Fallingwater

Fallingwater is the house that Frank Lloyd Wright built over a waterfall — by the 1960s already one of the most discussed modern buildings in the world. It stands in the woods of the Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania, on Bear Run, a stream that drops over ledges of sandstone on its way to the Youghiogheny River. The Kaufmanns hired Wright in 1934 to design a weekend retreat for the Pittsburgh department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann and his wife Liliane; the family began using it in 1937, and a guest wing followed in 1939.

The Kaufmanns expected a house with a view of the falls. Wright instead put the house on top of them. Concrete terraces cantilever out from a central core of locally quarried stone, with nothing supporting their outer ends, so the house seems to float above the water. Horizontal bands of concrete contrast with vertical stone piers and ribbons of glass. Inside, the living room floor is waxed flagstone that glints like wet rock in the stream, and in front of the fireplace a boulder from the site breaks through the floor — Wright wanted to cut it flat, Kaufmann insisted it stay. A glass hatch opens onto a stair that descends to a plunge pool just above the stream.

Most of the furniture was designed by Wright, and the house keeps the Kaufmanns' collection of art and objects. Its daring came at a price: the terraces sagged and cracked from the start, and by the 1990s engineers feared for them. A restoration completed around 2003 threaded post-tensioned steel cables through the concrete to stop the movement. The house is part of the World Heritage listing of Frank Lloyd Wright's 20th-century architecture.

After Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the couple's son, the house passed to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which has run it as a museum since the 1960s and manages the 2,000-hectare forest around it. The house is seen on tours of varying length; standard tours cover part of the house and do not allow photography, while extended tours cover all of it. Wright's Kentuck Knob, another house open to visitors, is an 11 km drive away.

Getting there

Fallingwater is on Pennsylvania Route 381 between Ohiopyle and Mill Run, about 116 km southeast of Pittsburgh; Morgantown, West Virginia, about 52 km away, is the nearest city by distance. Arnold Palmer Regional Airport (LBE) at Latrobe is about 41 km away. A car is needed.