Fallingwater Road Trip

[bjarvis]

We're back from our day trip to Pennsylvania, visiting Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob.


It was a fun trip, but exhausting. Nick, David, Flavio and Dick drove up Friday after work, spending the night at a local motel; they went on the 8:30 AM extended tour Saturday morning. By contrast, kent4str, cuyahogarvr, Michael M., Jeff and I carpooled up early Saturday morning (departing 6:20 AM... ugh!) for our 10:30 AM normal tour.

It's an impressive complex and I'm surprised how comparatively undisturbed the rocks, trees and Bear Creek were during its construction.

The kind folks of the Western Pennsylvania Conservatory bumped our 3:30 PM reservations for the Kentuck Knob tour up to to 2:30 PM, saving us having to twiddle our thumbs for an extra hour. We still managed to have a filling lunch at the Firefly Cafe in Ohiopyle, PA, and spend some time walking the waterfront of the Youghiogheny River and Ohiopyle Falls.


Kentuck Knob was only a few miles out of town. Rather than hidden in a gorge and sharing space with a creek, Kentuck Knob was on a hilltop and half-built into the hill itself. As with Fallingwater, the living room is probably the most impressive space, dominating the largest portion of the house. The halls tended to be extremely narrow (21 inches... if it was good enough for Pullman rail cars, FLW reasoned, it was good enough for a person's home) and there are only two right angles in the entire building (bathroom shower & baths). The current owner has created an extensive sculpture garden of modern art, most of which I thought detracted from the house itself. Fortunately, the "art" is far enough away that the visual damage is minimized.


Now that I've seen four different FLW houses in the past three months, I have to say that while I like his building exteriors, I'm not fond of some of his interior spaces. His mode of merging into nature is wonderful; I like the broad eaves and horizontal lines of his prairie style design. His insistence on cramped personal spaces, inflexibility in furniture arrangement, dismissal of kitchens, impracticality of heating & air conditioning and hatred of window screens --did the man never meet a mosquito?-- are sufficient to put me off the beauty of the final work. They're great houses to visit but Kentuck Knob is the only one I could bear to live in, and that's with major reservations.

By 4:15 PM, we were back in our respective vehicles and heading back to DC. We were home again by 7:20 PM, tired but happy to have made the trip.

BTW, huge thanks to Nick M. for coordinating the trip and making the reservations... he made it all possible!

Comments

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I have always loved his work and you are right in that he was not always thinking of the inhabitants who might be living there but his own whims and such but do love his basic sense of style, which was borrowed for many a mid century modern home as elements in the overall design.

There may be a home or two he built in the 40's, early 50's that I might consider although I love Falling Water for it's overall style.

Glad you got to go see them

[allanh.livejournal.com]

During a tour of Taliesen West, one of the guides suggested that most of FLW's interior spaces were scaled down to his point of view ... and he wasn't a tall man.

I spent most of the tour of his personal office at TW hunched over, because the ceiling was so low.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he was 5'8" and seemed to consider ceilings & doorways higher than 5'10" to be a waste. kent4str was nearly decapitated in multiple places; I worried he would do himself an injury until I remember how heavily I've insured him.

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

I thought you were very sweet to make sure I didn't fall into the river, too - until I remembered I had the only key to the car.

[apparentparadox]

I agree. His interiors look nice, but aren't really livable. I also think that his whole "you're going to use this furniture in exactly this place" a bit obnoxious. It's like it's still his house, and you're just the curator for his museum.

I do love the exteriors and the merging with nature. One of the things I loved about our Eichler was that he took a lot of the good things of FLW and made them practical for the "normal" people.

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

FLW inspired Ayn Rand to write The Fountainhead. Make what you will of that. :)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I always wondered who to blame...

[book-of-daniel.livejournal.com]

You were pretty much right in my hometown of Hopwood, PA....little village at the foot of the mountain. I spent way too much of my youth contemplating life perched out on one of the far rocks overlooking the falls from the back woods there at Ohiopyle. I've always said that when I die I want my ashes scattered up there by the falls or maybe placed under the roots of a newly planted tree in the area.

Oddly enough, I've never been to Fallingwater. I grew up hearing about it but never really got a grasp for how important it was until long after I'd left.

...and if I'd have known you were going I'd have insisted that you guys stop at a little Amish restaurant on Rt 40 called Glissen's....best damn pie in the world. You can totally make a meal out of one of their dinner rolls and a cup of coffee...

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

That sound like a great trip to have done and one I would have enjoyed. Your comment about the exterior v interior vision of how a house looks/functions rings true.