Fallingwater

Fallingwater, the weekend house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Pittsburgh department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann and his wife Liliane, does something no house had done before: it sits directly over a waterfall. Built from 1936 to 1937 in the forested Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, it extends its reinforced concrete terraces in bold cantilevers above Bear Run, so that the sound of falling water fills every room. It became an instant icon of modern architecture and remains Wright's most famous work.

The daring cantilevers came at a cost. The terraces sagged for decades, and from 2001 to 2003 engineers threaded steel cables through the concrete to post-tension and stabilize them. The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has owned and opened the house to the public since 1963, along with about 5,000 acres of surrounding land. In 2019 Fallingwater and seven other Wright buildings, including the Guggenheim Museum, Taliesin, Taliesin West and the Robie House, were named a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• Pennsylvania
  The Keystone State, ridge-and-valley heart of Appalachia located in
• The Appalachian Mountains
  The ancient, worn mountains of the eastern U.S. located in
• The Guggenheim Museum
  Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral on Fifth Avenue related