Friday, April 28, 2017

Day 13: Fallingwater

Day 13: Fallingwater









This was a day that I have long anticipated – a visit to Falling Water, arguably the world’s most famous house for a single family (barring palaces of course).  It started very well with Roger learning that his beloved Essendon had defeated Collingwood by 18 points in this year’s Anzac Day match!

Fallingwater is a ninety minute drive south of Pittsburgh, again through beautiful farmland with the typical red and white American barns dotted throughout. I hope this blog does not constitute too much of a lecture, but it is certainly what I will be telling my students on my return.

The famous house is situated on a property of several acres, originally called ‘Bear Run’. It is a hilly bushland site, full of rocky outcrops and a small stream flowing through it.  Several of the rocky outcrops have formed a waterfall.  It was owned by Edgar Kaufmann, a man who had accumulated considerable wealth from owning a Department store in Pittsburgh.  He and his wife had a small shack on the property which they used as a weekender. 

By 1934 they decided that they wanted more of the modern comforts of home at Bear Run. Kaufmann’s son, Edgar jnr. was studying architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright, who was in his sixties and considering retirement.  He persuaded his parents to engage Wright as an architect for the new home.

Kaufmann and his wife, Liliana, gave Wright ‘carte blanche’ for the design.  The brief was to involve the natural surrounds, especially the waterfall. Undoubtedly they meant that they wanted to gain good views of the natural surrounds. They also directed that they have seclusion from the road that had only recently been sealed and was therefore now carrying a considerable amount of traffic.

After visiting the site, Wright ordered topographical maps of the property.  His vision was to ‘use the power of architecture to touch people in profound ways’. His design certainly did that and the Kaufmanns must have thought he had taken leave of his senses when he presented to them his design of a house that not only looked at the waterfall, it was built right over it!

The civil engineers of the day said that it couldn’t be done but maybe this was prior to council permission being needed before a design could be built.  In any case, the building went ahead and was achieved in just two years. It still stands strong today, nearly one hundred years later, albeit with the help of a few million dollars thrown at it here and there by its current owners, the American Conservation Authority.

This steep, rocky site did not allow tractors and bulldozers to be used; it needed manual labour.  Of that there was plenty because these were the years of the Great Depression, so Kaufmann had no problem finding local farmers and tradesmen to work on the innovative build – at 35c an hour! Horses were used to drag materials up the steep slopes.

Kaufmann’s original budget was $50,000 but it eventually blew out to an extraordinary $150,000.  (That’s around $4.5 million in today’s money, but if built now, it would cost far far more than $4.5 million.) Never-the-less, Kaufmann spared no expense, even insisting that the furniture and fittings for the servants’ quarters were the same quality as in the main house.

To quote one of the boards at Fallingwater’s visitor’s centre, the house ‘…is Wright’s strongest expression of the richness and nuances of modern architecture. Like his modernist contemporaries, Wright explored new materials, technologies and architectural forms.’  It was recognised by the Institute of American Architects as   ’the best all time work of American architecture’.

The back part of the house is firmly embedded on and around the cliff on which it is built.  But the front house has no support at all, being cantilevered over the stream which runs entirely under the front half of the house.

With its strong horizontal lines and use of concrete, glass and steel, I have long known Fallingwater as an iconic example of Modernist architecture.  However it has taken this visit for me to realise just how much it is a wonderful example also of organic architecture.  In fact, our tour guide made no mention of ‘Modernist’ at all but often mentioned ‘organic architecture’. 

So now to the house itself.  It is built entirely from rendered concrete, steel, glass and slate quarried from Bear Run. Most of the furniture was built-in and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Visiting it today, you see it exactly as it was when given to the Trust by Edgar Kaufmann jnr in 1963.  He apparently forsook architecture, but his male partner was the designer of the impressive Visitor Centre. In giving the property to the trust, no doubt Kaufmann jnr. anticipated the immense amount of finance that would be needed for maintenance.

As you will see from the photograph, the house has several levels.  The first is the living room/dining room, the second the main bedroom, the Kaufmann jnr’s bedroom, a guest bedroom and Kaufmann’s study. Each of the three bedrooms have an ensuite, very small and humble by our standards. The highest level of the main house contains Kaufamann jnr’s study and a guest suite.  Decorated in lovely shades of blue, this was my favourite room. Many of the rooms throughout the home have balconies to take in the views.




The only room in the entire house to have window furnishings of any kind is the first guest bedroom, which has a timber venetian – the original still hanging in the window.  This is because the next door master bedroom has access onto a wide balcony.  The blind is there to give the guests privacy.

