Happy Birthday Frank Lloyd Wright!

June 8th is the birthdate of Frank Lloyd Wright. Considered to be America’s greatest architect of all time, he designed over 1,000 structures during his career. You can find their locations, tour information and even rental information on Frank Lloyd Wright Sites. He designed four houses here in New Jersey, only three are still in the state - one house was moved to Arkansas! He also designed the Guggenheim Museum building and my favorite, Fallingwater.

I took a quick and safe weekend trip out to Mill Run, Pennsylvania in September 2020 to see Fallingwater. After spending a little over seven months in lockdown, I knew I needed to get out of my house and a short road trip seemed like just the right plan and the perfect time to finally see Fallingwater.

Fallingwater is the name of the vacation house that Wright designed for the Kaufmann family in 1935 in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. It is a perfect example of Wright’s design philosophy of organic architecture. It sits atop a waterfall surrounded by nature. The house has stone floors, full walls of glass and a number of open patio spaces. There is no escaping nature in this house!

The house sits on over 400 acres of property that was donated by the Kaufmann family to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. The house was donated along with all the original artwork and furnishings intact. Looking inside the windows gives you a glimpse into what the house looked like when Wright first designed the building.

When you visit Fallingwater, they suggest you plan on spending at least 2 hours on the property. There’s a ¼ mile walk to get to the house from the visitor center and another short walk to get to the spot to take the iconic photo of the house that we all know. After you visit the house, there are some hiking trails, no more than a mile each, that will take you through the property and show you more of the river and the surrounding forest.

After our visit to Fallingwater, the next day we also took a drive out to the Flight 93 National Memorial.

Books on Fallingwater:

Fallingwater
This book was published on the 75th anniversary of the construction of the home.

Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann, and America’s Most Extraordinary House

by Franklin Toker
Fallingwater Rising is a biography not of a person but of the most famous house of the twentieth century. Scholars and the public have long extolled the house that Frank Lloyd Wright perched over a Pennsylvania waterfall in 1937, but the full story has never been told. When he got the commission to design the house, Wright was nearing seventy, his youth and his early fame long gone.

Fallingwater
by Marc Harshman
This book guides readers through the process American architect Frank Lloyd Wright used in designing Fallingwater, a now-famous house in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, perched atop a waterfall. Full color.

The library also has a number of books on Frank Lloyd Wright including:

The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum
Published on the occasion of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's 50th anniversary, and in association with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The Guggenheim : Frank Lloyd Wright's iconoclastic masterpiece
by Francesco Dal Co
The captivating tale of the plans and personalities behind one of New York City's most radical and recognizable buildings Considered the crowning achievement of Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan is often called iconic. But it is in fact iconoclastic, standing in stark contrast to the surrounding metropolis and setting a new standard for the postwar art museum.

Wright Sites: A Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright Public Places
by Joel Hoglund
A comprehensive guide to Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings open to the public--revised and updated.

50 Favorite Houses by Frank Lloyd Wright
by Diane Maddex
Wright believed that the home was the center of family life, of individual freedom, a place of repose. As this book shows, his ideal home took on an amazing variety of forms, but was always built using natural materials and colors, and was always a work of art. Included here are his Prairie houses; revolutionary designs in California built of concrete blocks; the famous Fallingwater; and Taliesin West, his home in the desert.

Frank Lloyd Wright for Kids: His Life and Ideas
by Kathleen Thorne-Thomsen
An engaging, kid-friendly exploration of America's leading architect and his work This revised and updated edition of a longstanding classic, Frank Lloyd Wright for Kids , details the life, times, and work of the celebrated architect. 

- by Amelia, IT Department