Fallingwater Rising Frank Lloyd Wright Ej Kaufmann And Americas Most Extraordinary House 1st Edition Franklin Toker by Franklin Toker 9780307425843, 0307425843 instant download after payment.

Fallingwater Rising is a biography not of a person but of the most famous house of the 20th century. Scholars & the public have long extolled the house that Wright perched over a PA waterfall in 1937, but the full story has never been told. When he got the commission to design the house, Wright was nearing 70, his youth & his early fame long gone. It was the Depression, & Wright had no work in sight. Into his orbit stepped Edgar J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department-store mogul–“the smartest retailer in America”–& a philanthropist with the burning ambition to build a world-famous work of architecture. It was an unlikely collaboration: the Jewish merchant who had little concern for modern architecture & the brilliant modernist who was leery of Jews. But the two men collaborated to produce an extraordinary building of lasting architectural significance that brought international fame to them both & confirmed Wright’s position as the greatest architect of the 20th century. Fallingwater Rising is also an enthralling family drama, involving Kaufmann, his beautiful cousin/wife, Liliane, & their son, Edgar Jr., whose own role in the creation of Fallingwater & its ongoing reputation is central to the story. Involving such key figures of the 30s as F. Kahlo, A. Einstein, H. R. Luce, William R. Hearst, Ayn Rand, & F. 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 rich evocation of the upper-crust society of Pittsburgh–Carnegie, Frick, the Mellons–a society that was socially reactionary but luxury-loving & baronial in its tastes, hobbies, & sexual attitudes. Toker has been studying Fallingwater for 18 years. No one but he could have given us this compelling saga of the most famous private house in the world & the dramatic personal story of the fascinating people who made & used it. A major c