As we gathered for our tour of Fallingwater, the home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the rolling Pennsylvania country southeast of Pittsburgh, the guide said that a man on the same tour earlier in the morning had burst into tears when he entered the living room.
That seemed to me a little overwrought.
I am not an expert on architecture, but I have always been skeptical of the cults that develop around particular practitioners of a craft that collectively owes modern humanity an explanation.
The Fallingwater site was owned by Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann, who had a large and successful department store in Pittsburgh. They had a cabin on the property, but it had been allowed to run down. They were introduced to Wright in the mid-1930s by their son, Edgar Jr., who studied with Wright in Wisconsin, and decided to hire him to develop a new country home.
The large property is spectacular, ribboned by a beautiful stream that burbles out into a complicated waterfall right at its heart.
Originally the Kaufmanns had imagined a house with a view at the base of the waterfall. Wright’s daring vision was to build the house atop the cascade. Whether that’s a nice thing to do to a waterfall will be a matter of opinion.
It is without a doubt a remarkable house in which you never lose consciousness through sight and sound of the nature that enfolds it.
From the tour, I very much got the impression that Wright was the kind of architect who expected the mere inhabitants of his creations to experience them as he intended and not to dick around with their own disordered inclinations.
The guide explained that as a “concession”, photography was permitted on the first floor but that elsewhere it was prohibited, apparently on the grounds that taking pictures of the place interferes with the experience as Wright intended it. A more generous concession to explore the entire house was apparently extended to the photographers who created the large and expensive books available in the museum store.
The corridors in the house are weirdly narrow, low and dark. I was fine. My six-foot-five son would have struggled. The guide explained that this was a result of Wright’s theory of compression and release. As I understand it, the living room is made the lovelier by the unpleasantness of getting to it.
But it is lovely. Smaller and more intimate than you would imagine from such a spectacular house, but modern, elegant and comfortable.
I wish I could show you some of the private spaces. The master bedroom is surprisingly small and the bed was apparently shorter than usual to enhance the symmetry of the room. Edgar Jr.’s room with its narrow aperture for a single bed, makes it clear that, for him, remaining single was a design feature.
If my tone suggests that Fallingwater isn’t worth visiting, I apologize. I thoroughly enjoyed walking the beautiful grounds before my tour, and the experience of visiting the house is remarkable. It is well worth the trip.
At the end of the tour, we were forbidden from photographing the swimming pool attached to the guest quarters, but the guide did indulge me by allowing a photograph of what she dubbed “Frog Lloyd Wright” on the pool’s edge.
Architects are mere craftsmen who owe “modern humanity” an explanation? Now there’s a can of worms. Your most courageous post yet, Paul!
Sorry that it’s coming to an end. Great trip. Good on you!