Day 37: Falling Water

On Sunday, July 19, 2009, Dave and I were ready to come home...for a while at least. After a delicious chard frittata that Breakfast Master Will built for us, we packed up our things, said goodbye to our Pittsburgh hosts,



And headed south.

We made a slight deviation from our route in order to hit Frank Lloyd Wright’s piece de resistance Fallingwater which lies in western Pennsylvania.







Wright designed and built Fallingwater from 1936-1939 for the Kaufmann family as their mountain vacation home away from Pittsburgh where they owned a successful department store. The house sits atop a 30’ waterfall on Bear Run. Wright’s idea was to make the house blend in seamlessly with the surrounding nature.

Its design was intended to mimic the flow of water over the falls as well as the stone that creates the falls.


We took a great tour of the house in which our guide explained a great deal about the architecture and theories involved. In many places, the house beams and even walls are built directly into the rock of the mountain.


As a result, there are plenty of hidden GPS markers in the house to make sure that the rocks are not shifting significantly.

Our terrific tour guide told us that during the building process, there were times when the water from the rain and melting snow would come through the rocks of the house. Instead of blocking it up and resisting it (which could cause later problems and damage), Wright would incorporate the water into the home in the form of a fountain.


These outdoor stone stairs led to a cement “plunge pool” fed by Bear Run where the family could take a dip without walking on the river rocks.



Most of the corners of the house are designed with windows that open revealing no vertical frame at the corner to allow the people inside to feel more connected with the outside.


Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take pictures inside the house, but we could take pictures on two of the terraces. Dave used that opportunity to take some photos through the windows.


Most of the furniture was designed by Wright and is built into the walls. The couches on the left and back right of this photo are intended to double as beds for unexpected guests.

More built-ins.



The chair you see above is one of a set that were purchased by the Kaufmanns for the home. They are the only furniture in the home that Wright did not design. They are, however, Tuscan country chairs from the 16th century. Still very cool.

This photo includes some of the only blinds in the home.


Wright objected to the use of blinds in the home because they disconnected the inhabitants from the surrounding nature, but the Kaufmanns insisted on the blinds in this guest room.

The family and their visitors reached the house by crossing this stone and cement bridge over Bear Run. The bridge was being patched and painted while we were there.


This is a view of the terrace from outside the home.


Notice that those white flowers are in an indoor flower bed. Just beyond that bed are some red stairs. These are the indoor stairs that go down beneath the house into Bear Run. By that, I mean that one could open the glass doors and walk down a stone staircase directly into the creek, which is a consistent 55 degrees.


Here is a better view of the stairs. The tour guide informed us that in the spring, when the snow melts, the water sometimes flows as high as the second or third step from the bottom.


If you look carefully at this picture, you can see that in the back right is a staircase with bookshelves built into the wall. Brilliant!


Here, we can see a beam of the house built on a curve to go around this tree. This tree looks fairly young to me, so I doubt the tree has been there 80 years, but some tree was there.


Only as we were leaving Fallingwater were we able to see that classic view of the house that has become famous. Approaching the house, one does not see the waterfall but hears it.



After leaving Fallingwater, we steered toward the highway for the 7-hour drive home. It was nice to see the trees and hills I am used to.


When we arrived in our driveway a little after 2 am Monday morning, we discovered just how much ground we had covered.


I cried a little when I got home because I was so happy to see my cats. On top of it all, our house was IMMACULATE, courtesy of the most amazing house sitter in the world. ShaLeigh had taken fantastic care of our house and our cats. It was such a relief to come home to a clean house. We thought our trip was over.

After about a day, we made a final decision to join our friends Patrick and Jen (from Atlanta) in Hilton Head, SC, on Thursday, so the story continues.

