Exploring Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
I'm behind a coal truck. Actually, four coal trucks. With one lane of PA 381 closed as a piece of heavy machinery cuts away at a mid-summer mudslide, I find myself waiting for the traffic signaler to change the sign to "slow," while wondering how long it will take the behemoths ahead to complete their slow crawl up the hill, where my trip terminates in less than a mile.
Perhaps the most amazing
thing about Fallingwater is not the combination of nature and engineering that Wright called organic architecture, but the very tenacity it took to place it
there. This is not the easiest weekend home to find; and according to my
tour guide, the leisurely two-hour trip from Pittsburgh was three to four for
the original owners. Even today, curvy, spottily marked roads, often
lacking a shoulder, lead to this sanctuary from the Steel City.
Fallingwater was built
in 1935-36 for the Kaufmann family, owners of a large department store in
downtown Pittsburgh. Kauffman's moved to my own hometown as part of an
expansion in the 1980's; with the acquisition of the May Department Stores by
Macy's, the name has largely been erased, except in Pittsburgh, where the
original store is being repurposed into a mixed retail-residence building.
The Kaufmanns themselves have died out. Their only child, Edgar,
Jr., who never married, donated the home to the Western Pennsylvania
Conservancy in 1963.
A long driveway leads to
lots and overflow lots for the home. A visitors' center, built under the
supervision of Edgar, Jr.'s partner in 1980, closely mirrors the fusion of
nature and architecture found in the home itself. Guides lead groups of
about 15 down to the house along Bear Run. The first thing you notice, at
least if it's been raining recently, is the sound of rushing water.
Fallingwater's tour
begins on a bridge over Bear Run. Just three days before my visit,
Fallingwater had its most serious flash flood in fifty or sixty years.
Waters reached the third stair from the top of the picture to the left,
damaging a sculpture on the lower patio, and coming close to flooding the main
room.
There were no floods
that day though, and the cool mountain wind was already a refreshing change
from the summer air. Entering the house, Wright's open living and dining
room (interior photography is not allowed) is a breezy space, cooled in part by
the open hatch to the creek below. Polished sandstone blends with wrap
around windows to bring the outdoors inside, and the natural rock formation of
the Earth below rises up at the fireplace to become part of the room itself.
Wright's unique, low-slung furnishings dominate; the Kaufmanns added a
few other pieces noted by our guide. Terraces open on either side, and on
the right balcony (from the inside), I notice one of the unexpected features of
the home: a sense of vertigo! Most photos do not capture the plunge from
the terraces to the bottom of the falls below, and that feeling only grows as
the tour proceeds to the upper levels.
Wright's design was
meant to push the home's occupants to the living room and outdoors.
Ascending to the second level, the ceilings of the bedrooms are low, the
halls narrow and dark, and the bedrooms themselves undersized even by 1930's
standards. The master bedroom opens to its own terrace, directly
above the living room on the 2nd floor, and windows in each of the rooms are
almost fully retractable, allowing for fresh air to flood the home.
Reaching the 3rd level of the home, meant for Edgar, Jr, one senses a
profound solitude. An architect and art historian who was a junior
apprentice to Wright at Taliesen in the years before the construction of
Fallingwater, he was 26 when the home was built. Books line the built-in
shelves and the stair to the lower level.
It's nearly impossible
not to mention the unusual circumstances of the Kaufmanns. A Jewish
family, the kitchen is not set up for kosher, and as art collectors, images of
the Virgin Mary are an unexpected touch. Having a gay son at that time
was, of course, not accepted socially, and so this weekend retreat seems to
have been equally a retreat into privacy. This is one of the few homes in
which Wright did not dictate the art used for decoration. There is a work from
Tiffany Studios in each room, but arts from the Middle Ages to the Modern era can
be found in the home.
The guest house, added
in 1939 above the main house, is reached by a covered outdoor stair, and is by
contemporary standards more accommodating. The ceilings are higher, and
the space seems more like small home, with a stream-fed swimming pool to the
side. Walking back around to the bridge, we see for the first time how
the home is built into the hillside itself, the weight of the upper levels
house pushed downward on stone to create the cantilever that the living room
rests on.
The classic view of the
house, as seen in the photo at the top, is accessible from a nearby trail, and
a second nature trail is also available. Fallingwater is located inside
of Bear Run Nature Preserve, so if you wear the right shoes, you can easily
enjoy another hour or two of hiking at the site.
Some of my friends have
made it a point to visit in each season. The fusion of the indoors and
outdoors makes it ideal for that kind of tourism... just allow extra time for
weather, getting lost on unmarked roads, and coal trucks.
Fallingwater
1491 Mill Run Rd.
Mill Run, PA 15464
Basic Guided House Tour $30/$18 Youth with other tours available
Closed Wednesdays
© 2017 Randall Stewart
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