40 Fun Facts About Fallingwater

Which natural feature juts through Fallingwater's living room floor, kept at Edgar Kaufmann's insistence?

A boulder about seven feet long pokes up in front of the hearth. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to shave its top flat, but his client overruled him.

Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly matched Fallingwater's ocher concrete to a dried leaf of which plant?

Rhododendron was the leaf Wright is said to have picked up on site, and he ordered waterproof paint from DuPont to match its dried color.

Which wry nickname did Edgar Kaufmann Sr. give Fallingwater because of its many leaks and damp?

Rising Mildew was his joke on the name of a house that at first leaked in 50 places. Later studies traced the leaks to mistakes by the builders.

Fallingwater inspired the villain's house in which Alfred Hitchcock thriller that ends on Mount Rushmore?

North by Northwest gave its villain a lair in Wright's style, modelled on the Pennsylvania original. It was only a film set, as no such home exists near the monument.

Which Hollywood actor and architecture buff marked a birthday with a private tour of Fallingwater in 2006?

Brad Pitt had wanted to see the house since a college architecture course, a curator said. He spent two hours touring it with Angelina Jolie.

Which toy company sold a model of Fallingwater as an early set in its Architecture series?

Lego teamed up with Adam Reed Tucker, a trained architect who built landmarks from its bricks as art. The house was among the first six sets in the range.

Edgar Kaufmann Sr., who commissioned Fallingwater, made his fortune from which kind of Pittsburgh business?

A department store, Kaufmann's, was the largest in Pittsburgh, and Wright also designed a private office inside it for the owner.

What happened to Fallingwater's first visitor pavilion within days of its opening in April 1979?

It burned down, so the pavilion had to be built a second time with an $800,000 grant from the Kaufmann family's foundation.

Which famous physicist did the Kaufmanns invite to Fallingwater during his 1939 trip to the Pittsburgh area?

Albert Einstein had come to western Pennsylvania to meet Jewish leaders about helping Jews still trapped in Germany. The trip was so sombre that he gave no public lectures.

Which New York museum joined Fallingwater on the World Heritage List among eight Wright buildings?

The Guggenheim, finished in 1959, was the last of the eight to be built. UNESCO listed them together in 2019 as Wright's masterpieces.

A glass hatch in Fallingwater's living room opens onto concrete stairs that lead down to what?

The stream runs right under the room, and the Kaufmanns kept the hatch open all summer. The steps end at a landing just above the water, beside a shallow plunge pool.

Which building technique, which Wright likened to tree branches, holds up Fallingwater's terraces?

Cantilever construction fixes each concrete terrace at one end only, like a diving board. Neither it nor reinforced concrete was common in houses when Wright used them here.

Fallingwater is held up as the masterpiece of which design philosophy championed by Frank Lloyd Wright?

Organic architecture, in Wright's hands, meant using the same materials indoors and out, so that the house seems to grow from its wooded site.

On Fallingwater's completion, Frank Lloyd Wright gave the Kaufmanns six woodblock prints from which country?

Japan's Hiroshige and Hokusai made the six prints. They were Wright's gift, while the Kaufmanns chose the rest of the art in the house themselves.

Which metal did Frank Lloyd Wright first propose as a coating for Fallingwater's concrete walls?

Gold leaf was the idea, and nobody is sure whether Wright was joking. Edgar Kaufmann still hired a gilding contractor, who turned the job down, and ocher paint won out.

Fallingwater's ceilings dip as low as six feet four because Frank Lloyd Wright scaled the rooms to whom?

Wright measured the house against himself, at about five feet eight, assuming everyone was his height. The low hallways were also meant to stop people lingering.

Which unusual material covers the floors and walls of the bathrooms in Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater?

Cork was the suggestion of the Kaufmanns' son, who thought the bare floors Wright had specified would feel too cold after a shower.

Which type of rock, quarried on the Kaufmanns' own land, forms the walls and chimney of Fallingwater?

Sandstone came from a disused quarry reopened for the job, and local workers laid it in rough courses that mimic the cliff beside the house.

Which signature Frank Lloyd Wright color coats the steel window frames and doors of Fallingwater?

Cherokee red appealed to Wright as the color of burning metal, a hue he thought stood for life itself. It joins gray rock and ocher concrete as the only exterior colors.

Works by which Spanish artist, including The Smoker, hang in the art collection at Fallingwater?

Pablo Picasso is represented by The Smoker and The Artist and his Model, hung in a house whose owners collected art from many cultures.

