Fallingwater—the iconic, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home cantilevered over a waterfall—was a comeback story for the visionary American architect. Born in 1867, Wright was in his late 60s in 1934 when he was commissioned to design a country retreat outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the wealthy Kaufmann family.
At that point in his career, Wright had suffered so many professional and personal setbacks that he was written off by most architecture critics, says Catherine Zipf, an architectural historian.
“They were calling him ‘washed up,’ a ‘has-been,’ a ‘19th-century architect,’” says Zipf, author of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: American Architecture in the Depression Era. “Nobody thought he had it in him. The brilliance of Fallingwater was as much of a surprise to Wright as it was to anyone else.”
Ultimately, what made Fallingwater such a wild success was the full realization of Wright’s “organic architecture” philosophy combined with a stunning natural setting and a risk-taking, art-loving client.
Wright Weathers Scandal and Tragedy
In 1908, Wright caused a scandal when he left his family—wife Catherine and six children—for a wealthy client named Mamah Borthwick. Wright closed his studio in Oak Park, Illinois, and traveled around Europe with Borthwick in search of architectural inspiration.
“Wright went through this personal and professional crisis in which he said, ‘I don’t like what I'm doing and I think there’s something different out there,’” says Zipf. “From that point until the late 1920s, he was really casting about for how to make his new ‘living in architecture’ formula work.”
Returning from Europe, Wright and Borthwick were shunned by Chicago society, so they retreated to Wright’s childhood property in Wisconsin. There he built Taliesin, the first home that truly embodied Wright’s new vision for “organic architecture.” The low-slung house was built from local limestone and its horizontal lines echoed the shape of the rolling hillside.
But Zipf says that Wright’s “organic” philosophy was about more than local materials and integration with the landscape.
“Taliesin was also about how you live,” says Zipf. “Wright put his money where his mouth is. What he proved at Taliesin is how architecture can help you live in this very organic, honest, back-to-the-land type of way.”
Tragedy struck in 1914, when a disgruntled Taliesin employee set fire to the home, killing Borthwick, her two children and four others.
Wright rebuilt Taliesin and tried to rebuild his career in Los Angeles. With the exception of a few impressive works like Hollyhock House, many of Wright’s projects were never built or received a lackluster reception, especially when compared with the biggest names in European Modernism, like Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
When the Depression struck, Wright’s client base dried up completely and he took to writing and speaking. His best-selling books Modern Architecture (1930) and An Autobiography (1932) reintroduced the aging architect to a younger generation, including the Kauffmans.
In Pittsburgh, a ‘Meeting of the Minds’
Edgar J. Kaufmann, known as E.J., was heir to the Kaufmann’s department store dynasty. He married Liliane Kaufmann, his first cousin, and they had one son, Edgar Kaufmann, jr. (who spelled his name with a lowercase “j”). The Kaufmanns traveled extensively and surrounded themselves with artists and creative minds.
Most accounts of Fallingwater say that Edgar, jr. was the one who first made contact with Wright. During the Depression, Wright created the Taliesin Fellowship, an apprentice program for aspiring architects and artists. Edgar, jr., who later worked at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City, became a Taliesin Fellow in October 1934.
But as Zipf and other historians have discovered, it was E.J.—the elder Kaufmann—who first reached out to Wright months earlier to discuss some New Deal construction projects in Pittsburgh.
Wright wasn’t interested in “bridge and tunnel” work, but E.J. convinced Wright to visit Pittsburgh with the prospect of designing a new office above the Kaufmann’s department store and maybe even a planetarium. (Wright’s earlier design for a futuristic planetarium called the Gordon Strong Automobile Objective in Maryland was never built.)
“When Wright first came to Pittsburgh and met E.J., that was really a meeting of the minds,” says Zipf. “Wright, who was famously difficult to work with, realized that he found a kindred spirit in Kaufmann. Something that’s not talked about enough is how important the client is in an architectural project. For Wright, the Kaufmanns were the perfect client.”
A Vision at Bear Run
After discussing the office renovation and planetarium projects in Pittsburgh, E.J. and Liliane invited Wright to visit Bear Run, their refuge outside the city where the Kaufmanns owned 1600 forested acres.
