In 2019, UNESCO confirmed what many already knew—that Frank Lloyd Wright was a master of his craft—when it added eight of the architect’s iconic structures to its World Heritage List. Among them was Fallingwater, the waterfall-straddling home that in 1936 jump-started Wright’s career amid the Great Depression.
Fallingwater may be the most famous architectural marvel in the Laurel Highlands, a forested stretch of southwestern Pennsylvania, but it’s not the only one. Three additional Wright-designed homes have made the area a mecca for 20th-century design enthusiasts.
Wright, who lived from 1867-1959, is considered one of the most influential figures of the midcentury modern movement, having designed more than 1,000 structures (532 of which were built) over the course of his career. His penchant for open floor plans, locally sourced natural materials, low-pitched roofs and strong horizontal massing makes his designs instantly recognizable.
Fallingwater
Wright’s connection to the Laurel Highlands can be traced to the son of Fallingwater’s original owners, Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann.
After completing an architectural fellowship at Taliesin, Wright’s self-designed home and studio in Wisconsin, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., introduced the architect to his parents. The elder Edgar Kaufmann was a wealthy Pittsburgh department store owner who, like Wright, enjoyed pushing boundaries. His department stores were known for speedy and efficient home deliveries.
“We call him the first Amazon,” quips Sandy Spagnola, our tour guide during a recent visit to Fallingwater on a crisp fall day. Back then, Pittsburgh had earned dubious nicknames such as “the smoky city” and “hell with the lid off,” she says, referencing the fiery and sooty iron and steel town the Kaufmanns sought refuge from.
Wright took a liking to the Kaufmanns, and in 1934 visited the roughly 1,900-acre property they had purchased about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. He noted the stone ledges over Bear Run—the stream that spills into a waterfall—and the abundance of local Pottsville sandstone, a resource that would become one of the home’s primary building materials.
Wright’s philosophy, Spagnola explains, was that “a house should look like it grew there. [He] tied the house to the waterfall itself and created cantilevered terraces that mimic the rock edges of the waterfall.”
The Kaufmanns had pictured a home with pretty views of Bear Run. Wright wanted them to live on top of it. His clients were initially shocked by that radical notion, but eventually came to embrace his vision. The construction of Fallingwater broke ground in 1936 and was completed in 1938.
Wright was notoriously stubborn. (For a deeper dive into his character, read the excellent fact-based novel Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.) He refused to budge on his designs, and at times demanded that workers dismantle and redo elements that hadn’t been crafted to his exact specifications. He often built furniture into a house so it couldn’t be changed.
But some clever clients, like Kaufmann, found ways to circumnavigate the architect’s obstinance. According to Spagnola, when the businessman saw how little space Wright had allocated for a home office desk at Fallingwater, he sent a letter: “I can’t write a check to an architect on this small of a desk,” he wrote. Wright promptly enlarged it.
Kaufmann, in turn, ended up writing much larger checks than anticipated. The house that had been initially quoted at $35,000 came in with a final price tag of $148,000, with $11,300 in added architectural fees.
Taking up residence in their new home, the Kaufmanns enjoyed bracing morning dips in the spring water that fed their outdoor plunge pool. (They could walk down the stairs and into the pool from inside the house.) Albert Einstein and Frida Kahlo counted among the luminaries who came for dinner or overnight stays. The furniture and artwork that remain on display are originals, including a Tiffany lamp and several Picassos.
Fallingwater spans 9,300 square feet in total but nearly half of that (4,400 square feet) is comprised of outdoor terraces, as befits Wright’s philosophy that houses should rest in harmony with nature.
After his parents died, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.—by then an adjunct professor at Columbia University—entrusted the home to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963. His partner, Paul Mayén, designed the visitors center.
Occasionally, Spagnola says, Edgar would give tours without wearing a name tag and ask visitors, “How do you like my house?”
Kentuck Knob
Though Fallingwater usually gets top billing, nearby Kentuck Knob is another Wright masterpiece worth a visit.
“The house is going to come right out of the hillside, like the prow of a ship,” explains our guide, Jennifer Nicklow, as our shuttle bus approaches the low structure. There are audible gasps inside the bus as the home’s copper patina roof and rich stonework seemingly emerge from the land itself.
Commissioned in the mid-1950s by ice cream magnates I.N. and Bernardine Hagan to occupy the apex of an 80-acre site, the home is an expression of Wright’s so-called “Usonian” principles.
Usonia, Nicklow explains, was a term the architect coined to express his “vision for a more modern, yet distinctly American style of architecture.” (The word is thought to be an abbreviation of “United States of North America.”) Impacted by his memories of the Great Depression, Wright wanted to design dwellings that a middle-class family could afford and revolutionize the way Americans felt in their homes by emphasizing their connections to nature.
Most Usonian homes are one story with a small (around 1,500 square feet), open footprint, often in an L shape that wraps around an outdoor terrace. Favoring natural and local building materials and large expanses of glass, Wright often employed cantilevered overhangs to promote passive heating and cooling, along with radiant heat in concrete slab floors.
He hated clutter. Many of his homes featured open carports, built-in furniture and minimal closets.
Designed without any 90-degree corners, Kentuck Knob unfolds as a series of parallelograms and hexagons. Most of the angles in the house are 60 or 120 degrees—although Nicklow shares that the contractors did have to make two exceptions to accommodate the plumbing in two bathrooms. They never told Wright.
Occupying 2,300 square feet, Kentuck Knob also embodies Wright’s “compression and release” philosophy, in which low entries, small doorways and narrow hallways blow open into more spacious communal areas. Wright was 5-foot-5 and usually designed to that height. Many customers, including 6-foot-tall I.N. Hagan, had to request accommodations.
