Peace, serenity abound

Bruce Goff designed round house turns 50

Aurora, Ill. -- Inside the round house, Sidney Robinson’s fingers rhythmically scale up and down the keys of a brilliant orange baby grand.

Melodic tone resonates throughout his home’s wood-lined dome as clearly as sunlight filters from its central skylight.

As he plays, Robinson’s eyes shine. He knows his home, as free-wheeling and shocking to some as his piano, has an indelible place in history.

Constructed from 1948 to 1950, the round house or coal house now approaches its 50th year. The spherical structure is one of two or three of architect Bruce Goff’s best homes, Robinson says.

“I walked in and it was a road to Damascus experience,” recalls Robinson of his first visit to his home of 12 years. “I was changed. I saw I wanted to live here.”

Goff, who lived 1904 to 1982, is considered by many as a contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright.

Commissioned by Aurorans Sam and Ruth Ford, this two-bedroom 1,700-square-foot dome was featured March 19, 1951 in Life Magazine.

“People in Aurora get so used to this odd house they don’t realize its significance,” laments Robinson as he looks at a three-dimensional image of his home through a View Master. “Therešs no house like it.”

Armed with only a high school education, Goff used materials in a revolutionary way as an architect, composer and painter, Robinson says.

Goff’s stint in the Navy is reflected by the boat rope which runs tweed-like patterns underneath ceilings and the scarlet, skeletal quonset hut ribbing.

Rough black coal, lending the home its other name, is contrasted by large, glowing chunks of green glass, and red and green marbles.

Indoors, fig and rubber trees cover the floor-to-ceiling glass wall which slices through the dome’s center. After growing nearly a half century, the plants now have arm-thick trunks, leaves as big as footballs.

Yet most people, Robinson says, go beyond the home’s visual excitement.

“All of this stimulation quiets down,” Robinson says. “And then it becomes a very special retreat both quieting and calming.”

In 1993, Robinson purchased the house next door and had it demolished to plant wildflowers, creating an unobstructed vista from his home’s wall of glass.

And Robinson plans to donate an easement of the homešs appearance to the Landmark Preservation Council of Illinois, headquartered in Chicago.

“It’s the most effective legal protection,” he says.

Yet even Robinson admits he was something less than a believer in Goff, until he experienced the round house.

“I knew about Bruce Goff and thought he was nuts,” says Robinson. But he adds, “It’s (the round house has) changed my life. I think of architecture differently. I teach differently.”

Robinson, associate professor of architecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago and co-director of Institute For Architecture And The Humanities Ltd. in Chicago, lets his students experience his home. They often settle in and discuss what it would be like to live here, he says.

Symmetrically placed semi-circular wall divisions form bedrooms on either side of the main area. The top level, Robinson’s office, is in plain sight of the brightly enameled instrument, similar to one pictured long ago in Life, in the living room. Step down to a kitchen kept private by cabinets. An indoor and outdoor fireplace, adjacent to an outdoor seating area, is in the center of the dome.

A circular theme completes the design.

“The calming is the geometry,” Robinson says. “The circle is so smooth and embracing that it starts to count more than the color and texture.”

People from all over the world knock on the door to ask to see the home. If the inquirers respond correctly to questions, their requests are granted, he says.

One day, Robinson says he found a man taking photographs of his home from the middle of his naturalized prairie.

When Robinson walked up to him, the man seemed frightened, he says. After talking with him a few moments, Robinson discovered the man was from Paris and knew about the house so he was invited in.

“He said, ‘Wait, I’ll get my wife,’ who was waiting in the car,” Robinson says. “He went from absolute terror to complete enjoyment in half a second.”

Through the years, though, the round house has been central to more than merely serious architectural discourse.

Not long after he moved in, Robinson says a neighbor insisted that the house originally pivoted on its axis. He feels obliged to put such local lore to rest.

“I have seen the drawings,” Robinson assures. “There’s never been any plan to have the house revolve.”