's more than five feet off the surface of the Earth, right? But sure enough, there's a concrete cylinder below the house that contains all the services in to and out of the house. It has to be there; it's just never shown in pictures, that's all.

Welded connection. Or is it?

Travertine. It's thin, right? I think it is.

Despite my generally positive review of the place (admittedly some of it due to the almost unrestricted access to the property on our tour), the coming together of the Farnsworth House was not a painless process. Design started in 1946 with a promised $40,000 budget (that's about 1/10 of 2021 dollars) and the house wasn't ready for occupation until the absolute last day of 1950 (how cold was that first night?). And with a $70,000 price tag.

Mies eventually sued Edith Farnsworth and she eventually sued him back. She lost. Or more accurately, she ended up having to pay him $1,500. But they probably both really lost. There is an introductory video played at the beginning of the Farnsworth House tour. During that video there is a quote attributed to Dr. Farnsworth that goes "My house is a monument to Mies van der Rohe. And I'm paying for it." 

She's probably mostly right. There are not a lot of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe houses out there (the Tugendhat House in Czechia sticks out as another one but I can't say I can think of any others). He's different from some of his contemporaries in that regard. This one got some things very wrong, but it also got some things really right. And sure, she paid for it, but it's also in some ways a monument to her, not that she likely wanted that. But it took both of them to make this house.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation (which owns the house today) decided that they would (at least for 2021) stage the house as Edith Farnsworth, and not Mies, wanted it. Like most architects, Mies was a control freak, and tended not to tolerate anything about his buildings that was not the way he intended, including the objects and furniture placed within. 

I tend to disagree with the master here and go with the client. We should have furniture in our houses that makes us feel comfortable, not that which looks best in the eyes of the architect. We should also be able to hang whatever we want on the walls. After all, we paid for it. I love the objects in Edith Farnsworth's weekend house. For posterity and as a close to this post, I'm including below the key to the objects on display when we were there. This is some pretty good stuff. Both Mies and Edith Farnsworth should be proud of what they did here. It's too bad that the process was so difficult.

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How We Did It

The Farnsworth House is located in Plano, Illinois about a 55 mile drive west and a bit south from Chicago. The National Trust for Historic Preservation operates a series of different tours, (including in depth, grounds-only, seasonal and nighttime tours) Wednesday through Sunday at various times. Check their website for all the options. We took the "Guided Tour of the EFCH" and it was thoroughly awesome. Photographs are allowed. Or at least they are with an iPhone. I'd suggest a reservation in advance because I always have reservations. It just prevents the off chance of huge disappointment.

Earlier this year, I read Alex Beam's book, Broken Glass, which is an account of the relationship between Dr. Farnsworth and Mies and the story of the design and construction of the house and the ensuing lawsuits. I read it right after the new year and it made me determined to visit. It worked!

Finally, there's a field of soybeans right next to the visitor center parking lot. From afar, they looked like a field of flowers somewhere in some European country. I thought they looked awesome, so I took a pic and made it the cover of this blog post. 

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