Fallingwater helped inspire buildings in which Ayn Rand novel about an uncompromising young architect?

The Fountainhead follows Howard Roark, a hero partly modelled on Wright. Rand always denied that the architect shaped the book's plot or its philosophy.

Fallingwater is built over a waterfall on which creek in Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands?

Bear Run sometimes freezes in winter and shrinks to a trickle in summer. Contrary to a common belief, it flows beneath the house and not through it.

Edgar Kaufmann Jr. studied at which Frank Lloyd Wright home and school before Fallingwater was commissioned?

Taliesin, in rural Wisconsin, is where his parents came to visit him and met Wright. The younger Kaufmann had gone there after reading the architect's autobiography.

By legend, what prompted Frank Lloyd Wright to sketch Fallingwater in about two hours after months of delay?

A surprise client visit did it: Edgar Kaufmann phoned to say he was on his way, and the drawings were done when he arrived. Wright had in fact been planning the house in his head for months.

Where did the Kaufmanns expect their house to sit before Wright put Fallingwater on top of the cascade?

Facing the falls was the family's wish, because they loved the view. Wright argued that they should live with the cascade, not merely look at it, and built over it.

Which North Carolina timber, chosen because it resists warping, forms all of Fallingwater's woodwork?

Black walnut suited a site that is damp all year, and about half of the furniture made from it is built into the walls.

Which New York institution devoted an exhibition to Fallingwater in 1938, weeks after the Kaufmanns moved in?

Museum of Modern Art staged a show about the new house that then toured for two years. The Kaufmanns' son later became a curator of design there.

Frank Lloyd Wright posed before a drawing of Fallingwater on a January 1938 cover of which magazine?

Time ran the cover in the same month that Life and Architectural Forum featured the house, and the burst of fame helped revive Wright's career.

Edgar Kaufmann Jr. gave Fallingwater in 1963 to which organization, which still runs the house as a museum?

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy took over at a ceremony with the state's governor and began public tours the next summer. The gift came with $500,000 for upkeep.

Which professional body named Fallingwater its building of the century in 2000?

American Institute of Architects members had already voted it the best all-time work of American architecture in 1991, nine years before the century title.

Which top US government designation does Fallingwater hold in addition to its World Heritage status?

National Historic Landmark status is held by all eight Wright buildings on the UNESCO list, and it was one of the reasons they were put forward.

Which other Frank Lloyd Wright house stands about seven miles from Fallingwater in Fayette County?

Kentuck Knob was built for the Hagans, an ice-cream family who discovered Wright on visits to the Kaufmanns. Edgar Kaufmann advised them to tell the architect only half their budget.

After Fallingwater, Edgar Kaufmann Sr. hired which architect to design his desert house in Palm Springs?

Richard Neutra completed the Kaufmann Desert House in 1946, giving a single client two of the most celebrated modern homes in America.

What did engineers thread beside Fallingwater's beams in 2002 to stop its sagging terraces failing?

Steel cables were anchored and tightened much like those of a suspension bridge, after the terrace tips had drooped by as much as seven inches.

What was reportedly sealed inside Fallingwater on the orders of Wright or Edgar Kaufmann?

An engineers' critical report listed at least eight structural problems and advised against building on the site at all. Edgar Kaufmann is known to have kept a copy.

Before Fallingwater was built, Edgar Kaufmann ran a summer retreat on the same land for which group?

His employees came in crowds, with up to a thousand using the camp each summer. When they stopped coming, the Kaufmanns bought the land for themselves.

What did the Kaufmanns name the bare cliffside cabin they used for years before Fallingwater was built?

The Hangover had no electricity, plumbing or heating. The family put up with it for more than a decade before asking Wright for something grander.

Which Swiss sculptor of thin, elongated figures designed the Kaufmann mausoleum doors at Fallingwater?

Alberto Giacometti made the doors for the small tomb in the grounds where Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann lie. Their son's ashes were scattered around the house instead.

Why did Frank Lloyd Wright set the toilets at Fallingwater only about ten inches above the floor?

Squatting seemed healthier to Wright than sitting on a standard American toilet. He also ordered oversized shower heads so bathers would feel they stood under a waterfall.

Which Racine office building, designed alongside Fallingwater, helped revive Frank Lloyd Wright's career?

Johnson Wax Headquarters rose at the same time, and Wright's apprentices swapped between the two sites as supervisors. Before these jobs his practice had almost dried up.