A Polymath Park PhotoJournal

When I shared about our tour of Fallingwater recently, I promised another set of photos coming soon because we also visited Polymath Park on that trip. Here are those photos and a little about this site. Polymath Park is about a half hour from Fallingwater, and about an hour from Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands. 

In the 1960s, two families from Pittsburgh engaged architect Peter Berndtson to design two summer houses for them in Westmoreland County. Berndtson had studied at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and had worked with him on several projects, so his designs were greatly influenced by Wright, and his original vision had been to create a Usonian type area with common areas shared by the two families.

In 2000, the Papinchaks purchased a home in the mountains as a retreat, and in 2003 also purchased the Berndtson-designed houses (Balter and Blum) and land in order to preserve the area known as Polymath Park from development. The work of restoration on these houses began with a plan to open to the public at some point. In 2006 they got involved with the relocation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Duncan House which had originally been in Lisle, IL. Mr Papinchak acquired the house and it was reassembled at Polymath Park piece by piece. Polymath Park opened to the public in 2008 for tours and overnight stays, educating guests on Wright and Berndtson and their concepts of Usonian designs. In 2016, the Frank Lloyd Wright house known as "Mäntylä" was also acquired and approved for relocation from Cloquet, MN. This house was reassembled and opened for tours in 2019.

This is the Treetops Restaurant at the 'headquarters' of the site, which was originally the home of the Papinchaks:

Guests can tour all four houses or just the Wright houses. On our visit, we chose to visit just the two Wright houses.

The Duncan House was one of the prefabricated houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in a partnership with Marshall Erdman. Today Wright's best-known buildings are the large custom homes he designed for wealthy clients, but he was interested in mass production of housing throughout his career. In the 1950s Wright found that the builder Erdman was selling prefab houses, and he offered to design better homes for Erdman that would sell at even more modest prices. The Duncan House is an example of the Prefab #1 design - a single story, L-shaped home with a bedroom wing and a living and kitchen area wing all centered on a large fireplace. The design also included a storage shed connected to the house by a carport.

The R.W. Lindholm house, named Mäntylä, was designed in 1952 by Wright. The name is from a Finnish word meaning "of the pines" which was appropriate for its original location in the Minnesota forest. The house was in danger of demolition due to encroaching development, and in 2016 the house and furnishings were donated and the relocation project began. Mäntylä at Polymath Park opened for tours in 2019.

I loved both of these homes. As beautiful and innovative as I found the other Wright homes we've toured, they were all designed for very wealthy families with household servants and plenty of money for luxuries, and so there was a bit more of a museum quality to them. The houses at Polymath Park were designed for families that prepared their own meals and spent time in their own kitchens, and drove their own cars instead of having a chauffeur. Just the design of a kitchen that was part of the family's living space added a hominess that I really felt.

For review, here's my recent post about Fallingwater: A Fallingwater PhotoJournal

Thanks for joining me as I looked back on this tour! Hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even learned something. Have you visited any Frank Lloyd Wright buildings? Leave a comment and let me know!

See my related posts: A Kentuck Knob PhotoJournal; Frank Lloyd Wright - Blogging Through The Alphabet; A National Building Museum PhotoJournal

  

A version of this post will also appear on A Fresh Cup of Coffee.

Don't miss a coffee break! Subscribe to HS Coffee Break by email 

 ©2006-2025 HS Coffee Break. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. This post was written by a human. http://kympossibleblog.blogspot.com/ 

 This post may contain affiliate links - using affiliate links from HS Coffee Break helps fuel this blog. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.