Travel: A Little-Known Frank Lloyd Wright Gem

Frank Lloyd Wright described Kentuck Knob, a fieldstone and cypress dwelling he designed in 1953, as built “so hill and house . . . live together, each the happier for the other.” The house, nestled into a lush hill in Western Pennsylvania, remains out of view until you wend your way up a wooded rise and down a curving driveway. Then you are greeted by a wall of stone blocks broken only by a narrow file of windows running under the roof. It’s a little fortress-like. But inside, the rich interior opens up, for the southern wall is a continuous window that makes you feel as if you’re floating over the verdant landscape.

This remarkable home in the Laurel Highlands is a two-hour drive from Pittsburgh and ten minutes from Wright’s best known house, Fallingwater, which he designed in 1935. Kentuck Knob is less ostentatious but equally worth visiting. Fallingwater is austere in its elegance, while Kentuck Knob is warm, more an artful residence than an inhabitable work of art.

After its original owners moved out, in 1986, it was purchased by Lord Peter Palumbo, an art collector from England. He gave it the name Kentuck Knob after the hill it sits on and opened it to the public in 1996. It is fully stocked with the Palumbos’ collection of Wright furniture, art objects, and fossils, and so has the feel of a real living place—one that is at once ample and intimate.

It was originally designed for I. N. Hagan, an ice cream manufacturer from nearby Uniontown. When Hagan approached Wright, the architect was 85 and near the end of his career. The construction of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City was well underway, and Fallingwater was almost 20 years old. Mired in high-profile projects, Wright offered to design, but not build, the house.

His inability to visit the site was a blessing in disguise for the Hagans. He was notoriously uncompromising about aesthetics and often sacrificed solid construction to get the look he wanted. Fallingwater has needed millions of dollars in restoration work, and the Guggenheim is currently undergoing large-scale renovation. Since the Hagans first moved in, 50 years ago, Kentuck Knob has needed only superficial work. Herman Keys, a local contractor, oversaw the construction and made sure the building could withstand the region’s hard winters. He added more heating pipes and varnished the cypress. (Wright had originally stipulated that the wood remain untreated, which could have led to warping and cracking.) The original heating system, involving a maze of pipes installed under the floor to avoid unsightly radiators, is still in use. Two local masons, Jess Wilson and Jess Wilson, Jr., cut the home’s sandstone blocks from nearby boulders, hand-incising each one.

Thanks to Keyes’s modifications, Kentuck Knob ingeniously solves the problems presented by Pennsylvania weather and is a remarkably inviting house. Wright had been experimenting with something he called Usonian design, a word he coined in part from an acronym for United States of North America. Usonian design, inspired, he said, by the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was meant to unite man with nature by eroding the distinction between interior and exterior and creating an uncommon unity in materials, design, and space. Usonian homes, usually meant to be especially affordable, are based on modular construction, with the rooms fitting together like the blocks Wright endlessly played with as a child. He also declared that the right angle wasn’t conducive to human movement, and he filled Usonian homes with 30, 60, and 120 degree angles.

Kentuck Knob is the finest realization of Usonian ideals. At its center is a vaulting, hexagonal kitchen with a fifteen-foot ceiling topped by a giant skylight. Standing in it is more like being in a chapel than in a kitchen. The rest of the house radiates from that core. The solid-stone northern wall provides privacy, while the glass southern wall opens on a stunning vista and gives the living room a sense of expansiveness.

Off the living room is a generous terrace with a 28-foot-long cantilevered overhang with 24 skylights, all edged with distinctive woodwork in a dentil pattern. The overhang continues inside to become part of the dining-room ceiling, creating a unity between inside and out. The windows are “invisible”—they have no frames but rather are set directly into the stone around them. This creates a near-dizzying sense of space. You almost feel as if there are no walls or windows at all.

“Buildings like people must first be sincere, must be true, and then withal as gracious and lovable as may be,” Wright once wrote. Kentuck Knob is perhaps the most lovable Wright house, one that truly seems to respond to the needs of its inhabitants. Elegant without being overly dramatic, ingenious without being showy, it is, above all, comfortable. And after all, comfort is the most important function of any home.

To Visit: Kentuck Knob is about two hours south of Pittsburgh, near Uniontown and the Wright house Fallingwater. Reservations are strongly recommended for the hour-long tour of the house and can be made by calling (724) 329-1901. Tours are $15 for adults and $8 for children. For times, directions, and additional information visit www.kentuckknob.com.