Art: Palace for Pills

At 6 a.m. one day last week, after a night of tossing and turning, California Industrialist Arthur Hanisch, 63, gave up his vain effort to sleep. "You'd better go back to bed, Arthur," said his wife, "Santa Claus isn't here yet." Hanisch was, indeed, like a boy waiting to see a new toy. Twenty-nine months ago he set out to build a dream palace for his small (140 employees), 17-year-old pharmaceutical business, the Stuart Co. He hired Manhattan Architect Edward D. Stone after seeing a picture of Stone's highly praised design for the New Delhi embassy (TIME. Sept. 10, 1956), and then announced that he would not so much as look at the building until it was completed. He decided that an architect is "like a surgeon —when you agree to let him operate on you, you just trust him, that's all."

The First Look. Hanisch kept his word, though he admitted he had passed by the plant late one night after a bridge party and "damned near knocked off three cars looking the other way." Now it was opening day. With Architect Stone, Owner Hanisch rode up to his brand-new, three-acre, $3,000,000 combined office and plant in Pasadena. He saw a dazzling, 400-ft.-long, low, white-and-gold façade, faced with an airy grille of masonry, half given over to a carport spaced by hanging saucer-gardens. Black-bottomed reflecting pools reached under the cantilevered grille-wall to give the building a hovering effect. Five evenly spaced jet fountains splashed aerated water in the sun. The whole structure was set back a deep 150 ft. from the boulevard, and magnificently set off by San Francisco Landscapist Tommy Church with lawns, ferns, clusters of palms. "Oh, my, Ed," mumbled Hanisch, "that's something. It's fantastic. It's . . . it's outta this world."

Taking the keys from easygoing, Arkansas-born Ed Stone, Hanisch made his way inside to an even bigger surprise. Instead of the confined central shaft that he had seen in the early plans, he found himself looking out over a spacious patio or Roman atrium, a sort of immense Pompeian inner court, to be used as a dining area, with three huge, gold-colored saucers overflowing with vines and ferns suspended at varying heights, and with mother-of-pearl light globes, which seemed to float, for illumination. It was a sight fit for a maharajah's eyes; said Industrialist Hanisch: "Tears started in my eyes when I saw it."

"We Can Change the World." Then Hanisch had a question: "Can this place also make pills?" Striding through the well-lighted, air-conditioned plant, with its white walls and precisely placed blue machines (white and blue are Stuart Co.'s colors), he found a more than satisfactory answer. With an elliptical swimming pool and 30,000 sq. ft. of gold-roofed, pagoda-like recreation shelter in the form of a hyperbolic paraboloid to be finished in two months, Pillmaker Hanisch has a building that combines beauty, efficiency, and the atmosphere of a country club.