Fallingwater rising : Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann, and America's most extraordinary house

Author / Creator

Toker, Franklin

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Summary

"Fallingwater Rising is a biography not of a person but of the most famous house of the twentieth century. Scholars and the public have long extolled the house that Frank Lloyd Wright perched over ...

"Fallingwater Rising is a biography not of a person but of the most famous house of the twentieth century. Scholars and the public have long extolled the house that Frank Lloyd Wright perched over a Pennsylvania waterfall in 1937, but the full story has never been told." "Fallingwater Rising is also a family drama, involving Kaufmann, his beautiful cousin/wife, Liliane, and their son, Edgar Jr., whose own role in the creation of Fallingwater and its ongoing reputation is central to the story. Involving such key figures of the 1930s as Frida Kahlo, Albert Einstein, Henry R. Luce, William Randolph Hearst, Ayn Rand, and Franklin Roosevelt, Fallingwater Rising shows us how E. J. Kaufmann's house became not just Wright's masterpiece but a fundamental icon of American life." "One of the pleasures of the book is its evocation of the upper-crust society of Pittsburgh - Carnegie, Frick, the Mellons - a society that was socially reactionary but luxury-loving and baronial in its tastes, hobbies, and sexual attitudes (Kaufmann had so many mistresses that his store issued them distinctive charge plates they could use without paying)." "A major contribution to both architectural and social history."--BOOK JACKET.

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