Fallingwater, the groundbreaking home architect Frank Lloyd Wright built for Pittsburgh’s Kaufmann family, is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. The image of the home, cantilevered over the waterfall of Bear Run in the Laurel Highlands, may be more familiar to Pittsburghers than the place itself. Just 70 miles east of the city, it’s close enough to feel almost ordinary—which is remarkable considering it’s one of the most significant and studied buildings in the world. 

In the mid-1930s, Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., president of Pittsburgh’s Kaufmann’s department-store empire, asked Wright to design a weekend house at Bear Run, where the family had been summering for years. Wright’s response was audacious: rather than putting the house where the Kaufmanns could look at the waterfall, he put it directly over the falls—and changed architectural history. 

Since 1963, Fallingwater has been owned and cared for by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which opened it to the public the following year. More than 6 million people have visited since then. Justin Gunther, who has served as Fallingwater’s director since 2018, is responsible for the preservation and interpretation of one of the world’s most important works of architecture—and for making sure the public can continue to experience it. Here, he shares three of the biggest surprises about the house and its architect, whether you’re seeing Fallingwater for the first time or returning for another look. 

What to Know About Fallingwater and Frank Lloyd Wright

1. Frank Lloyd Wright Really Did Not Like Pittsburgh

Opinionated and combative, Wright was famously disdainful of cities, hating their overcrowding and artificiality, which he saw as at odds with the kind of life he envisioned for Americans. In 1935, when the 68-year-old Wright was en route to Bear Run, he made a pitstop in Pittsburgh—and unleashed a string of acerbic put-downs about the Burgh. After seeing the Cathedral of Learning, Wright said, “That’s the most stupendous ‘keep-off-the-grass’ sign I’ve ever seen. If this is the best learning can do, let’s get unlearned.” His view of Mellon Institute was just as withering: “That’s what happens when men get rich and bring Greece to Pittsburgh.” Asked what he would do to improve the city, Wright didn’t hesitate: “It would be cheaper to abandon it and build a real one,” he said.

For Gunther, Wright’s contempt for Pittsburgh was part of a larger argument about American architecture’s identity. Wright had zero patience for revivalist architecture—which borrowed heavily from the past—and was determined to invent what he considered a genuinely American modernism. Fallingwater, says Gunther, is Wright’s not-so-subtle rebuke to the prevailing architectural styles of the time. 

“It’s a middle finger to the European internationalists,” says Gunther. “Wright is saying: I can do what you’re doing, but I can do it better. I can do it in an American way, and I can do it in a natural way, not a machine way.”

At Bear Run, Wright saw a chance to put his philosophy into practice. Rather than treating the landscape as something a building should dominate, he made it part of the architecture itself, cantilevering the house over the waterfall, extending terraces into the hillside, and making the stream an inescapable part of everyday life.

2. Fallingwater Wasn’t Exactly Designed With Safety First 

When Fallingwater was being built in 1936, Wright was able to make some pretty radical design choices, including how much distance there should be between a person and a 30-foot drop. In keeping with his vision, the walls along the edges of the outdoor terraces are only 26 inches high, which feels precariously low from a 2026 perspective. There are no handrails on any of the more than 100 stairs throughout the house, because Wright expected people to grab onto the stone walls for handholds. Then there’s the hatch in the living room, which opens onto a suspended stairway leading directly down to the stream below—with, again, no handrail. 

Also pushing the limits of safety was Wright’s audacious plan to cantilever the home: he envisioned enormous concrete terraces suspended over the waterfall, with nothing supporting their outer edges so they appeared to float in midair. While Wright had experimented with concrete and cantilevered construction for years, he was going rogue with Fallingwater, pushing his ideas far beyond what he had attempted previously. 

That didn’t exactly instill confidence in Kaufmann. Worried about the home’s structural integrity, he secretly brought in Pittsburgh engineering firm Metzger Richardson to review Wright’s plans. They created separate specifications for the reinforcing steel in the cantilevered beams, and during Fallingwater’s construction, site engineers quietly added more steel based on the firm’s calculations. When Wright found out, he was apoplectic. As Gunther explains, Wright wrote to Kaufmann that if he couldn’t trust him to be his architect, then “to hell with the whole thing.” 

Kaufmann and Wright ultimately reconciled and continued with the project, and the extra steel stayed. As it turned out, Kaufmann had good reason to worry: despite the added steel, the cantilevers eventually began to sag, requiring major structural reinforcement decades later.

3. You Don’t Have to Know Anything About Architecture to Get Fallingwater

Fallingwater may be one of the most-studied homes ever built. Architects, scholars, writers, and filmmakers have spent lifetimes analyzing Wright’s career-defining creation and its place in architectural history. It’s easy to imagine that a house with such a formidable reputation might feel equally formidable in person. Gunther had a similar expectation before his first visit, when he was a high school student. He had only seen photographs, which made Fallingwater appear monumental and even a little forbidding.

“I had this preconceived notion that Fallingwater was going to be this big, iconic thing,” he says. Instead, he found something much more human-scale and approachable. 

Gunther calls Fallingwater “a cerebral house,” because every detail is intentional. But he also calls it “an extremely accessible house.” That accessibility, he says, comes from a universal connection with nature: the waterfall, the woods, and the stone. For Gunther, Wright was working with things everyone understands instinctively, whether or not they know the vocabulary of architecture. 

That may be Fallingwater’s best trick: a house that rewards intellectual study doesn’t require any architectural knowledge to appreciate. You can simply walk through it and think: this is unbelievably cool.

Bring the flavors of Fallingwater home with recipes from former Fallingwater chef Tom Shuttlesworth. And learn more about one of the most-famous artworks at Fallingwater. 

About the Author

Kathleen Renda is TABLE Magazine’s Online Content Strategist and a contributor covering design, trends, and lifestyle. A veteran journalist with more than two decades at national titles including Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful, and HGTV Magazine, she was part of the Budget Living team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. She’s interviewed names like Chip and Joanna Gaines and Nate Berkus, and ghostwritten two bestselling interior design books, including Thom Filicia Style. More at kathleenrenda.com.

Photo Courtesy of Western PA Conservancy

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