Publish Date: Monday, June 8, 2009
Location: Mill Run, Pennsylvania
It’s misty and grey as you wake up one Saturday morning. A fire crackles softly in your fireplace, and outside, the rushing sound of a waterfall hums. Rolling over in bed, you stretch and lazily toss your covers aside. Putting on a bathrobe, you sneak out onto the wide and low terrace right outside your cozy room. Towering spring green trees surround this home, with a hazy fog settling mysteriously over them. But what makes this masterpiece of a home incredibly unique is what is below. Looking over the porch, you find yourself staring right down at a rushing waterfall.
This may describe a morning for one of the Kaufmanns, the original owners of this magnificent house. Fallingwater, a house located in the mystical woods in southwest Pennsylvania, was built in the 1900’s by Frank Lloyd Wright. This incredible architect had a very unique collection of houses he designed. He was most known for incorporating nature into his many spectacular pieces of art. Designing a house that goes over a waterfall…that is really something.
My family and I had the opportunity to visit Fallingwater a few weekends ago. It is truly incredible.
Standing on the bridge crossing over the river to Fallingwater
The visitors center is located out of view from the house. You walk down a deeply wooded path until you are right up next to the home. Walking through the woods, I could hear the waterfall getting closer until I was face to face with the most magnificent house I had ever seen. Pictures I had seen were nothing compared to the beautiful sight. Not only is the design incredible, but the natural beauty of it’s surroundings were also breathtakingly gorgeous. The house is positioned directly over the waterfall, and is in the middle of a vast and magical forest. The tour of the house convinced me even more that this house belongs in a fairytale.
A staircase leading from the common room...right to the river!
Inside, Frank Lloyd Wright combined the natural forms of nature with a modern twist. Much of the house is glass, with edgeless windows, glass doors, and whole walls of nothing but clear window. By the hearth, the stones from the mountain side were not removed, but rather built in as a rustic edge. The furniture was red, which gave a bright and desert-like feel to the otherwise wet woods. The bedrooms and house layout were magnificent. This house from the outside looks giant, but the rooms are rather cozy and small. Tiny, low beds, brilliantly designed desks, built in wardrobes, and magnificently large terraces were just some of the interesting decor. Frank Lloyd Wright loved the outdoors, so every rooms has windows with no blinds, and terraces larger than the whole floor!
The common room was the one exception to the smallish rooms. Yes, the ceiling was rather low, and yes, the terrace was bigger, but other than that, the common room felt free and open. Couches, tables, chairs, and rugs were spread out along the room with, also, a vast area of stone and wood floor open for dancing. I could imagine the wonderful parties and fine entertainment held there.
All together, Fallingwater was an amazing, unique, magical, and interesting experience. Frank Lloyd Wright really was a brilliant architect, and his houses express this to the fullest.
Fallingwater from the side of the waterfall...a fairytale setting
Bermuda Calling
I have always been an admirer of Frank lloyd Wrights work and have read his story and his trials and tribulations.
Mr Wrights work was new and refreshing at the time, he knew how to balance hight width and bredth .
i am sure that he understood the proportions of 1.414 .
” Falling water ” was a unique blend of that which relates to nature and the requirements of man,, i have always said that “no man need be common” for those people who lived in a house designed by him life for them surely changed.
We are motivated by our enviorments living in a prison brings remorse and sadness looking at the sunset brings happiness and the promice of a new day coming.
SO ! why do i tell you all this ,it is because over the years i have designed and buily many tradiotional Colonial Bermuda houses i am living in one since the age of 25, i have been involved in every thing to do with realestate and home construction and the art of living on the land.
Our Home here takes the form of a 17 century old English farm house and very much like you would see in Devon and Cornwall England we are truely living in the past with period furnishing tiled floors and chandeleers in every room.
Bermuda has some very unique homes, here our building traditions are comprable to that of Italian Spanish and oriental.
Unfortunately we have to many monsters housing those who live for one day at a time.
May be the best way to show you what we are all about is to E mail you some pictures
but i need you permission to do that.
As you travel arount the are three things that will stand aside from most people ; buildings and the beauty of the land.
“When we build let us think that we build for ever and not for present delight alone and as we place stone upon stone let us think that our sons will say we did this for them”.
Bermuda an island in the sun.
Donald & Mavis
[…] (he’s so good about getting his blogs up in a timely fashion); as did Ayla in her blogs about Fallingwater and CedarPoint; but, I just wanted to add my thanks to all of our old friends, new friends, and […]