Leaving the main house and ascending a covered walkway, one arrives at the guest suite.  This is where the swimming pool is to be found.  It is fed by natural spring water and was drained into the small river around every sixteen days through a hole in the bottom. 

Further up is the carport that used to accommodate up to eight cars.  This was apparently the invention of the carport. Wright convinced Kaufmann not to have a garage because that would only encourage clutter. The carport has now been converted into a small theatre for the viewing of a film by visitors to the property.  Immediately above the carport is the  servants’ quarters, some considerable distance from the main house.

The colours and fittings are the same throughout the house. The walls and ceilings are of rendered concrete, with all the walls being a pleasant light mustard colour.  Wright’s favourite colour, Cherokee red, features in various trimmings.  One example is the huge round hanging pot that the Kaufmanns would swivel over the open fire in the lounge room. The pot contained eighteen gallons of mulled wine and they poured it from a spout at the bottom.

All of the furniture is timber, most of it, as mentioned previously, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The particular timber is blackwood cherry, a beautiful dark timber.  The cabinetry of the in-built wardrobes are the new innovation of the day in cabinetry, veneer. Wright specifically had the grain of the timber running horizontally on the wardrobe doors to accentuate the low, horizontal lines of the house.  In designing the furniture, he also incorporated the natural surfaces wherever he could. Colourful accents are provided by the rugs, the bed coverings, some upholstery and the artwork. 

The home is a veritable museum of original pieces of artwork and accessories.  In one study alone I encountered a Picasso on the wall and on the desk a most beautiful Tiffany lamp and an Alessi vase – all originals of course!
Wright not only accommodated the natural surrounds – he incorporated them where he could.  My favourite example is a huge boulder that provides support for one of the rooms, then ‘invades’ the house, forming a hob in the living room and then a shelf in the kitchen above. Another example is how he slides the glass of the windows seamlessly into the slate of the exterior wall.











Slate forms every floor surface, with the only exception being the bathrooms, where cork features for both floor and wall finishes.


One of the features of the living area is the ‘hutch’, a pair of glass doors opening to a glassed-in stairway that leads below the house.  The bottom step is just above the water line and it is said that Mrs Kauffmann was fond of fly fishing from that step.












The final features that I want to write about are the windows, which are, of course, steel framed as were most windows of the time.  In seven areas of the home, Wright designed the corner windows to have no supporting corner frame. When two adjacent corner windows are opened, the view from that corner is un-interrupted, giving full access to the sights and smells of the surrounding bushland.  To me, this seems a stroke of genius and an indication of Wright’s innovative use of materials.









You may remember that Wright was planning on retiring when he took on this project.  In fact, after Fallingwater he took on another one hundred buildings, including New York’s famous Guggenheim Museum.

Although we were free to wander the grounds at will, we had to take it in turns to visit the house itself because children under six are strictly not allowed.  Roger and Robyn went first while I walked the children around the grounds.  Pushing the stroller was no mean feat on the gravel paths and up the many steps.  Fortunately, independent Miss Isabelle insisted on walking most of the way.  By the end of the day she was exhausted! 







Then it was my turn to tour the house, with Roger and Robyn taking the children for yet another walk around the grounds. We ended the day with a brief look in the inevitable gift 

Days 12-14: Pittsburgh and Amish tour

Days 12 -14: Riding the Greyhound, Pittsburgh and the Old World Amish

We left Savannah at mid-day Sunday to start our trip north – Pittsburgh and then over to New York to start our exciting tour.

Having left it too late to book a train from Savannah due north to Pittsburgh, the equivalent distance of Melbourne to Sydney, we were left with the Greyhound bus.  The trip took all of 23 hours and was RUGGED!!!  We learned the hard way that the only ones who use Greyhounds are students and those for whom it is the only option financially.  Most certainly it is not used by middle-aged, middle-income people – except for us!

Each of the seven or eight legs of the trip involved the driver starting with the strict instructions, including that all cell phones must be on vibrate, no music must be heard and all conversations must be quiet. This we appreciated very much and thought that Aussie bus lines could learn something from Greyhound. At the end of each leg, we would roll into a very ordinary bus station, lucky to find even a vending machine dispensing Coco Cola and chips. At some of these we had to spend several hours. I managed to snatch patches of sleep along the way, but poor Rog was unable to do so and consequently finished the trip quite exhausted.

As the bus drove into Pittsburgh, we were reminded of Launceston.  It was beautiful hilly terrain, the hills dotted with houses and the city nestled in a valley at the bottom. 

Once at the bus terminal in Pittsburgh, we had an hour or so to wander the city central before Robyn arrived.  (She had wisely flown up with the children – a ninety minute flight.) 