Day 36: Pittsburgh

On July 18, our friend Will gave us the most fabulous tour of Pittsburgh! We began with *oh, God* the steps. Pittsburgh, you understand, is the city that lies at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers converge to become the Ohio River. The Allegheny Mountains surround this area; thus, the city is built into the sides of these great mountains. When the city was first digging into the mining industry, there weren’t nearly as many cars as there are now, so there weren’t as many roads. Instead, workers would use stairs to get up and down the mountains. They’d go down the mountain for work, up the mountain for lunch, down the mountain to go back to work, up the mountain to come home in the evening. Will tells us that older maps of the city show some of the staircases being named with street names. Technically, streets were just thoroughfares that allowed people to get from one place to another regardless of vehicle; thus, a paved road would be named as would a staircase. According to a gent named Bob Regan who published a book about the stair, there are 712 sets of steps in Pittsburgh. Well, just a little while on these stairs and I was ready to throttle Will for even thinking this was a good idea. However, the awesomeness of what we saw from the tops of these staircases made it all worthwhile. This is the view from the top of the first set of stairs we climbed (I’m afraid that I have no idea where we were).


Note that the power lines follow the stairs. That’s how important they are.

Two hundred years ago, the steps would have been constructed of wood, but most were replaced with concrete by the WPA.


We also loved the different styles of homes around the city. We found these delightful single family homes


...as well as the row-style houses, which are typically three stories and a basement. We found this poor guy standing by himself out there.


Pittsburgh also has more than its fair share of cobblestone streets.


They were very lovely but murder on the suspension of the tan van.

After walking so many steps that I thought my legs might fall off, we headed to Polish Hill where we found an estate sale. These old row houses often have little alleys between them that lead to a common courtyard in the back.


Some old lady had passed away, and her friend was selling off all of her belongings as well as those of the dead lady’s dead sisters. Too bad for them, awesome for me. We checked out the basement floor of the lady’s house to found some serious 1800s construction: arched doorways, huge fireplaces, the whole deal. It was so awesomely decrepit that I was not surprised to find that the house was going to be demolished.

After the estate sale, we headed down the street to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Festival. This was a street fair featuring bingo, games, baked goods, Polish t-shirts and souvenirs, and lots of other fun stuff. They offered their own version of Frito chili pie, but they called it "Taco in a Bag."



Fritos, taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. It was really quite delicious. It only cost $1.50. Now, here’s something I noticed at the festival that I then noticed everywhere. A dollar fifty. This was supposed to be a fundraiser. They should have charged at least $4 for that little treat. The contents alone were worth about $2 when you include the work of cutting all the veggies and cooking the meat. As I started to look around, I realized that EVERYTHING in Pittsburgh was less expensive than it could have been. What a wonderful city! I love it here!

From Polish Hill, we headed to Schenley Park for the Vintage Grand Prix.


Schenley Park is in the Oakland neighborhood in Pittsburgh right near where Carnegie Mellon and Pitt seem to collide. The park was beautiful and green with some rolling hills. It was a very cool site for an antique car race. We found a nice little place on the grass where the cars come around a corner. I thought it was a lovely place to sit until the cars started coming around the corner and we could see them fishtailing a bit. Some even seemed to want to come up on two wheels. One false move and I’d have to run for cover.





After a few heats, we decided to keep on moving. As we walked back to the car, we saw what Will referred to as “radical knitting” on the Schenley Bridge.




I found it quite lovely that someone would spend the time to do that.

We then headed to Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh’s Jewish neighborhood, to hit an awesome record store.


Almost as a rule, I am not impressed by record stores. However, Jerry’s Records was an AWESOME store. It is a huge building with more records than I thought I’d ever see in one place. It’s all vinyl—not a CD in the joint. Jerry’s boasts more than a million records, and I believe that. Jerry himself is there to help you out if you need him. He’s an older guy who clearly left something behind with the backing from his acid tabs in the 1960s, but he runs an amazing store. The records were all priced reasonably and were generally of excellent quality. The records are all categorized, too, into the normal genres one might expect: jazz, rock, hip-hop, classical, etc. But then they also have weird genres like sermons, Celtic Christmas, “good stuff,” country radio shows, and horror. I even found this little gem.


Were it not for a spoken word/poetry section, I would have been pretty miserable. I left with four records, as did Dave. I think we got out of there for a total of $40. Nice. Jerry’s is a must-see.

