The Kaufmanns owned a department store in Pittsburgh and a stretch of Bear Run where their employees had camped for years. When they asked for a house with a view of the falls, they got a house on top of them.
Living in it was harder than looking at it. Terraces sagged and had to be post-tensioned decades later. Condensation ran down the stone. The family nicknamed it "Rising Mildew." They used it every weekend anyway for twenty-six years.
That tension — a house that is difficult and beloved in the same breath — is the most honest thing about domestic architecture, and it never appears in a listing.
Memories attached to this place
“You don't see the water from most of the house. You only ever hear it. That was the trick.”
“My father poured concrete on that job in '36 and swore the whole time it would fall in the creek.”
“Weekends only. The rest of the week it sat there in the woods with the lights off.”
Timeline
- 1916Kaufmann's employees begin summering at the Bear Run camp.
- 1935Design drawn; the house is placed over the falls, not facing them.
- 1937Family moves in for weekends.
- 1963Donated to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
- 2002Cantilevers permanently repaired after decades of deflection.
The most photographed house in America was, to the people who owned it, a damp cabin they loved.