Bear Run is a creek that cuts through the ancient Allegheny Mountains. Over millennia, the rushing waters have worn through layers of limestone and shale. Because sandstone erodes slower, it forms waterfalls like the 20-foot beauty on the Kaufmann property.
For decades, Bear Run served as a retreat for the female employees of Kaufmann’s department store. Edgar and Liliane built a rustic mail-order cottage there in 1921 that became the family’s escape from the pollution and noise of Pittsburgh.
Before Wright visited Bear Run, there was no talk of designing a home for the Kaufmanns, says Zipf. But as E.J. and Liliane discussed their frustration with the cabin—it was too close to the road and lacked modern conveniences—the conversation turned to the prospect of a new house, perhaps with a view of the dramatic falls.
It was as if the inspiration struck all of them at once. Wright had come to Pittsburgh to talk about an office and a planetarium, and he left with a commission for a house — a house with a revolutionary design that was already percolating in his imagination.
“The visit to the waterfall in the woods stays with me,” Wright wrote later, “and a domicile has taken vague shape in my mind to the music of the stream.”
‘Instant’ Inspiration Based on Decades of Experience
The famous story about Wright’s design for Fallingwater is that it “poured out of him” in a three-hour fit of inspiration. And there’s some truth to that.
On the morning of September 22, 1935, Wright received a surprise phone call from E.J. saying that he’d be at Taliesin in a few hours and was eager to see Wright’s progress with the designs.
“Wright says, ‘Sure, we’ll see you then,’ knowing full well that he doesn’t have any designs at all,” says Zipf. “So Wright sits down with the Taliesin Fellows and starts to draw.”
While Wright did produce the initial drawings for Fallingwater in a three-hour flurry of sketching, the radical architectural ideas behind it had been forming in Wright’s mind for months.
In truth, Zipf says, Wright had been experimenting with the engineering principles behind Fallingwater for decades. Concrete, cantilevered construction, the incorporation of running water, even building atop a natural sight—those were all concepts that Wright had played with in the 1920s, and now they were coming together in a single, ambitious project.
When E.J. arrived at Taliesin, Wright showed him the freshly drawn sketches complete with a name, “Fallingwater.”
E.J. said to Wright, “I thought you would place the house near the waterfall, not over it.” And Wright replied, “E.J., I want you to live with the waterfall, not just to look at it, but for it to become an integral part of your lives.”
The Epitome of Organic Architecture
Fallingwater is the ultimate realization of Wright’s vision for “organic architecture.” Perched on a rock ledge over the Bear Run waterfall, the three stacked horizontal “trays” of Fallingwater are cantilevered to mimic the rock overhang below. Instead of brick, the walls are made from stacked sheets of shale mined on site. The interior floors are polished flagstones meant to resemble a river bottom. The smooth crown of a large boulder rises up through the floor to form the hearth of the fireplace.
“In addition to its physical ‘organic’ elements, Fallingwater was designed to support the lifestyle in which the Kaufmanns intended to live,” says Zipf. “It’s a retreat, It’s private. Each occupant has their own area. The guest house is way up the hill. The living areas each have their own indoor/outdoor feel—the permeable walls in between, the sliding doors, the insanely cool windows in the corner that open out.”
Equal parts engineering marvel and work of art, Fallingwater made an immediate splash in the architectural world, and brought Wright the fame and adulation that had long eluded him.
“With Fallingwater, Wright shows up all of European Modernism,” says Zipf. “It checks every box of American design—it’s daring, it’s beautiful, and it photographs exquisitely well. Everybody’s paying attention and everybody loves it.”
Over his entire career, Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built more than 600 buildings. A third of them were commissioned after Fallingwater when Wright was in his 80s, long after most other architects would have retired.
In 1963, after his parents’ deaths, Edgar, jr. deeded Fallingwater and its surrounding property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which opened the historic home to public tours the following year.
“Its beauty remains fresh like that of the nature into which it fits," said Edgar, jr. in 1963. "It has served well as a home, yet has always been more than that: a work of art, beyond any measures of excellence.”
