Fallingwater

At the time of the original Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway, the house at Fallingwater did not yet exist. Its architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was in 1926 regarded as something of a has-been, his once-brilliant career derailed by a series of personal scandals that served as steady fodder for tabloid headlines, and his first encounter with wealthy merchant and philanthropist Edgar Kaufmann — owner of Kaufmann's department store, Pittsburgh's largest — was still a decade in the future. But Fallingwater today is almost inarguably the best-known visitor attraction in the Laurel Highlands, not to mention Wright's best-known work, and represents the point at which his career was relaunched from ignominy back to renown. And it would be unthinkable for a visitor to the region to pass up the opportunity to see this masterwork. With its groundbreaking design, its unique site plan perched above a small waterfall on Bear Run, and Wright's trademark blurring of the lines between the artificial and the natural, Fallingwater served as the Kaufmann family's weekend retreat from the smoke and bustle of the city from the time of its completion in 1937 well into the '60s, and has been open to the public for guided tours since that time.

Source: Wikivoyage, „Buffalo-Pittsburgh Highway“ · authors per page history · CC BY-SA 4.0 · as of 3/7/2020