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.

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 ©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.

A Fallingwater PhotoJournal

It's been a minute since I updated here, but since we visited a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright sites recently, I thought it was time to share a little about those.

Frank Lloyd Wright is a very well-known name as an influential American architect. But did you know? Wright didn't graduate from high school, and he got his start as a part-time draftsman for a civil engineering professor. He started at the University of Wisconsin in 1886, studying engineering, but changed his focus to architecture. In 1887, at just 20 years old, he went to Chicago and put his architectural talent to work as part of the rebuilding effort in the city after the Great Chicago Fire.

A year later he was hired by Adler & Sullivan as Chief of Design for all their residential work, and the following year he built what is now known as the Frank Lloyd Wright Home in Oak Park, Illinois. He was soon working as an independent architect, sharing office space with several others, including the first woman licensed as an architect in the USA. The group went on to form the Prairie School, designs characterized by low buildings with gently sloped roofs, crisp lines, and using unfinished materials. This movement also featured open floor plans and made them popular. 

In 1934, Edgar Kaufmann Jr read Wright's autobiography and soon went to Taliesin to apprentice. Kaufmann had no plans to become an architect but his enthusiasm for Wright's ideas led him to make introductions between the architect and his parents, Edgar Kaufmann Sr and Liliane. The Kaufmanns were wealthy business owners from Pittsburgh who wanted a weekend home built on forested land they owned in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. Wright's design wasn't just a country house near the Bear Run river, it was cantilevered directly over the falls, made to function and feel like a part of its natural surroundings.

When you visit Fallingwater, you walk from the visitor center to the house, crossing a bridge over Bear Run to the entrance. Wright built the house around a central core, so that this living space and steps could be cantilevered over the river. The steps go right down the water and are open so when the river rises it simply flows over and through them. There is even a cold plunge pool beside the house.

The open living room and dining room area, with smaller spaces defined by furniture groupings and differences in ceiling height rather than with walls.

Wright's designs always make use of large windows that bring the outside in, and allow for air flow that would keep the house naturally air conditioned. Even in this kitchen that would have been used by household staff, the windowed wall makes it feel almost like an outdoor space and those corner windows all open completely to allow maximum air flow. The same window design is used in Mr Kaufmann's study on the second floor, but photos aren't allowed in that part of the house.

This is a patio area off the living room.

Wright used four elements in the design of Fallingwater - steel, reinforced concrete, sandstone, and glass. The building is constructed so that it blends into the hillside and even incorporates some of the large existing boulders into the house. 

In 1955, Edgar Kaufmann Sr passed away, and left a large part of his estate to charity. In 1963, Edgar Kaufmann Jr deeded the Fallingwater house and 469 acres of land in Bear Run to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy as a memorial to his parents. He also supplied an endowment fund to care for and preserve the house, and personally took the lead in administration and developing educational programming for Fallingwater, even leading some tours. The house was open for tours beginning in 1964. Edgar Jr had enjoyed a long a successful career as a curator and director at the Museum of Modern Art, and a professor of Architecture and Art History at Columbia University. He was a writer and lecturer and authority on industrial and interior design, and on the work and influence of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Fallingwater was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1976. In 2019, Fallingwater and several other Frank Lloyd Wright buildings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Visit the Fallingwater website to learn more.

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.