Frank Lloyd Wright (right) and E.J. Kaufman Jr. confer at Taliesin West, Wright's winter home and studio in the Sonoran Desert near Scottsdale, Ariz.

Exploring the History, Myths, and Magic of Fallingwater

If you are a southwestern Pennsylvania resident who has never made the trek into the remote Fayette County woods to see Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house— Fallingwater—you are not alone.

Pitt Professor of Art History Franklin Toker estimates that fewer than one and a half percent of all Americans have actually seen the renowned building nestled in its natural surroundings, or gazed from its cantilevered balconies, or walked through the building's damp cave-like interior, with Bear Run waterfall rushing beneath the floor.

But certainly most people have heard of Wright's famous masterpiece, which became the weekend home of Pittsburgh department store magnate E.J. Kaufmann and his family.

The fact that Fallingwater created such a buzz in 1938 and was what Toker calls "a public relations triumph" is just one angle he explores in his new book, Fallingwater Rising (Alfred A. Knopf).

Using information gleaned from hundreds of interviews and thousands of memos, plans, diaries, and private letters, Toker also explores how Fallingwater became the 70-year-old Wright's comeback, how it helped novelist Ayn Rand emerge from writer's block, and why the building nearly collapsed in the 1990s, as well as the fascinating relationship between Wright, the genius architect, and Kaufmann, who bankrolled the project.

"For Wright, the artist was supreme," said Toker. "Whereas Kaufmann was a merchant and looked at everything as having a price.

"Yet, their collaboration was the work of angels," observed Toker, a genial man with salt-and-pepper hair who prefers to wear sneakers around campus.

Fallingwater Rising debunks many myths. For example, when the concrete balconies were completed, Wright did not personally knock away the wooden posts that served as temporary shoring. According to the author, Wright was not even at the site that day, but was in Wisconsin, where he made his home.

Another myth, refuted for the first time, is that Kaufmann's son, Edgar Jr., was largely responsible for the project and convinced his father to commission Wright to design it. Actually, Toker's research shows that the younger Kaufmann did not accompany his father on those early trips to Bear Run, as Kaufmann Jr. had stated in his own memoirs. Toker calls these claims by the younger Kaufmann "inexactitudes," and disproves enough of them to place credit for Fallingwater firmly in the lap of the elder Kaufmann.

Toker was both amused and intrigued when his probing met resistance from Kaufmann Jr.

"When I asked him some of these tough questions, he simply cut off communication," Toker remarked. "He wrote me a letter that said, 'Frank, you're onto something . . .but you're not going to get it from me.'"

Franklin Toker

The relationship between Wright and E. J. Kaufmann was a volatile one. Toker uncovered the fact that Kaufmann had attended the Yale University School of Engineering for one year. And Wright, who "hated merchants and the merchant lifestyle," made more money over the years from selling Japanese prints than he did from architecture.

"So the merchant with a tad of engineering knowledge is working with the engineer who sees himself as a merchant," said Toker, adding, "A worse prediction for conflict can hardly be imagined."

Toker said the building's balconies, which pushed engineering principles beyond their limits, began cracking and heaving even before the Kaufmann family moved in. They would have collapsed had the builders not added more steel to the concrete—as much as four times the amount Wright's original plans called for. Wright was not told until weeks later.

By the 1950s, however, the corners of the balconies had sagged seven inches. In 2002, at tremendous risk, engineers strengthened the concrete internally by inserting steel cables and then tightening them to a pressure of 350,000 pounds per square inch. While the move will prevent any further damage, the balcony ledges will always have a certain curvature to them.

"It's almost as if it's a living thing," said Toker, reminding us that "nature never uses straight lines."

Toker has concluded that Wright's genius was a result of several attributes, but chief among them was his amazing mental power to conceptualize something before he drew it. Toker compares this ability to Mozart, who could supposedly "see" the score for an entire symphony first and then just simply write it down. Wright was able to draw freehand to scale, in perfect proportion.

"He knew that these five inches represent, let's say, 40 feet on a building," said Toker. "That exceptional ability is every architect's dream."

He also hypothesizes that author Rand, who was struggling with writer's block while working on a book about the triumph and tragedy of a modern architect, helped to popularize Wright. According to Toker, Wright's Fallingwater exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art had such an impact on Rand that she was able to finish the book, which eventually became The Fountainhead.

Toker says the connections between passages in The Fountainhead and Fallingwater are numerous, including Rand's descriptions of three houses with stone terraces cantilevered over water.

Toker admits that many people he spoke to who have toured Fallingwater came away disappointed, calling the interior cold, damp, too noisy, the stone walls too rough.

"People want a building to look fantastic on the outside, like New York's Guggenheim, and then on the inside be comfortable and charming, complete with a string quartet in the corner," Toker said with a smile. But the professor says Wright was "faithful to nature," on both the building's interior and exterior.

"People have got to realize that the building is exceptional because it attempts to do something astonishing," he said. "And people are constantly telling me their visit to Fallingwater was a turning point in their lives." • SSB