The Herbert and Katherine Jacobs Second House (also known as Jacobs II or the Solar Hemicycle) is a house in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1946–1948, the house was designed for the journalist Herbert Jacobs and his wife Katherine, whose first house he had designed a decade earlier. The Solar Hemicycle name is derived from the house's semicircular-arc floor plan, its use of natural materials, and its energy-saving orientation. The Jacobs Second House has been praised for its architecture over the years, and Wright went on to design other houses with circular design motifs. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2003.
The Jacobs family moved to western Madison, near Middleton, in 1942, and commissioned Wright to design them a new residence. After they rejected his first design, Wright proposed the Solar Hemicycle, which was partially embedded into an earthen berm. Although the Jacobses paid the first part of Wright's fee in early 1944, construction did not start for over two years. The Jacobses ended up constructing much of the house themselves because of contractor delays and a misunderstanding that prompted Wright to resign. The family moved into the house's root cellar in July 1948 and occupied the rest of the house that September. The professor William R. Taylor bought the house in 1962; he lived there with his family until 1968, before renting it to college students. His son Bill Taylor bought the house in 1982 and renovated it. In 1988, the house was sold once again to John and Betty Moore, who rebuilt the roof and added a garage in the 2000s.
The northern elevation of the house's facade is partially built into a berm, with a circular, stone-faced staircase tower protruding from it. On the southern elevation is a curved glass wall, which faces a sunken garden surrounded by a stone terrace. The house is topped by a flat roof with overhanging eaves, and it is accessed by a tunnel that travels through the berm. The first floor contains a root cellar, an open plan living–dining room, and a kitchen, in addition to a pool that is partly indoors and partly outdoors. Suspended from the ceiling is the second floor, which contains three bedrooms and a bathroom.
History
Background
Until the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright mostly designed houses for wealthy clients, but he was also beginning to design lower-cost Usonian houses for middle-class families. In 1936, the journalist Herbert Jacobs asked Wright to design his family a house that cost no more than $5,000; at the time, Jacobs was a young reporter with a very limited budget. This became the Jacobs First House (or Jacobs I) on Toepfer Avenue, into which the Jacobses moved in 1937. Jacobs I, sometimes cited as Wright's first Usonian house, elicited high amounts of interest from the general public when it was completed. The first house, an L-shaped structure with a central lawn and approximately , had three bedrooms. In contrast to the family's second house, which was designed in a rural area in an organic style, Jacobs I was more urban in nature, and its lawn was more similar to a courtyard.
Not much was done with passive solar heating in modern buildings in the U.S. until 1933, when Fred Keck noticed on a cold winter day that his demonstration glass House of Tomorrow, in Chicago, was warming inside before the furnace had been installed. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University investigated solar-heated buildings in the late 1930s. During the same period, Keck built several houses that could store water on their flat roofs; as the water evaporated, it cooled the houses. Keck also designed a "solar house" in Glenview, Illinois, with extended eaves and a south-facing glass wall, which were designed to admit sun through the glass in winter and shade the house in summer.
Development
Land acquisition In 1942, the Jacobses and their two children moved to a farmhouse in western Madison, near Middleton, about away from the first house. The family also acquired a farm surrounding the farmhouse. In spite of Wright's efforts to convince them to keep the first house, the family felt that the area surrounding their first house was becoming too densely built-up. In addition, they felt that their daughters Susan and Elizabeth (who were respectively seven and three years old) would be better-behaved if they lived on a farm.
According to Herb, he and his wife had decided to move after contemplating the matter for only a short period; Herb wrote about his intention to sell the first house on September 6, and they moved to the farm on November 13. The family left the first house's built-in furniture in place, buying an old truck to carry their remaining possessions to the farm. While the farmhouse was habitable, it was rundown. Herb recalled that he had to clean up the farmhouse before they could even move. Afterward, they bought farm equipment and obtained livestock, farming the land even while Herb retained his day job at The Capital Times. Herb and Katherine, with their children's help, were able to produce all of their food at the farm.
Design From the outset, the Jacobses wanted Wright to design another house on their farmland, having liked the original house so much. In early 1943, Herb asked Wright to consider designing a new home for the family, to which the architect agreed. The family traveled to Wright's Taliesin studio several times to discuss the plans. During this time, Wright began developing experimental design features, and the Jacobses allowed him to use their new house as a testing ground for these features. For example, Wright hired a fiberboard company to design a specialized fiberboard wall for the Jacobses' second house, but the company declined to do so because Wright wanted the company to pay an exorbitant fee to use the design. That July, Wright visited the Jacobs farm, whereupon he decided to build the house on a hill with oak woods behind it. Though an even taller hill existed on the site, Wright recommended against using that site, correctly predicting that the higher hill would likely be destroyed due to highway widening.
