Fallingwater documentary shows how engineers saved the famous house
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Robert P. Ruschak Fallingwater's terraces were shored with steel beams, tucked behind the scaffolding, until reinforcing work on the concrete cantilever beams could be completed.
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If you didn't visit Fallingwater when it was under restoration in 2001, here's a chance to see what you missed -- the shocking sight of one of the world's most famous houses stripped to its underpinnings.
Ken Love's comprehensive hour-long documentary, "Saving Fallingwater," which airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on WQED, also is an opportunity to learn why the restoration was necessary and what it achieved -- stabilization of the building's drooping cantilevered terraces.
- When: 8 p.m. Thursday on WQED.
They began to crack and drop -- by almost 2 inches -- just after completion in 1937, as soon as the form work around the concrete was removed. Owner Edgar Kaufmann, who died in 1955, began monitoring them immediately; by 1995 they were 7 inches lower than they should be.
To help tell the story of the house's design and construction, Mr. Love uses vintage footage of Frank Lloyd Wright in his studio and the house itself as it began to rise in 1936. Mr. Love also quotes letters between the architect and the owner. When Mr. Kaufmann reported his contractor didn't think there was enough reinforcing steel in the concrete beams, Mr. Wright fumed back, "If I haven't your confidence -- to hell with the whole thing."
Time and technology would prove Mr. Wright and his engineer were wrong. It was a University of Virginia engineering and historic preservation student, John Paul Huguley, who, in creating a computer model of the master terrace structural system, discovered that it was not a self-supporting cantilever.
That led to more research and the hiring in 1995 of structural engineer Robert Silman, who measured cracks for 17 months before determining that the terraces were still deflecting and would eventually tumble into Bear Run.
Fixing the problem would involve removing the furnishings, including all of the built-ins, and numbering, photographing and removing the floor stones to get to the concrete beams, which would be tightened and strengthened with cables through a system called post-tensioning. One of the film's many revelations is that its application at Fallingwater marked the first use of post-tensioning in a historic structure. The house remained open for tours during restoration.
Mr. Love has a long history with the house; he wrote, produced and directed two previous films about Fallingwater -- one a conversation with Edgar Kaufmann Jr., and the other about Mr. Wright and his apprentices.
In "Saving Fallingwater," he's created an invaluable record of the restoration, the most significant work on the house since its building. It reminds once again what a conscientious caretaker the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy has been.
Capably narrated by David Conrad, the film was completed in 2006 and premiered that year at the National Trust for Historic Preservation national conference here, but is just now getting its local broadcast premiere. Don't miss it.
First Published March 3, 2010 12:00 am
