I got to see Fallingwater today, Frank Lloyd Wright’s spectacular rural Pennsylvania creation. It’s something I’ve wanted to see since I was very young, fascinated by its futuristic look – I don’t remember where I was introduced to it – it was certainly before I’d planned on art as a career for myself. I know my parents had somehow managed to get me out to Chicago where I got to explore Oak Park where a cluster of his homes made up a hazily-remembered summer day but somehow we never got to check out the relatively local stuff – presumably because we never had the money? It’s not an inexpensive outing! (for the record, $25 / ticket if purchased in advance – unless you want to take pictures inside the home – then they triple the price!)
It was incredible to finally BE there but slightly disappointing, strange to pick up on other aspects of the story – but picking at those threads brought it back to full fascination.
Let me back up and put this in the context of the PREVIOUS day’s adventure!
Yesterday we visited the Chateau Laroche, better known as the Loveland Castle. I’d been searching for something to break up the drive betwixt Louisville and Columbus and stumbled across reference to a “one man castle” while just going down the rabbit hole of Ohio oddities. Mixed up in map references to UFO houses, boots on hearses, Christmas Story museums, scary mechanical horses, miniature Eiffel Towers and MORE I stumbled across what promised to be a pretty unique experience that was priced right ($5 donation please!): a small-scale castle begun in 1929 and built slowly-but-steadily and almost completely by one man until his death in 1981. It was then brought to its current state by Boy Scouts and volunteers styling themselves as the “Knights of the Golden Path”.
Harry Andrews had become enamoured of European castles while fighting in World War I and I THINK had set out to recreate a castle where his unit had set up a temporary hospital, treating the wounded in one of its great hall. Reading more about it, it turns out he was actually declared dead during the war and used that as a way to break away from the front and explore the castles of Europe before coming home and getting a degree from Colgate University. He came back to Ohio and started working with the local Boy Scout troop (eventually they took the KOTP name) and once they’d taken on the troop name of “Knights”… well, knights HAVE to have a castle, right?
It’s a fascinating structure, quarried from the local sandstone from the Miami River, there’s a great video interview of him talking about how “I used to carry x number of buckets of rocks up to my castle every day, now that I’m 90 I only carry y” – it’s kind of amazing what Andrews built. The structure is beautifully complex with carefully fitted stones, and when he ran out of stones, he made bricks for himself out of cement and even
used donated stones (provided by friends and fans and BELIEVERS who sent him stones from all over the world with their place of origin carved into them) – it’s truly magnificent. It’s pretty whimsical to boot with a dungeon and arched stone ceilinged bed-tower, a spy hole, secret rooms – he grew his own vegetables, dug his own well, all the while building and building and building.
The next day of course we got to see what one of the “not quite” wonders of the world, possibly the
best-known creation of one of the best-known architects in the world: Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater”. I’m really glad that fate conspired to give us these two experiences back-to-back. The castle was built for Love and obsession and ideal : Harry Andrews hated what World War I had showed him of modern combat and had truly romanticized close, hand-to-hand and “honourable” combat with the knights and castles epitomizing this “better, more moral time”. Fallingwater was built for money – visual aesthetic certainly – but over-budget and under-constructed despite this, and built for one of the richest men of Pittsburgh in the first-half of the 20th century during the heights (or depths) of the Great Depression… it’s known for its exquisite cantilevered balancing act, it’s innovative construction and it’s one-with-nature visual aesthetic…
And it IS beautiful, and it IS stunning – and the oft-repeated mantra that you can’t visualize Bear Run without Fallingwater and you couldn’t have had Fallingwater without Bear Run is certainly true. Both buildings were nay-said by other architects and designers. The domed ceiling of Harry Andrews’ bedroom was deemed impossible by other builders and so he slept under that “impossible” structure every night! Frank Lloyd Wright’s response to naysayers was to entomb the report of a contractor declaring that his plans for Fallingwater were impossible within the stone of Fallingwater itself… never to be seen again unless the structure truly DID fail…. but there are a lot of other stories about the place that aren’t as sweet.
Kristen and I waiting for our tour of Fallingwater in Bear Run, PA.
As we were taking a tour, one of our fellow tourists had pointed out how complicated it would’ve been to change some of the light bulbs and I’d responded “eh, it wasn’t so bad, remember those call buttons?” – not a big deal, rich people have servants to get things done for them… but it’s interesting to be reminded that during the greatest depression the world has ever known, every-day convenience wasn’t a factor of the design because it simply didn’t have to be!
Later we were looking at the bedrooms and the tour guide brings up the son of the Kaufmann family. Edgar J. Kaufmann jr (he insisted on a small “j”), had a long-term “life partner” named Paul Mayen… reading more about this is unclear, but they were together for 35 years and most people that actually mention the relationship are pretty concrete that he was gay. I found references to his being a student of Frank Lloyd Wright’s and that he possibly was dismissed or passed over for opportunities because Wright didn’t approve… despite this jr convinced Kaufmann senior to hire Frank Lloyd Wright to create their new family home…. (my only source for this dismissal is from an interesting read : “Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann and America’s Most Extraordinary House” By Franklin ).
…Afterwards Kristen wondered if we’d have ever had the opportunity to walk through this beautiful home if it wasn’t for the fact that Edgar J. Kaufmann, jr was gay, leaving no heirs…
Jokingly our tour guide mentioned that there were two hallmarks of FKW houses – and Fallingwater exhibited both : leaky roof and over budget. In the case of Fallingwater, something to the tune of over 5 TIMES over budget. The tour guide mentioned that Wright was paid for many projects that were never completed and nothing EVER came in at his estimate… reading more about him, Wright certainly was a flamboyant spender of money, working illegal contracts to pay for his own spiraling debts, leaving wives behind for wives of clients, his history is definitely marred by infidelity and a definite arrogance.
His talent and the beauty of his creations aren’t up for debate. And Fallingwater (despite the fact that it’s kind of an institutially drab colour in person and additionally it is the MOISTEST house I’ve ever been in – nicknamed “Rising Mildew” by the Kaufmanns) IS exquisite. I’m so glad we finally got to stop. It was VERY cool wandering through what is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating buildings I’ve ever been in – and yet I think I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for the underdog and I *adored* Loveland Castle. I find it fascinating that they’re contemporary, begun within years of one another and ironically (because of the posthumous construction that the Knights of the Golden Path only recently completed – and the reconstruction that had to be perpetrated on Fallingwater recently because the cantilever thing, though cool, wasn’t quite as long-term as FLW had declared!) sort of completed within years of one another to boot. Edgar Kaufmann jr and Harry Andrews died within years of one another and both structures sprung of locally-sourced sandstone. I’m stretching things to truly compare them at all – but tour-proximity has linked them eternally in my mind.
From our time at Fallingwater we simply set the GPS and Hyundai towards home – though we’d initially planned to be out one more day I think it’s been a full (if brief) trip and it’ll be very, very good to be home.
