Weekly Round Up 2 of 2: A FLW Spring Break Bender

 

Picking it right up from last time, our normal thing for spring break is to visit my SIL in Chicago.  We stay in a nice hotel, visit museums, and then go over to her place at night for home cooked meals.

This year my husband is on a tight budget for PTO, so we needed something shorter than a Chicago spree.  I've become an expert at creating long weekend trips, so I gave the fellas a list of ideas from my travels and told them to choose their own adventure.  I was not disappointed at their choice.

I haven't properly told the story of my Frank Lloyd Wright obsession before now, so let me bring you up to speed.  Many years ago I picked up this business card holder at the gift shop at MOMA on a trip to NYC simply because I liked it (between you and me I knew so little about FLW that I thought it was a Mondrian design).  

Back in the days when I actually worked in an office and had business cards, I kept it on my desk, and occasionally people would ask if I'd been to Fallingwater.  I had no idea what that was, but it went on my mental list of places to visit if I ever had the time.  Last year when I started my local tourism campaign I found out that Fallingwater isn't anywhere near where I live.  Yes you *can* drive there and back in a day, but it's a hella long day.

Last November I had a day off work and was looking for a day trip.  A lot of places had shut down for the winter, so Fallingwater was one of the few options...that drive tho, was it really worth it?  It's in rural PA in the middle of nowhere.  But everyone said that it was epic and YOLO why not bite the bullet and check it out.

I booked a ticket and the website asked if I also wanted a ticket to Polymath Park...what even was that...huh more FLW stuff, about 30 minutes away from Fallingwater...hey if I was going to make a long drive anyway I'd rather see two things instead of one.  Done!

The Polymath/Fallingwater trip was the gateway "how it started" and then in January I found out about another FLW house closer to home which was the onset of the obsession that brings us to the "how it's going" part where I'm now planning long weekends around FLW visits like my Buffalo rampage a few weeks ago.

Back to this weekend.  When the fam said they wanted to visit a FLW house, my next question was how many?  The answer was as many as possible, which was music to my ears because since that first visit I'd learned about another FLW property close to Fallingwater.  I checked again that everyone was really down to see all three locations and I got to work.  I struggled with the order: should we start with the Big Kahuna (Fallingwater), should we start with the new-to-us-all Kentuck Knob, or should we start where I started at Polymath Park????

After much back and forth I decided to do Polymath Park first on Friday afternoon - partly because it's where I started my FLW journey and for the practical reason that it's further away from Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob.  On Saturday morning we'd go to see the next largest house, Kentuck Knob, and then in the afternoon we'd arrive at our ultimate destination of Fallingwater.

Polymath Park

So what is Polymath Park besides somewhere that you've never heard of?  It's basically the equivalent of a wildlife refuge for FLW houses.  Just because a location is good when a house is built doesn't mean that the location continues to work in the present day.  When a house is built in a place where it can't stay the most common solution is a bulldozer.  The second option, if say the house has historical value, is to disassemble it, move it somewhere else, and reconstruct it.  The two FLW homes at Polymath are from his "everyday" collection in the 50's when he came up with what I call "normie houses" for the masses...the only drawback was that they cost about twice what the average normie was paying for a house back then, so that cut into the demand.  

 

These houses are chock full of all the FLW trademarks, such as big open spaces and narrow halls so that your guests stay in the living room and don't go poking around in your bedroom.  Large windows with epic views and abnormally low seating so that other people's heads aren't blocking your view.  For scale, the windows are around waist height and the table is about knee height and yes that's the dinning room.

When we got to Polymath, everyone was squirrely from the long drive and I started to have doubts about picking this for our first stop.  I mean yes it's a great intro to FLW but were the "normie houses" really going to hold the kids' attention?

As the first house came in to view stepson #1 exclaimed "the shingles look like bricks!" and I let out a huge sigh of relief.  We had a hit on our hands.

What to know if you go there

• There are a few different tour options.  We did the "2 House Tour and a History of Polymath Park" tour which is an hour long and gets you into the two FLW designs: the Duncan house and Mantyla (there are other FLW-adjacent buildings on the property that are part of other tours).
  
• There is nothing I repeat nothing anywhere near Polymath Park.  It's truly in the middle of nowhere.  If you get there early your only option is to hang out in the visitors center.  The gift shop is very limited (fine by me since my FLW journey is about the experience and not about the merch) but there is a high likelihood that you're going to be bored out of your mind while you're waiting for the tour to start.
  
• The weather was awful for both of my visits and it doesn't matter.  You get taken by bus to the houses and you're not outside for very long.
  
• You're allowed to take photos in the houses and at the end of the tour they give you a minute to take exterior photos of Mantyla.  But you're on a schedule and not allowed to roam outside of the tour group so it's not an ideal place to get great photos.

After the tour we headed for a rental cabin that was about halfway between Kentuck Knob and Fallingwater.  It was no FLW house but it did have a hot tub with a view.  We kicked back and relaxed...well the kids kicked back and relaxed while the adults tried to suss out the weather.  When I booked the trip the forecast had been excellent, and now there was a wind warning for all day on Saturday.  The cabin owner sent us an text that the area would probably lose power and advised us to keep our electronics charged and to have cooked food on hand.  The weather service made it sound like it would dangerous to be outside and recommended staying on the lower levels of the house.  Arghh!!!  It looked like our FLW binge was going to turn into a "hunker down and wait out the storm" day instead.

