Architecture of the World
FALLINGWATER designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Edgar Kaufmann Family
Mill Run, Pennsylvania
FALLINGWATER
When I was 11 years old, I took a photography class and had to develop my own photos. My art teacher, Mrs. Oakes, gave me a film canister to develop, and imagine my surprise when the finished photo showed Fallingwater. I had never seen anything like it! For months, I would tell anyone who listened about the house with the stream running through it. It became my obsession, and as I grew older, Frank Lloyd Wright and his architectural wonders were very important to me. I even flew to Chicago from Frankfurt, Germany, to visit his studio in Oak Park, Illinois, and I flew back to Germany the following day. Obsessed, I say!
Fallingwater is a house that Wright designed in 1935 for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufmann, the owner of Kaufmann’s department store in downtown Pittsburgh. Located in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, the house was to be a weekend retreat for the family.
The Kaufmanns came to know Wright because their son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr, was an apprentice at Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, a communal architecture program that was established in 1932 by Wright and his wife, Olgivanna.
Nine months after meeting Wright and agreeing on the project, Kaufmann called the architect and announced that he would be there to see him later that day. Wright had told Kaufmann in the past that he was working on the project, but had not actually put anything on paper. After the announcement of the visit, Wright drew the plans in the two hours that it took the Kaufmanns to get to Taliesin.
Kaufmann had wanted the house to be placed lower than the waterfall so that the falls could be viewed from the property. Wright had other ideas. He wanted the falls to be integrated into the house.
There were many disagreements between architect and client, but the house was eventually completed in 1938. The original estimated cost of the house was $35,000, but ended up being $155,000, which included $75,000 for the house, $22,000 for furnishings, $50,000 for the guest house, garage and servants quarters. The total cost of $155,000, adjusted for inflation, is equivalent to $3 million in 2022.
The house was the family’s weekend home from 1937 until 1963, when Edgar Kaufmann Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Kaufmann Jr said “Wright understood that people were creatures of nature, hence an architecture which conformed to nature would conform to what was basic in people. For example, although all of Fallingwater is opened by broad bands of windows, people inside are sheltered as in a deep cave, secure in the sense of the hill behind them.”
A view of the living area
View from outside the property
The open floor plan of the house
I don’t think I had ever been so happy to see a building!
Books everywhere! I felt myself a kindred soul!
A Pennsylvania Commonwealth Treasure
From the rear of the house
The staircase leading to the upper level
Integrated into nature
With my favorite human who knew about my love of Fallingwater and surprised me with the trip!
With Gayane, my sister/Soul friend, enjoying the fantastic visit before a concert,
The main living area
On one of the cantilevers that support the house
The two newest members of the Pennsylvania Conversancy, helping to maintain the house.
Entry to the property
Fallingwater in the winter