Our short stroll left us very impressed with Pittsburgh. Clearly it is a very historic city and we just happened to choose a street full of historic plaques.  It featured in the War of Independence and a women’s historical society in early twentieth century had ensured that places of historical importance were identified and marked. A wide river with several bridges runs through the city.

Today, Monday, we have had the most wonderful day exploring Amish country and their lifestyle.  We will be going to another Amish area, Lancaster, on our Trafalgar tour, but we highly suspect that this might be quite a liberal ‘tourist friendly’ version of Amish that we see there.  Robyn and Damien had found on-line, a two hour tour that a non-Amish lady, Sue, conducts from a little town named New Wilmington, about an hour out of Pittsburgh.  






The drive was through beautiful countryside – gorgeous rolling hills and spring blossoms.  We knew we were close to New Wilmington when we had to slow down because there was a horse and buggy infront of us.












We saw one of the covered bridges for which this region is famous.  One of my favourite movies, ‘Bridges of Maddison County’, features one of them, so it was a thrill to actually see one.













Sue rode in the car with us and as we drove she told us about these particular Amish people and their way of life.  They are, she told us, ultra conservative, much more so than the ones we will see in Lancaster. The next bit is what we learned, so any who are not interested, just skip past the dot-points. I will place various photographs throughout, not necessarily immediately relevant to the text.

·      They are the Old World Amish – a very conservative sub-culture. They originated in Switzerland and Wikipedia tells me that they came to the area around 1850.
·      To them, people are either Amish or ‘English’.
·      They live within the local community, with a blue front door being the marker that it is an Amish home.
·      New Wilmington has a population of about 5000, with about half being Amish and half ‘English’.
·      Each individual Amish community throughout USA has its own rules, colour of clothing and colour of buggies, the number of pleats in their bonnets etc.  For this community, the women wear blue or purple and they have seven pleats in their bonnets.                                                                                                                    
      All of the New Wilmington buggies have a brown hood.  So they all know where other Amish are from by these identifying marks.













·      Their lifestyle is all about conformity.  For example, all their homes are the same design, and they all do the same thing at the same time.  Today it was washing day and so every house had washing flapping on its long wire line with the old fashioned wooden props. The washing would have been wrung with a hand wound wringer like we had in the 1950s.  Amish homes have no electricity, no hot water, no drains.  They have an outhouse and use wood stoves.
·     

Amish have their own schools, with children leaving after year 8.  We saw two schools on our tour around New Wilmington.  The teacher is typically an unmarried girl about sixteen years old.  Her main role is to teach conformity and good behaviour. 
·      Prior to entering school, the child will speak only Pennsylvanian Dutch, which is their first language and the language that will be spoken in all Amish homes. It is an oral language: no written form at all. At school the children learn English, including the writing and reading of it.  In 4th grade they begin to learn High German, the language that is used at church and in their Bibles.
·      


Schoolhouse with teacher's buggy parked by the door.



Church services are held in homes and last three hours.  An Amish woman told us that they have church every second Sunday only and that this last weekend was relaxing because there was no church.  Services are attended by around 100 people.
·      Weddings are also held in homes – the bride’s home.  It will always be held on a Tuesday or Thursday after the last harvest and before the first harvest of the new season.  There is a very formal ceremony, no special clothes, no rings nor decorations – just a new dress for the bride.  The wedding will be attended by about five hundred Amish from all over the US, with them sometimes hiring buses to go to it. It takes the women about a month to prepare the food for a wedding.
·      Young people must marry within their own Amish community. It is not an arranged marriage: they are free to choose their own partner.
·      At sixteen years of age, three things happen. Firstly, the young men will get their own horse and buggy. Secondly, both boys and girl will be allowed to attend the weekly ‘Singing’.  Thirdly, at sixteen an Amish young person may begin to experience Rumspringa, meaning ‘running around’, a time of freedom to experience life on the outside.  Susan said that they live at home but can dress as the ‘English’ do and have similar hairstyles. They can drive cars and not attend home prayer. They are, during this time, permitted to drink alcohol and use recreational drugs. The rationale behind this is for it to be a time to discern what they will be giving up if they choose to progress to baptism as an adult member of the faith.




