Falling for Fallingwater

When planning our way west through Pennsylvania back to the farm, I picked the small town of Confluence for our home base because it is close to several sights Tim and I wished to see:  the Flight 93 Memorial, the Allegheny Portage Rail, the Johnstown Flood and Fort Necessity.  In addition, there are Fallingwater and the Great Allegheny Passage.  More about that last attraction later, but for now let me just say that I fell in love with Fallingwater.

Edgar & Liliane Kaufmann with their son Edgar jr.
Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Fallingwater was the summer home of Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann and their only child, Edgar Kaufmann jr.  In 1916, Edgar J. Kaufmann, owner of the Pittsburgh department store bearing his name, leased the property with plans to develop a camp where his employees could escape the heavily-polluted city.

Snapshot from a wall display at Fallingwater Visitor Center

Camp Kaufmann became a popular retreat where visitors could enjoy tennis, swimming, volleyball, hiking, hayrides, picnicking, sunbathing, singing and reading.

Snapshots of bathers frolicking under the Bear Run falls were published in The Storagram, Kaufmann's Department Store's newsletter.  The camp accommodated nearly a third of Kaufmann's 3,000 employees each summer.  Needless to say, the prospect of a seven-dollars-per-week vacation every third year was a genius moral-booster for the company.

The Kaufmann's Department Store formally purchased the property in 1926.  Once only an occasional visitor, Edgar Kaufmann began to spend summers swimming, lunching and playing tennis with his employees.

In July 1933, the land's ownership was transferred to the Kaufmann family, the beginning of Edgar's plans to build a summer home there.

In the summer of 1933, Edgar Kaufmann jr., began an apprenticeship at Taliesan, Frank Lloyd Wright's communal program for architect students in Wisconsin, and introduced his parents to the noted architect.

For the sum of $8,000 (almost a third of the proposed construction cost), the Kaufmanns hired Wright to develop plans to build Fallingwater over the Bear Run falls.  However, before the home was completed, the construction costs soared to $150,000.  That's a lot of money for a summer home that the Kaufmanns used only a few weeks out of the year.

Liliane & Edgar Kaufmann
Photo courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After his mother's death in 1952 and then his father's death in the 1955, Edgar jr. rarely visited the property.  Concerned about Fallingwater's preservation and following his father's wishes, Edgar jr.  entrusted Fallingwater and approximately 1,500 acres of the land that surrounds it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

When we visited, our tour guide mentioned that it takes $4 million a year to maintain this home situated on top of Bear Run falls with all the issues of damp and water damage.

But I think it's worth it.  Just ask any of the 4.5 million visitors who have come to Fallingwater since it opened to the public in 1964.  I'm sure they'd say the same.