Like Fallingwater, Kentuck Knob embraces a mostly natural palette, save a few of the architect’s signature “Cherokee red” touches. I smile at the six-sided kitchen, with its red tile floor, red countertops and large skylight. Bernardine Hagan reportedly asked Wright to enlarge the kitchen, only for him to respond by shrinking the adjacent hallway.
“I don’t often use the word comfortable with Frank Lloyd Wright furniture,” Nicklow says, pointing to a set of angular chairs designed by the architect. But the aesthetic is captivating. Hexagonal cutouts in the home’s dramatic overhangs cast playful patterns on the stone terrace.
Since 1986, Kentuck Knob has been owned by Peter Palumbo, an art collector, philanthropist and former member of the British House of Lords, and his wife, Hayat. The Palumbos converted the house into a museum more than two decades ago and live elsewhere.
Take a short stroll from the residence along the forest trail and sculpture garden to the nearby overlook for a gorgeous view of the Youghiogheny River Valley below.
Polymath Park
For yet another peek inside Wright’s world, head to nearby Polymath Park in Acme, Pennsylvania. This privately owned, 125-acre preservation site is home to two Wright-designed houses—Duncan House and Mäntylä—as well as two homes designed by Wright apprentice Peter Berndtson that follow the Usonian playbook, with large windows framing woodland views and stunning stonework inside and out.
The Wright structures weren’t always located here, explains our tour guide, Robert Hoffer. In 2000, after moving to the Laurel Highlands to enjoy its wooded seclusion, entrepreneur Tom Papinchak and his wife, Heather, learned that the owner of the Berndtson-designed homes (Balter House and Blum House) was aiming to sell and possibly harvest the forest on the property. Papinchak bought the parcel and the homes, “and then told his wife the next day,” Hoffer jokes.
The Papinchaks subsequently transplanted two threatened Wright homes from Minnesota and Illinois to Polymath Park with the approval of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Both homes were dismantled, their parts cataloged and numbered, before they were transported cross-country and then painstakingly reassembled on-site.
Stepping inside Wright’s circa-1952 Mäntylä, I’m smitten by the retro vibe of the earth-toned living room with its wall of windows and small cushioned stools. I picture myself enjoying cocktails with stylish friends in this groovy conversation space. (And for a mere $875 per night, I could. All of the homes at Polymath Park can be booked for overnight stays.)
Duncan House, a prefabricated Wright prototype originally built outside Chicago in 1957, is a Usonian structure marked by narrow, wood-paneled hallways that open into charming living spaces with bright red floors and countertops.
Now there’s even more Wright-inspired architecture coming to Polymath Park. Soon to be constructed on the site is Birdwing, a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. As the name implies, its roof resembles the outstretched wings of a bird in flight.
Visitors who overnight here appreciate “the peace and the ability to detach and reconnect in nature,” Hoffer says.
I’m certain that’s true, just as Wright intended.
If You Go
THE WRIGHT HOMES
Fallingwater offers guided architectural tours ($36) from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily (closed Wednesdays and Thanksgiving), March through Dec. 1. See website for holiday hours in December. Special events include forest-to-table dinners and fireside talks. The 5,000-acre site includes scenic walking trails and an extensive gift shop.
At Kentuck Knob, guided home tours ($30) are offered daily, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (noon to 3 p.m. Wednesdays), March through November. See website for holiday hours in December. If the weather’s fine, take the woodland trail that showcases owners Peter and Hayat Palumbo’s sculpture collection, including works by Andy Goldsworthy and Wendy Taylor, and enjoy a scoop of local Hagan ice cream.
Polymath Park offers architectural tours with lunch ($75) through Nov. 24, as well as overnight stays in homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Wright protégé Peter Berndtson ($475 to $825 per night).
WHERE TO EXPLORE
In nearby Shanksville, the Flight 93 Memorial pays tribute to the brave passengers who perished while diverting a hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001. This sobering memorial includes walking trails and audio clips of victims’ cellphone calls to loved ones. Admission is free.
The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg is a large, contemporary museum in a charming small town. Currently on display are works by Pakistani American multimedia artist Anila Quayyum Agha.
The town of Ohiopyle (population 37), recently named the Best Small Town in the Northeast by USA Today, is a haven for outdoor enthusiasts. The adjacent Ohiopyle State Park offers rafting, biking and waterfall hikes along the Youghiogheny River, and is bisected by the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) Trail, a scenic bike route that later connects to the C&O Trail.
WHERE TO EAT
For a leafy dining experience at Polymath Park, book a table at TreeTops Restaurant or one of its treehouse-style dining pods and enjoy locally sourced dishes by chef/owner Heather Papinchak. The outdoor bar will stay open into November, weather permitting. In December, a holiday progressive dinner that serves a different course in each of the site’s historic homes invariably sells out.
Silverhorse Coffee in Donegal serves up espresso drinks, kombucha, breakfast burritos and locally made pastries, as well as portable snacks (think energy bars and beef jerky) made by Pennsylvania purveyors. Another spot for a caffeine fix is Bittersweet Café in Farmington, known for its barista specialties and sandwiches made with locally sourced ingredients. Falls City Pub in Ohiopyle features casual dining and live music.
WHERE TO STAY
The Slopeside Hotel at Seven Springs Mountain Resort has 414 guest rooms and suites, as well as rental cabins. The 1907 Historic Summit Inn Resort, an original “grand porch hotel,” is on the historic National Road and also has dining options. Nemacolin resort is an upscale place to eat, play and stay, with many onsite activities, including golf and a ropes course.
Arlington resident Amy Brecount White agrees with Frank Lloyd Wright’s belief that we all need more nature in our lives.