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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
March 19, 2024

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Flooding may cause iconic home to move

Illinois landmark's design makes it appear to hover over landscape

The Columbian
Published:

With its white frame of steel seemingly hovering over a verdant landscape, architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House is elegant simplicity defined. But protecting the modernist landmark from the floodwaters of the Fox River is turning out to be anything but simple.

In the latest twist in the debate over the house’s future, its owner, the Washington-based National Trust for Historic Preservation, is pondering a plan to move the steel-and-glass masterpiece from its original location in Plano, Ill., 58 miles southwest of Chicago, to a nearby site that’s still along the river but considered less flood-prone. That site is located on the 62-acre Farnsworth House property.

A committee advising the trust on the Farnsworth House was to discuss the plan in a recent conference call. “It’s definitely one of the viable options that we’re deeply exploring,” Germonique Ulmer, a spokeswoman for the trust, said.

But one prominent member of the committee — Chicago architect Dirk Lohan, Mies’ grandson — strongly opposes the idea.

“That is not in keeping with the design concept of the house, which was a house in a flood plain, close to the river,” Lohan said in a telephone interview. “The river was part of its immediate environment. To move it to higher ground where it never floods would be ridiculous. You would ask: ‘Why is it on stilts?’ It makes no sense to me.”

Originally a country retreat for Chicago Dr. Edith Farnsworth and now a house museum, the Farnsworth House was built in 1951 on a flat flood plain. After noting the high-water marks on a nearby bridge, Mies raised the house’s living space on stilt-like steel columns to allow floodwaters to pass beneath it. The design has produced a combination of poetic effect — when water surrounds it, the house has been compared to a water lily floating in a pond — and watery assault.

Floodwaters have inundated the house three times in the past 19 years, a problem blamed on rapid suburban development that’s sent more water into the river. During the worst flood, in 1996, more than 5 feet of water poured into the Farnsworth, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Recent heavy rains, which forced the house to close for tours but did no damage to the interior, were the latest reminder of the threat.

Last year, the prospect of more flooding prompted the trust to make public three options for protecting and preserving the house: installing a system that would lift the iconic structure on hydraulic jacks; moving it north to high ground on the Farnsworth House property, several hundred feet from the river; and placing the house on a 9-foot mound at its original site.

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The hydraulic option, which had a price tag of up to $3 million and is supported by Lohan, was gaining support from the advisory committee convened by the trust. Yet it appeared to lose steam after opponents, led by Chicago architect John Vinci, argued that lifting the house would create a “jack-in-the-box” spectacle at odds with the design’s transcendent calm.

Others said the jacks would be vulnerable to logs and other flood debris, a criticism that also did in the option of raising the house on inflatable diaphragms.

Further complicating matters, the trust alone won’t determine the house’s future. Also having a say will be Landmarks Illinois, a Chicago-based historic preservation advocacy group that joined with the trust and private donors in 2003 to make a winning bid of more than $7.5 million for the house at a New York auction.

The nonprofit Chicago group operated the house for several years before ceding everyday control to the trust. Yet it still holds a “preservation easement” on the house, giving it the power to approve or reject significant proposed changes to the structure. “We can say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ” said Bonnie McDonald, the group’s president.

She said the plan to be discussed Friday envisions moving the house roughly half a mile to what is now a cornfield southeast of the Farnsworth House’s visitor center. “It’s a little bit higher and it still has proximity to the river,” she said. No cost estimate was available for this proposal, which would presumably involve relandscaping the cornfield.

Landmarks Illinois has not taken a position on which Farnsworth House option it favors, said McDonald, adding that the group plans to tour the site next month.

But a combination of practical and philosophical issues has pushed preservationists to consider moving the house, McDonald explained. The floods have broken windows and damaged the house’s travertine marble floors. In light of rising seas and climate change, she said, the treatment of the house could set a precedent for how preservationists deal with historic waterfront properties.

And yet, McDonald acknowledged, moving the home from its original site invariably will raise questions about the authenticity of the visitor’s experience.

“We have (the) integrity of the design intent versus ‘What’s the practical solution,’ ” she said. “This is very challenging. Any one of these solutions is a compromise. There is a risk inherent in all of them.”

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