From there, it was on to the grocery store and then home for a nice quiet dinner with Will and Kirsten’s friends Joe and Lisel. They were delightful, and dinner was delicious. Dave treated us to his favorite Italian dish: spaghetti with olive oil, fresh garlic, Greek olives, toasted pine nuts, and raisins. It was wonderful. Will grilled up some hot dogs, brats, and veggie dogs, and Joe and Lisel brought a salad with pine nuts and raisins. I can’t recall what else we had, but it was delicious!

We finished the evening with a trip to Nico’s Recovery Room, which is a bar that features Saturday night karaoke. We took full advantage of that, as one might expect. Dave sang “She-Bop” and I sang Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Some short little kid, likely a CMU student, got up and sang the Andrew WK song “Party Hard.”


This kid was INTO IT! He knew every little flourish on that song. Lots of air guitar and air drums. It was pretty great.

After about 2 hours of this, we just had to go home. It had been a long day, and we were beat. What a great day it had been!

Day 35: Pittsburgh

Since our friends and hosts Kirstin and Will were working on Friday, Dave and I had to entertain ourselves in Pittsburgh. We drove around for a little while just looking. We ended up in the Strip District, which is where lots of shops and restaurants are located. We began by getting some lunch at Primanti Brothers, which is a legendary sandwich place. They sell the original "Pittsburgh-style sandwich" which is two slices of crusty bread that they cut right there, lots of meat, a few slices of cheese, a handful of their homemade cole slaw, and a gigantic handful of french fries. That's right. French fries right there on my sandwich. It was fantastic!

After lunch, we continued to roam around the Strip District and found an awesome Italian supermarket called the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company (“Penn Mac”). It was a huge market with lots of pastas, fresh produce, fresh meats, handmade sausages of all kinds, and weird little regional staples. We decided that Dave would make one of his signature dishes (spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, raisins, and olives) for dinner the next night, and this was the perfect place to shop for it.

We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at the Andy Warhol Museum.



While I was not permitted to take pictures inside the museum, rest assured that it was a great museum. We learned about his life as well as his art. We also learned about who his influences were and who he influenced. One room in the museum featured silver helium-filled mylar pillows that would float around the room directed by strategically placed fans. It was quite nifty. The museum also presented some pretty great multimedia presentations that Warhol had made in conjunction with the Velvet Underground.

By the time we finished and headed back to the house, Kirstin and Will had returned home from work. We decided that instead of cooking dinner, we’d head to the Church Brew Works.


This place was wacky. It was a 1902 church that was converted to a restaurant in 1996.


Having been raised Catholic, I was definitely feeling weird about this. It was a bizarre experience for me. When I looked up toward where the altar should be, there stood the steel and copper brewery tanks.



For dinner, Dave and I chose the Pittsburgh salad, which is a green salad with about a half pound of hot Steak-um-style meat on top smothered in cheese. Oh, that's right. There's french fries. ON the salad. You read correctly, my people. There are french fries on the crazy Steak-um salad. It was amazing, and I think I almost had a coronary right there on the spot.

At one point during dinner, Kirstin got the hiccoughs and showed us her method for getting rid of them.


Hmm.

The outside of the building was quite lovely.



But there was a disturbing view as well.


After dinner, Will took us all on his evening tour of the city. We headed up Mount Washington to a terrific scenic lookout. The first thing I spotted was this cool statue of a Seneca warrior named Guyasuta meeting with George Washington.


The statue is called “Point of View” but it looks more like there is about to be a historically disturbing intimate moment here. I’m just saying.

We also got to see the beautiful night skyline of Pittsburgh.



Oh, it was just gorgeous. At this point, I think I was halfway to being in love with this city. There was a Pirates home game in play at PNC Park and we could see it a little bit from where we were. That was neat.


Here’s a little something for Peter Geddes.


Here’s Pittsburgh’s entry in the Theater of Weird Signs.


This one was a symbol on a paper towel dispenser. It was actually recommending that one use one’s forearm, not one’s fingertips, to press down on the bar that releases the paper towels. Wow.

We wandered about a bit more before heading back to the house and crashing.