House designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 built partly over a waterfall and is considered one of Wright's greatest masterpieces both for its dynamism and for its integration with its striking natural surroundings.
General Information
Closed Wednesday
Guided Grounds Walking Tour: $25.00
Grounds Pass: $15.00
How to Get There
From Pittsburgh (67 miles): Get on I-579 S. Get on I-376 E from Boulevard of the Allies. Follow I-376 E and I-76 to PA-31 W in Donegal Township. Take exit 91 from I-76. Take PA-381 S to Fallingwater Road in Mill Run.
Overview
Fallingwater is Frank Lloyd Wright's 1930s masterpiece, a house built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Laurel Highlands, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. Designed as a weekend home for Liliane and Edgar J. Kaufmann, owner of Kaufmann's Department Store, it is a National Historic Landmark (1966) and part of the 2019 UNESCO World Heritage listing "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright." In 1991 the American Institute of Architects named it the "best all-time work of American architecture."
Cantilevered terraces echo the rock ledges of the stream, and Wright kept natural features inside: a boulder protrudes through the living room floor beside the hearth, a stairway leads from the living room to the stream, and a spring drips through the interior. He limited the palette to ochre concrete and Cherokee red steel. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. gave the house and about 1,500 acres to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963, and it draws more than 160,000 visitors a year.
Visiting
- Guided tours: of the main house, with a guest house and gardens nearby; book ahead in season
- Best season: spring, when the snowmelt makes Bear Run loudest, and fall foliage
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fallingwater", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
