You do not need to be an architecture buff to appreciate Wright's FALLINGWATER (mid-March to late Nov Tues-Sun 10am-4pm; $10, weekends $15; tel 724/329-8501, ), which was built in the late 1930s for the Kaufmann family, owners of Pittsburgh's premier department store. Signposted off Hwy-381 some twenty miles south of I-70, it is set on Bear Run Creek in the midst of gorgeous deciduous forest that constitutes the 5000-acre Bear Run Nature Reserve . It is the only one of Wright's buildings to be on display exactly as it was designed, and for good reason - it's built right into a set of cliffside waterfalls. Wright used a cantilever system to make the multi-tiered structure "cascade down the hill like the water down the falls"; the house's almost precarious position is truly stunning, and it is remarkable how well its predominantly rectangular shapes blend in with nature's less uniform lines. The well-presented hour-long tour (more extensive and expensive tours are available for experts) takes visitors up through the different levels of the building, allowing plenty of time to admire the setting from the various terraces as well as the beauty of the interior design. Among the house's pioneering features is a lack of load-bearing walls, which gives an extra sense of space, and natural skylights . When Edgar Kaufmann Jr. entrusted the house to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963, he donated all the furnishings and artwork with it. Objects on display include some fine East Asian sculpture of Buddhas and Indian deities. Tours begin and end a few hundred yards from the house in the wooden reception pavilion, where there is a café and shop.
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