In December 1943, Wright invited the Jacobses to Taliesin to view a preliminary design for the house. The original design called for a square, double-height living room with a mezzanine, in addition to a single-story wing containing a master bedroom, two smaller bedrooms, and a bathroom; this plan would have cost $12,000. The National Park Service cites the design as a modification of a plan that was originally created for the Hein family in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, while Herb said that Wright had offered to give the design to the Hein family if the Jacobses did not accept it. In any case, the Jacobses rejected the plan, saying that the design was expensive and overly difficult to heat. Wright acknowledged the family's financial constraints and agreed to create an alternative design.
The following February, Wright presented to the Jacobses a revised plan, telling them that "you are getting another 'first'" and describing the design as suitable for any hilltop exposed to wind. The design consisted of a crescent-shaped structure measuring long along its outer arc facing north, long along its inner arc facing south, and wide. The inner arc of the crescent, facing south, would be made of glass; the remaining walls would be made of stone, and the northern facade would be built into the side of a hill. The concept of the house was so novel that Wright had difficulties deciding on a name; he initially referred to the plans as the "Solar Hemicyclo" (after the Greek term for a semicircle) before changing the name to "Solar Hemicycle". In addition, Wright's second plan initially called for a roof that was creased in the middle, and the second story was to be supported by columns on the first floor. Wright later revised the plans to remove the columns and flatten the roof.
Construction
The Jacobses paid Wright the first installment of his fee, amounting to $250, in March 1944. Wright's son-in-law William Wesley Peters wrote to the Jacobses the next month, notifying them that Wright had nearly completed the plans for the house itself and that Peters was designing them a barn. The Jacobses did not receive detailed plans for two years, despite frequent requests. In the meantime, the Jacobses built an easy chair for the house in early 1945, and they sometimes visited Taliesin to inquire about the house's design. Herb wrote that he had grown impatient by early 1946, when he asked a bank in Madison to give them a loan for the house; the loan was denied because the house was not in Madison. Ultimately, they obtained a loan from the Haley brothers, who had helped fund the Jacobs First House. The family initially hoped that the house would not cost more than $5,000.
Herb wrote that he had received a response from Wright only after writing a poem to the architect on August 15, 1946. Eight days later, Wright arrived to survey the site and draw out plans for an access road. Still, the Jacobses did not receive blueprints for some time. In October 1946, Wright's apprentices excavated the house's site with a bulldozer, and moved the soil from the sunken garden to construct the berm north of the house. Local farmhands refused to dig the foundations without a bulldozer, while a contractor with a bulldozer could not dig them because the berm was in the way. As a result, Herb personally dug the holes for the house's foundation during his free time, completing it in January 1947; his children helped fill in the holes with $20 worth of crushed rock.
The Jacobses ended up doing much of the construction by themselves. Wright's apprentices surveyed the house in June 1947, and the couple built a section of wall to test out their masonry-laying skills. Herb hired the stonemason Johnny Luginbuhl that August, but Luginbuhl worked for only a couple days in August and one in October. Wright also severed his involvement with the project due to a misunderstanding over We Chose the Country, a book that Herb was writing; the architect had taken particular offense to a sentence implying that Wright had asked Herb for help. Just after Wright left, Luginbuhl and his apprentices returned again in March and began working on the house in earnest, while Katherine assisted in laying the masonry. Wright's departure also allowed the Jacobses to make changes to the design and add a root cellar without having to fear Wright's mercurial response. The Jacobses hired several contractors to help complete the house.
Completion and Jacobs ownership
The Jacobses had sold their farmhouse in February 1948, expecting that they would be able to move into the new house by July 1; when the new house was still incomplete on that day, the farmhouse's new owners allowed them to stay for another week. This gave the family enough time to fit out the root cellar, into which they moved on July 8. The family also visited Wright, who expressed his continued displeasure not only with Herb's manuscript, but also the modifications that had been made to his design. The Jacobses finished the rest of the house, which included pouring concrete for the floor slab, excavating the indoor portion of the pool, constructing the wooden mullions, and completing the roof. They then built the support beams for the second floor, and a contractor built some tables for them. The family also constructed the terrace outside the house on their own. The Jacobses moved into the main house at the end of August 1948. The final cost of construction has been cited as $20,000.