There was a huge thunderstorm that night and blue skies with not a gust of wind to be found on Saturday morning, so we continued on.

Kentuck Knob

Kentuck Knob is to hills what Fallingwater is to waterfalls - it's a house built into a hill.  It's had an easier go of it than the other FLW properties that I've visited, since it's always been lived in, and maintaining a "house in a hill" is a lot more practical than maintaining a "house in a waterfall" like Fallingwater.  You not only get the FLW experience, you get to see the current owner's art collection and there is a sculpture collection on the grounds.  The time period is the same as the Polymath Park houses, but on a grander scale and a much bigger budget.

My family's enthusiasm for FLW went from a lot to even more during the course of our visit.  We left the gift shop with a book of blueprints.

What to know if you go there 

• We did the "normie" tour which is fairly short.  You're taken by bus from the visitors center to the house, given a guided tour inside, and then let loose outside.  To get back you can either take the bus or walk.  I don't like to tell anyone else what to do, but I can tell you that there is no way that you could have gotten us back on that bus.  It's not very long (quarter mile?  half?  something like that) and between the view and the sculptures it is epic.
  
• I'd say that this one is better saved for a good weather day, since much of the experience is from the outside.
  
• You're not allowed to take photos inside the house, so I didn't bring the good camera with me.  What a mistake, since once you get outside, it's a photographer's dream.  If you've got an SLR this is the place to bring it.
  

After the tour we headed back to our cabin for lunch.  The weather was still looking good, but as it got closer to Fallingwater o'clock the wind kicked up and it started raining.

Fallingwater

Okey dokey, with a name like Fallingwater...yes this is really a house that was built into a waterfall.  It was designed to be impressive, it wasn't necessarily designed to last.  I don't know if Fallingwater was the first FLW house to be opened for tours, but the family donated the house and a ton of money to the conservancy for exactly that reason ==> to raise the funds to make it last.  It's an ongoing effort.

What to know if you go there

• We did the guided architectural tour, which is about an hour long.
  
• This is one of the most popular FLW tourism sites, so they've got everything figured out for you.  Tours start every 10 minutes, and if you're early they'll bump you up into an earlier tour.  I assume that if you're late they'll work with you to get a later tour.
• Bad weather is no problem, at least for the inside tours.  It rained for both of my visits, and they've got umbrellas on site for you with plenty of pick up and drop off stations.
  
• Yes bring your good camera!  You're not allowed to use it inside past the ground floor (because the upper floors are smaller and they don't want people lugging a bunch of stuff with them and knocking into things), but you can get good shots downstairs and of course outside.  They're so strict on space that I wasn't allowed to bring the camera case inside but it was well worth it to have to hold the camera for an hour.  I got a ton of good shots (PS it was pure luck that I happened to be the last person up the stairs and was alone in the living room to get the good shot).
  

As we left, the off and on rain turned into a deluge and we headed for the cabin.  There was a good downpour for the rest of the night but the wind warning turned out to be nothing...for FLW country anyway.  Back at home there was a widespread power outage so it turns out that our little cabin out in the woods was the place to be last weekend.

Let's Wrap it Up

• Doing an FLW bender in PA...10/10.  
  
• Bringing the fam in on my FLW obsession...11/10.  They only have two trips to catch up to me.
• Vacationing in rural PA....eh it's fine.  It is beautiful, it is the middle of nowhere (which is either a pro or a con depending on what you like), but the mountains make driving a bit tiring.  Cell service is spotty.
  
• Is it worth it to revisit a FLW house?  Yes.  These houses are designed so that you see the outside as much as the inside, so there's something new with every season.  The Fallingwater tour took a different route through the house so I got to see areas that I hadn't seen before.
  
• Visiting a FLW house solo vs visiting with the fam (or friends)...oh this is tough.  I've loved my solo trips, but having the fam around added another dimension.  They picked up on so many details that I hadn't noticed on my own.  I'll continue to do solo trips since I've got time on my hands while they're doing Boy Scout things, but I'd love to revisit all of the houses with the fam. 
• I think we picked the right order to see the houses, from smallest to grandest.  I can also make a case for doing Polymath Park==>Fallingwater==>Kentuck Knob since Fallingwater was the inspiration for Kentuck Knob.
  
• Now is the time to be an FLW tourist.  Fallingwater has been open for tours since the 60's but the other sites opened more recently...Kentuck in the 90's, many of the others in the 00's, and Mantyla opened in 2019.
• I've got my eye on a few more FLW sites between now and summer.  Once summer comes then I'll have my hands full with all of the non-FLW things.  If I'm still hot to trot after that, I can see making something like a trip a year to CHI/WI to start tackling all of the goodies up there.

Thanks for humoring my FLW obsession;-)  Last year I was all about AFI Top 100 movies and now I'm on a Pokemon "gotta catch 'em all" (at least the ones within reasonable driving distance) FLW quest...you never know where life is going to take you.