As you may be able to tell from the folks walking through my photo, Fallingwater is popular. There were tours for about a dozen each running every few minutes constantly. The house and 1500 acres were donated by the client’s son. The reserve is now 5,000 acres in rural Pennsylvania. I ate lunch at Polymath Park, about 45 minutes away, where they have four Wright homes, a Treetop restaurant and even let a few lucky folks spend the night.

This World Heritage site may be Wright’s greatest private home, his masterpiece of organic architecture. The multilevel home and guesthouse are built over the Bear Run Falls and into the rocky hillside. Several steps descend into the creek, and there are pools for swimming, for enjoying the creek and even for washing up. Unsurprisingly, the home has had some leaks, water and flood damage, but overall the waxed stone floors, stone walls and stucco covered steel reinforced cantilevered structures retain their stunning appearance. The many patios extend out over the water providing myriad views while adding to the modern exterior design.

The Kaufmanns owned Pittsburgh’s premier department store and welcomed employees here to play tennis, swim and enjoy nature. They also collected art, and much of their collection is still here, including an original from their friend Diego Rivera, who visited here with Frieda Kahlo. Much of the furniture is original and designed by Wright. Instead of abstract, complicated, multicolored glass window designs, Wright used plain glass windows, but in fascinating ways, especially by running the glass all the way to the corner from two sides without any corner support. From across the creek below the house, there is a stacked column of such windows running between floors, and each opens to provide an exquisite series of views that descend like the falls from the small upstairs room to the creek. Iconic.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s mother got him the job of designing a new church for her Unitarian congregation in their Oak Park neighborhood. Still used by the Unitarian Universalists today, this progressive architecture combines Egyptian and Japanese elements in a uniquely American temple. Wright’s signature custom light fixtures, intricate skylights, wheat colorings and guided journey from low, dark compressed spaces into the release of high open space and light from above, all contribute to a sense of awe. This World Heritage Site has been restored to exceptional condition and is open for excellent, detailed tours.

This classic 1910 Frank Lloyd Wright house is in the middle of the University of Chicago. Take the self-guided walking tour to learn about some of the nearby famous buildings. The campus is Oxford style, but Wright shattered traditional norms in this multilayered brilliant home.

The footprint is long and narrow, which Wright used to advantage, capturing light along the long south side, adding pointy ends, like the breakfast nook above on each end, and an open floor plan the length of the home. The colored glass in the window has iridescent multihued glazes on the outside, including pink, purple and lavender. Outside the home emphasizes the horizontal with brick colored mortar up and plain mortar sideways, and inside the vertical. From outside the home appears private, behind walls, with the front door hidden, but from inside, especially upstairs, the home has open views of what were once open fields and are now busy campus structures and spaces.

This World Heritage site is fascinating and is one of the most important architectural works of the 20th century.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Welsh grandparents bought a large parcel of land out here in Wisconsin, and his mother asked Frank to come back from Europe—where he was philandering with the wife of a client—and design a home here. He did and named it Taliesin (say ‘Tally-Essen’), which as I said before, means ‘brow’ in Welsh. To expand on that, it really is named after a 5th century bard of early Britain whose works were partly preserved in a Welsh book, so it takes on the meaning of ‘high-brow’ or ‘highly cultured, scholarly and well-versed in rare interests’. Wright obviously identified with the term positively, as he used it to name his most personal home, where he chose to live longest. In an amusing letter on display in the visitor center, Wright claims to love Wisconsin in part for the lack of ‘high-brows’, although he notes that Wisconsin does have several people who are ‘educated beyond their capacity’.

Unfortunately, his mistress and two of her children moved into the house and were killed in a fire started by a servant, who poured kerosene on the floors, locked the doors and dispatched all but one fire survivors outside with an axe. Wright rebuilt and lived here with his third wife (his second OD’d). The room above was built for a photo shoot in the 1950s, and shows the wooded hills and river valley that reminded his grandparents of Wales. Wright also built a high ‘bird-walk’, or narrow balcony jutting straight out, with phenomenal views that defines the home from the road below. The house is filled with Japanese influences and Asian art. His many students lived and worked in the barn they helped redesign and build, and a few still live here today.