Images of Bear Run ...
Future Site of Fallingwater
Rare Photographic Postcards of a Bygone
Era
in the Days Before Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a
Masterpiece Over a Waterfall for the Kaufmann Family
See Fallingwater Today
along with details from our 2004
reunion
and our special booklet, Fallingwater: A
Long Family Affair.
Kaufmann's Department Store, Pittsburgh, circa 1909
In the years before Fallingwater® was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Edgar J. Kaufmann department store family of Pittsburgh, the spectacular landscape was owned by the Masonic Country Club and later by the Syria Improvement Association, an arm of the Masons. The Masons built a club house, a dance pavilion, cottages and other buildings for use by members as a weekend retreat. Later, in about 1913, the Kaufmann's Department Store bought the property for use by its women employees as a summer club.
By the 1920s, according to Donald Hoffman's book, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater: The House and Its History, the grounds were used for "tennis, swimming, volleyball, hiking, hayrides, picnicking, sunbathing, singing, theatre and 'quiet' reading." The Kaufmanns bought the property outright in about 1932, and within a few years designs for Fallingwater were underway.
Cousins who worked at Fallingwater under the Kaufmanns over the decades from the 1930s to the 1990s, and honored at our 2004 national family reunion, were Ralph Miner, Lester and Mildred (Anderson) Miner, Oakey and Gertrude (Shroyer) Harbaugh, and Frank Miner.
Above: the famed, pristine falls, circa 1910, not yet touched by human hands
Above: the rocky waters of Bear Run
Above left: the famed "Hangover"
cabin that Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann built circa
1921 for use on weekends,
about 1,500 feet to the southeast of the falls where
Fallingwater would someday
emerge. Above right: the "Spray Rock Cottage"
also known as the
Porter cottage where Fallingwater's guest house now stands.
Above: two views of the famed "Club
House" built by the Masonic
Country Club, about 1,100 feet to the southeast
of the falls.
Club and annex of the Kaufmann summer camp, where
Ralph and Leola Miner resided from 1956 to
1963
Above left: the "Club House." Above right: a quiet road
leading to the property.
Above left: the "Back to Nature"
cottages. Above right: the Arbutus cottage.
Above left: a trout hatchery located just
a few hundred feet upstream
from the falls. Above right: the Stone
cottage.
Copyright © 2004-2006 Mark A. Miner