Twenty-five miles north-west of Chicago sits the quintessential Center American suburb of Schaumburg. There are acres of McBuildings, dreary housing, bland chain shops, company workplaces and the Woodfield shopping center, one of many largest within the nation. However hidden on this sprawl of overdevelopment is one in every of Illinois’ star buildings, by one of many greats of Midwest modernist structure. Which, after all, is a few declare.
Paul Schweikher, initially from Denver, got here to Chicago in 1922 to review structure at The Artwork Institute of Chicago after which the Armour Institute of Expertise (later the Illinois Institute of Expertise and Mies van der Rohe’s base of operations after taking depart of the Bauhaus). In 1930, Schweikher joined the Chicago structure agency Lamb and Elring, and within the mid-Thirties, he obtained the job of rebuilding a farmhouse for an area insurance coverage household within the city of Roselle. As fee, they gave him seven-and-a-half acres of land, and he set about constructing his own residence. Roselle has lengthy since been swallowed by Schaumburg’s unfold. However within the Prohibition period, it was largely rural, and lots of of its farms have been purchased up by bootleggers to make use of as distilleries. Even after Prohibition had been revoked, the affect of the Capone period may very well be felt.
(Picture credit score: Nathan Kirkman)
Enter the previous residence and studio of architect Paul Schweikher
Schweikher lived within the Schaumburg home for nearly 20 years and have become a accomplice at his apply in 1946, which was renamed Schweikher and Elring, constructing throughout the Midwest and past. His initiatives embrace the Unitarian Church of Evanston, Knoxville Department Library and the Watertown Library in Massachusetts. However in 1953, after accepting a chairmanship on the College of Structure at Yale, Schweikher offered his residence to Alexander and Martyl Langsdorf.
On the time of our 2009 interview, Martyl, 91 and nonetheless sprightly, a life-long nice artist, has lived in the home for greater than 55 years. And since her husband handed away in 1996 (Schweikher died a 12 months later), she has develop into the only real protector of the home’s legacy. The constructing was designated a historic landmark by the state of Illinois in 1987 and has a star-studded guests’ e book. ‘All of the well-known architects in Chicago of Schweikher’s interval have been out right here,’ Martyl says. ‘Frank Lloyd Wright was right here twice; Mies van der Rohe, too. To not point out the scientists we introduced right here. At one level, we had 17 pals who’d received Nobel Prizes. A variety of them got here right here, too.’
(Picture credit score: Nathan Kirkman)
Martyl’s husband, Alex, was a physicist who had come to the Windy Metropolis to work on the top-secret Manhattan Mission on the College of Chicago. Earlier than the transfer, he had helped construct an atomic particle splitter, or cyclotron, for medical analysis at Washington College in Missouri. His contribution to the Manhattan Mission was a speck of plutonium produced by the cyclotron, which was used to set off the primary atomic bomb exploded within the New Mexico desert in the summertime of 1945. He subsequently pleaded with the federal government to not use the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For her half, Martyl designed the so-called Doomsday Clock in 1947 for the June situation of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists journal. ‘I used to be an artist that every one the scientists knew,’ she says. ‘I used to be pals with all of them, so it was logical that I’d assist them out.’
(Picture credit score: Nathan Kirkman)
An icon of the Chilly Warfare, the clock was a graphic assertion of how shut the human race was to nuclear annihilation, represented by midnight. At the moment, it was set at seven minutes to midnight. Now a broader vary of anxieties, resembling local weather change, is taken into account, and it reads 5 to midnight – and counting.
‘The scientists had a social conscience about what they’d found, and so they based the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to mission that. They usually obtained lots of mileage out of that picture,’ says Martyl, noting that her design has appeared someplace on the journal’s cowl for greater than 50 years. ‘For a really very long time, folks referred to me because the clock girl, though I might been exhibiting my very own artwork since I used to be very younger.’
(Picture credit score: Nathan Kirkman)
After we go to, the Schweikher Home is a jewel within the tough of limitless suburban sprawl. Just about hidden off a wooded stretch of Meacham Street, this Prairie-style fashionable masterpiece is tucked away down a gravel driveway. Solely a single silver mailbox field out entrance would lead you to imagine that somebody lived past the dense foliage.
The panorama round the home is impeccable and blends in with the constructing’s pure, Japanese-inspired design. Within the yard, a sprawling Zen backyard designed by panorama architect Franz Lipp captures the tranquillity of the property. There are additionally locust, pear and apple bushes, Russian irises and roses. To not point out a vegetable backyard. Inside, it is all rough-hewn wooden and fir ceiling beams. There is a ‘photo voltaic room’, which faces south and ‘is positioned to deliver the solar into the entire house within the winter, whereas in the course of the summer time, it retains that room the best,’ says Martyl. Schweikher additionally invented an ingenious heating system that ensures air circulation stops the home windows from fogging up, and put in a really early carport. Most decadent of all is a Japanese tub overlooking the backyard.
(Picture credit score: Nathan Kirkman)
All of the shelving is built-in, and the lounge is furnished with the architect’s authentic bench work, in addition to Eero Saarinen furnishings, which Martyl purchased in St Louis when she was in her early twenties. The easy nation kitchen with its open shelving was distinctive for its time. Schweikher did it years earlier than Frank Lloyd Wright. A brief stroll exterior takes you to Martyl’s studio, as soon as Schweikher’s drafting room. Martyl’s black poodle mills about among the many art work. Her work has developed over time, however one in every of her mainstays has been portray landscapes.
‘My studio is my consolation zone,’ she says. ‘However one factor about this home: regardless of the place you look out, it is lovely. And daily I look out and assume I really don’t have any favorite a part of the home.’
This text was initially revealed within the Wallpaper* situation of April 2009
Supply: Wallpaper
