We got mail
We in the band got e-mail and text messages from people all over the world expressing their joy after the election results came in. I got mail from France and Brasil, Graham got one from Germany, and Kaïssa got a letter from a friend in Senegal — here is an excerpt:
Former Villages and Frank Lloyd Wright II (Fallingwater)
Thanks to Jenni’s friend Jim a bunch of us piled 8 bikes into the back of his pickup and we headed to a riverside park called Ohiopyle, which is also very near Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house.
At Ohiopyle there is a wide bike path along what once was tracks for a small railway that served little lumber and coal mining towns along the Youghiogheny River. The coal seams are visible everywhere, as the river has created a valley and the geological fault line cuts through here, hence the numerous waterfalls along the river. The area was once a booming tourist and resort destination, served by the same little railroads, but the car did in those spots and the villages, and the forest growth now covers what once were small towns. Jim says his wife, an archeologist, has excavated along this bike path, and that one can dig almost anywhere here and come up with remains of farms and villages. But as we pedal through the foliage there is absolutely no evidence of any former habitation. I scan the woods for house foundations, chimney stacks or such, but it’s all been covered up; there are no ruins or any evidence whatsoever of former human habitation.
The movie version of Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” was shot in these parts — a story about traveling through a land after the civilization has collapsed.
A few miles away is the Frank Lloyd Wright house Fallingwater, built by the Kaufmanns, a Pittsburgh department store family, in the late 30s as a summer retreat. Lily’s uncle Joe, who has joined us on this trip, says it was essentially a “party” house. This reminded me of my recent visit to the Glass House that Phillip Johnson build for himself in Connecticut. I could see that both houses were indeed essentially intended for entertaining important guests from town. Both of these houses also served as showcases for the architects — Wright was a low point in his career, almost bankrupt, and with no pending commissions, when Kaufmann Jr, who apprenticed under him in Wisconsin, encouraged his dad to hire Wright to build a rural retreat on some land they owned. Or so said Jr. — another version has it that Kaufmann Sr. had previously approached Wright about designing a parking garage next to the dept. store, as Wright had designed an innovative parking garage in nearby Maryland — so recent scholarship intuits that maybe Sr. let Jr. think he was more influential than he was. The initial budget was 20K, which must have been chicken feed to a wealthy family during the depression when labor was cheap. However, Frank’s work went over-budget, as architects are wont to do, and the final costs were more like 140K. That’s quite an overrun, though the total might still seem cheap to us now.
As a showcase it worked spectacularly. Wright got new commissions before the work was even finished, and they kept coming in, a steady stream, until he completed the Guggenheim during the last year of his life. Kaufmann Sr. went on to commission a famous Neutra house out in Palm Springs.
One isn’t allowed in the house unless you’re part of a tour, so we took one, and were admonished many times not to take pictures and not to touch anything. The interior is weird and spectacular: lots of wide horizontal spaces with fairly low ceilings, views outside through creatively fenestrated windows that lead to or open onto large balconies that overhang the stream that runs under the house. The main room was obviously made for entertaining, as there are multiple sofas and little tables for large gatherings and groupings, and an expandable dining table for feeding guests. The bedrooms and bathrooms, as is often the case in Wright houses (and those of his son, Lloyd Wright), are small and fairly claustrophobic. Kaufmann Sr. and his wife had separate bedrooms, which seems odd to us now, and Mrs. Kaufmann’s bed was by far the largest. One has the sense of being in a beautiful sculpted cave with many chambers, wrapped in a lovely womb, conveniently with multiple views of the outside world. One is in semi-darkness, sheltered, secure, and yet able to see the surroundings at the same time. I suspect this secure yet advantageous position, in principle much like a concrete gun bunker, gun turret or an animal’s nest, satisfies some deep biological need for protection as well as strategic position. Wright may have been tapping into biological needs more than he knew.
The house was in danger of falling down a few years ago, as Wright worked intuitively and didn’t always take practical matters into hand. Millions were spent to invisibly shore up the balconies. Surveillance cameras were installed, disguised as stone building blocks.
In addition, the flat roofs were not designed to support the weight of winter snows around here (this was a summer getaway) so servants had to push the snow off the roofs and balconies whenever it accumulated. So much for integrating architecture and landscape, at least beyond the visual.
Kaufmann Jr. later became director of the industrial design dept at MoMA, in NY, which encouraged “good” design. One can debate the merits of promoting “good” design to the masses, but that propaganda effort has certainly had a lasting effect, and the linking of the design of a certain class of quasi-mass-produced household objects with high modernism and fine art was no small thing either, whether one agrees with the idea or not.
Jr. had Fallingwater to himself from 1955 to 1963, after his dad died. Our tour group asked the occasional impertinent question of our guide, who kept her information flow to the straight and narrow. We tried to imagine the parties. Given that this was 75 miles from town, many of the evenings must have been sleepovers. The questions culminated in someone asking if Junior ever married. When the answer came back no, someone in our group shouted “bingo!” Our poor guide put her hand to her face as if this was all too much.
Pittsburgh comes back
About 4 years ago when I was here I was given a short tour of the area by my friend John Chernoff. He told me how the Heinz family was intent on bringing life (and eventually living) back into the downtown of this former industrial giant. We passed through neighborhoods of former steelworker housing – areas on the verge of coming back after years of being abandoned. Like Detroit, Cleveland and many others, this town got dealt a series of body blows in previous decades and some of those towns have managed to remain standing while others are definitely on the mat.
On this visit it seems that Pittsburgh is more than just standing — the cultural district downtown was jumping on the weekend, the little neighborhoods were thriving with their corner bars and grocery stores, the strip district still has its booming markers and, I was told, folks are moving back into the city. This latter is essential, as it will provide the tax base, and the humanity, that will allow this kick-start that the Heinz family and others have initiated to keep running on its own steam.