·      It seems strange that the young people would not already know each other from within their own community, but Susan explained that they rarely leave their own family’s property because they are involved dawn to dark with household chores. The exception of course would be church, but obviously there is not a lot of socialising happening at church.
·      I asked Susan if the children are aware that they are ‘curiosities’ and she said that to them, we are curiosities because they know no other way of life.
·      That said however, she said that although TV, radio, computers, phones etc are banned for the Amish, they certainly don’t mind when they hear or see TV via an ‘English’ person.  Although they are not allowed to own cars, they may ride in a car and Susan said that when she is transporting an Amish person they may well say to her that it would be rude of them to ask her to turn off the radio!
·      They are not allowed phones, but apparently last year a ruling was made about them because the Amish acknowledge that for them to get on in the commercial world, they must be able to communicate by phone with suppliers and clients.  So now a business may have a phone but it must be 400 yards from the property and must be used only for business purposes. Apparently it is not at all uncommon for an Amish person to go to a neighbour’s home and ask to use the phone!
·      In terms of commercial businesses, apparently carpentry is their speciality and they supply hand made furniture all over America.  They use diesel to drive their power tools.
·      The Amish participate in local government and may vote if they want to.  Apparently in the recent election, many of the Wilmington thought it very important to vote – we wondered which way.
·      We were surprised to learn that the Amish use western medicine.  They do have their own herbal remedies etc, but will take western medicine when they know it to be more effective.  They also visit English doctors and some of the women will have their babies delivered in hospital.
·      They are very judgemental of each other, quick to criticise if they believe a member of the community is not following the discipline expected of an Amish person. In fact, a group of Amish men and women from Ohio are currently in jail as a result of the 2011 beard-hacking attack they made on another group whom they considered to be far too liberal.
·      They celebrate both Christmas and Easter. In fact they celebrate Christmas twice – the European Christmas (‘Old Christmas’) and then December 25th.  They exchange Christmas cards and gifts and have special food at Christmas.  On ‘Old Christmas’ they spend the day fasting and then have a feast at night.



·      Apparently even the more liberal Amish shun photographs.  This is because of God’s commandment not to make any graven image.  They believe that a photograph of themselves is just that.  Roger made quite a gaff when we were visiting a beautiful Amish owned and run nursery.  The young girl at the counter had a manual adding machine on the counter.  I drew Thomas’ attention to it and Rog held up his phone, ready to take a photo of it. The young girl quickly turned away, thinking that she was going to be in the photo. With some embarrassment, we explained that this was not the intention and I think all was forgiven.





                                                                                                                                                                   














§  The Amish have their own grocery stores but English are welcome to buy from them also.  We visited one that has been established in the lowest of three levels of the family home.  She sold all kinds of dry goods that she had bagged herself, but also many processed goods, some of which, Oreos for example, were quite familiar to us.  Susan told us that it is a common misconception that the Amish eat and grow only organic.   The back of the little store was quite dark and was lit reasonably effectively by an oil lamp.


·     

The final highlight of the tour was visiting an Amish lady who sells quilts, again on her own property but this time from a building separate from her house. some she has made herself and others that she sells on behalf of other Amish women.  There were some magnificent quilts there, with the going price being around $950 US for a queen size, very intricate one that had more than a year’s work in it.  With it being nothing but hand stitching, we thought it was very good value.




Roger, bless his soul, found a collection of quilted one yard square wall hangings and picked out one that he knew I would like for its colours. He suggested to me that we buy it – a most generous gesture given that I had assured him that I would most definitely not be hankering to buy an Amish quilt because I knew they would be too expensive. I just love it and will treasure it, not as a wall hanging but as a beautiful knee rug.

(This is not my quilt - it is the $950 one.)



Having left our tour with Susan, we had lunch at a most homely restaurant named the Tavern on the Square.  It just happens to also be owned by Susan our tour guide, but it is really the only eating place in town.  The very substantial menu  managed to also squeeze in four mentions of God and two bible verses!   The restaurant occupies the entirety of an old house from the mid 1800s. Its original owner was a doctor and he and his wife were abolitionists (of slavery). This was a ‘safe house’ for runaway slaves to find food and shelter on their way north to Canada. 

Having had a most delicious lunch, we wandered a few streets of the quaint town, typical of what I had imagined of American towns. Some of the houses, all two storeyed, were very pretty and with the spring blossom out, made excellent photography. 






    The town has several churches – all Presbyterian!  There is also a small Presbyterian university, with the honour of being one of the first two Pennsylvania universities to grant degrees to women – way back in 1857.  Two plaques in the garden honoured classmates who had fallen during the 1917-1919 world war!










  


Our final stop for the day was to visit a village over the hill – this is where the Methodists are – and to stop into one of the many shops selling local handicrafts. We were not at all tempted as everything on display was of the country American style that was quite popular here in the 1970s. While some things were quite quaint and well crafted, others were just cutesy junk!















Days 46-49: New Orleans

Days 45-49: New Orleans At last we arrived at our final destination: New Orleans. Lying between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchar...