Fallingwater Restoration Passes Quietly into History
by Lynda Waggoner
Director of Fallingwater

 Shortly before Christmas, with no ceremony and few people present, the shoring that has for the last six years propped up what the American Institute of Architects voted the most important building of the 20th century, was cut into pieces and removed. As curator Cara Armstrong observed afterward, "Fallingwater is free." The muse is unbound.

It seems a lifetime ago that we first learned that Fallingwater was in trouble. The story is well known by now: a young University of Virginia engineering student, John Paul Huguley, asked if he could create a computer model of Fallingwater's master terrace structural system. Though many scholars had studied the building, no one had ever attempted such an analysis before and we were happy to assist by providing access to our archives and to the building.

But, we were not prepared for his findings - that the master terrace was not a self-supporting cantilever. Rather, its weight was being carried by the first-floor cantilever, resulting in overstressing. And, as we later learned, if left unaddressed, this could lead to collapse. We contacted Robert Silman, an internationally respected preservation engineer, to undertake further study and thus began what has been a nearly-decade long odyssey to preserve Fallingwater. Four stages resulted:

1. Shore the building to prevent any further sagging.
2. Fully examine the problem and develop a plan to address it.
3. Raise money to fund the restoration.
4. Restore Fallingwater.

Now that the work is complete and Fallingwater's cantilevers once again soar into the air, defying gravity with a grace unequaled in the history of architecture, some might ask: how does preservation of this building fit within the mission of Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and was it worth all the effort, time and money?

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy recognized long ago that it takes more than the work of scientists and conservationists to protect the natural world. Artists like Wright can play an important role, too. Philosopher Henry David Thoreau, lamenting the rift between the art world and admirers of nature wrote, "It has come to this - that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature." The best art awakens something within us that we recognize is larger and more important than ourselves - something that can transport us across boundaries we thought impenetrable. Fallingwater is such a place.
Wright's mentor and the architect he most respected, Louis Sullivan, wrote, "All great thought, all great ideas, all great impulses, are born in the open air, close to Nature, and are nursed, all unknown, all unsuspected, upon Nature's bosom."

Like Thoreau and Sullivan, Wright believed that nature informed art. In studying plant forms, their geometry and rhythms, Wright found the entire universe represented; its amazing harmony in the ways all of the parts, each equally beautiful and important, relate to the whole. He transferred this understanding to his architecture. Experiencing Fallingwater one cannot help but sense that Wright's objective was to open us to the multitude of possibilities and understandings nature and art working together can provide. The insights people receive from Fallingwater are diverse, subtle and not available from any source other than the actual place itself.

But as some authors of the many restoration stories of recent years have enjoyed asking: "Was Wright wrong?" Doesn't the fact that the cantilevers failed diminish the achievement? Others asked, "Would it not be more honest to leave the shoring in place as testimony to the historic fact?" We asked these questions at the public forum held in 1999 to review our plans for the restoration and the response was a resounding no. Wright's achievement at Fallingwater is so unique and so precious that it deserves to be kept alive and capable of stirring visitors with the same vitality as before. With the shoring in place, Fallingwater took on the quality of a ruin.
The cantilever is central to Wright's vision. It is also the singular architectural feature that has come to define Fallingwater. Inspired by the rock ledge of the waterfall, the cantilever is the most important structural and design element of the building and is echoed throughout the house in the design of furnishings and interior features.

Using the cantilever, Wright was able to centralize the supports for the floors and roofs away from the perimeter walls. He wrote, "The walls as walls fell away." As they did, a new freedom was achieved; screens of glass replaced load bearing perimeter walls, allowing more light inside. An intimacy and harmony with nature never before imagined was realized. But at Fallingwater it is from outside that the cantilevers most amaze us and there, seeing them reaching out, connecting heaven to earth, that we are seduced. Author Barbara Lazear Archer calls Fallingwater, " Frank Lloyd Wright singing." A place that evokes joy, Fallingwater is not about perfection, it is about possibilities. And that is worth preserving.

For more information on Fallingwater, click here.