Falling Water

My parents took a trip to the Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes of Falling Water and Kentuck Knob, both of these homes are located in western Pennsylvania roughly about 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh in the Laurel Highlands.

In looking for a map I discovered that much of the route my parents traveled was along Braddock's Road-a military road built in 1755. This was the first to cross successive ridgelines of the Appalachian Mountains in western D and south western PA. It was built by the VA militia and British regulars commanded by General Braddock on the way to remove the French from Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh), a leg in the over all plan to conquer the Ohio Country from the French at the beginning of the French and Indian War. George Washington, a low ranking officer was on the expedition. Braddock's army basically cut a trail through the wilderness roughly following Nemacolin's (a Delaware Indian Chief) Trail. This is the road we know in MD as the Cumberland Road, National Road/Pike, or Rt. 40.

It was a lovely trip with a stop at Sidlings Hill and its great highway cut through the mountain on the way out and further on we stopped at the Castlemen's River Bridge and the Penn Alps restaurant at Grantsville, Maryland for lunch.
The historic Castlemen's River Bridge is a place where we used to stop in the past on our way to vacation at Deep Creek Lake and I've stopped there on occasions on my way to Civil War re-enactments in West Virginia. The Penn Alps restaurant is buffet style, has great home style cooking and has been there as far back as I can remember.

Situated between the restaurant and the bridge (the bridge hasn't been in use since about 1933) is a small village of crafts shops which was interesting. Among the shops was a period home which was fixed up in the style of a German style farmhouse on the frontier of probably the late 1700s. In the Penn Alps bookstore I found a reprint of Meshack Browning's book called "Forty-four Years in the Life of a Hunter" but since I had read it so often in the past I decided not to purchase it but in the book he mentions visiting Grantsville.

We drove past the French and Indian War and National Park Service battlefield of Fort Necessity and the nearby grave of Gen. Braddock who was wounded in the Battle of Monongahela, 1755, located at Pittsburgh, Gen. Braddock died during the retreat and was buried on the National Road (now old Rt. 40), his grave was covered over and disguised so the enemy wouldn't desecrate the body, a large monument and a small park is there now. The Battle of Monongahela or sometimes called the Battle of the Wilderness was a loss for the British and their American allies but what was interesting about this battle was its where a young militia officer by the name George Washington saw his first combat. (I attached a painting showing the death of Gen. Braddock)

We toured the Frank Lloyd Wright home of Falling Waters, when first built it was the home of the home of the Kaufmann family who were once wealthy owners of the Kaufmann Department store in downtown Pittsburgh, the place was first used as a family vacation retreat where the family and their friends picnicked and played in the falls along Bear Run. Later Edgar Kaufmann asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build him a home with a view of the falls but Frank Lloyd Wright decided to build the home over the falls instead. The Kaufmanns left the design of the house entirely in the hands of Mr. Wright and it's definitely a unique place but personally I can't understand why anyone would take such a beautiful falls and build a house over it but that's what Wright did. After touring the house which at the time, 1935, cost $150,000 but in today's dollars that figure would be between 2 and 3 million dollars with the estimated value as an historic site today being incalculable, probably more than 20 million dollars plus.

I've attached some outside shots of Falling Water, photos inside the home were prohibited. When touring the home I had the feeling of being in a rock shelter that Indians might have lived in, rooms were tiny and halls were dark. I thought the only livable room in the whole house was the living room and dining room combination, what was unusual about that room was the push back glass panels where one could walk from the living room down the concrete steps to the falls, about all anyone could do at that point was to watch the water flow over the falls from the top or I guess you could sit down on the edge and put your feet in the water, there was no swimming pool except in the guest house on the hill above the main house.

Later we toured another nearby Frank Lloyd Wright house called Kentuck Knob (above), in my estimation this was a much better designed home only because the owners (the Hagan family) made extensive changes to Frank Lloyd Wright's original architectural designs during the building of the home. This home is small and would make a lovely vacation home, there isn't much storage in this house or any Frank Lloyd designed house because Wright simply didn't believe in it. (I've attached a few shots of Kentuck Knob including an interesting apple core piece of art near the visitor's center.

We spent the night at the historic old Summit Hotel in the mountains of Pennsylvania on the road to Pittsburgh, it was a lovely hotel and had a great indoor heated pool which I enjoyed greatly, I had the pool all to myself, it was wonderful. According to a history of the hotel a number of famous people had stayed there in the past including Henry Ford, Firestone, President Woodrow Wilson and many, many other famous personages who supposedly sat by the large fireplace, it was a really interesting old place where hallways went on forever, in those days folks dressed in black tie for dinner, how times have changed. In one brochure it said that Johnny Weismiller, the Olympian and actor who was Tarzan back in the old black and white movies used to give a diving and swimming show at the outdoor pool when he was a guest there back in the days.