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Kaufmann Family Edgar Kaufmann Sr. was a successful Pittsburgh businessman and founder of Kaufmann's Department Store. His son, Edgar Kaufmann, jr., studied architecture under Wright briefly. The Kaufmanns owned some property outside Pittsburgh with a waterfall and some cabins. When the cabins at their camp had deteriorated to the point that something had to be rebuilt, Mr. Kaufmann contacted Wright. Initially, the Kaufmanns assumed that Wright would design a house that would overlook the waterfall. Wright asked for a survey of the area around the waterfall, which was performed by Fayette Engineering Company of Uniontown, PA and included all of the boulders, trees and topography. They were unprepared to hear Wright's suggestion to build a house positioned over a waterfall. Fallingwater was the family's weekend home from 1937 to 1963. Fallingwater (The Kaufmann House) is now a museum. Since 1964, when it opened to the public, nearly four million have visited the house (as of July 2006). Style Wright adapted the vocabulary of International Modernism—a usually stark and ordered variety used in public buildings—for this organically designed private residence intended to be a nature retreat. The house is well-known for its connection to the site: it is built on top of an active waterfall which flows beneath the house. The fireplace hearth in the living room is composed of boulders found on the site and upon which the house was built. Wright had initially intended that the boulders would be cut flush with the living room floor, but they were left as they were, protruding from the rest of the floor. The stone floors are waxed, while the hearth is left plain, giving the impression of dry rocks protruding from a stream. The active stream (which can be heard constantly throughout the house), immediate surroundings, and locally quarried stone walls and cantilevered terraces (resembling the nearby rock formations) are meant to be in unison, in line with Wright's interest in making buildings that were more "organic" and which thus seemed to be more engaged with their surroundings. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and the balconies are off main rooms giving a sense of the closeness of the surroundings. There is also an interior staircase down from the living room allowing direct access to the stream beneath the house. On the hillside above the main house is a garage, servants' quarters, and a guest bedroom. This attached outbuilding was built using the same quality of materials and attention to detail as the main house. There are many ways into and out of the house, but the door Wright considered the main door is tucked away in a corner, is rather small, and gives one the sense of entering a cave rather than its being a grand entrance. Wright's idea of the grand facade for this house is from the perspective of all the famous pictures of the house, looking up from downstream, viewing the opposite corner from the main door. Structural problems
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