Fallingwater

A mile down the road sits one of the most photographed houses on earth. Fallingwater was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in nineteen thirty-five for Pittsburgh department-store magnate Edgar Kaufmann, who wanted a weekend retreat above a mountain stream called Bear Run. Wright's answer was audacious: a series of cantilevered terraces thrust directly over the waterfall, anchored to a natural boulder that becomes the living-room hearth.

The house seems to float in midair above the cascade. In nineteen ninety-one, members of the American Institute of Architects voted it the best all-time work of American architecture. Edgar Kaufmann Junior donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in nineteen sixty-three, and it has been open to visitors ever since.

It draws well over one hundred thousand people a year to this otherwise quiet corner of Fayette County.