A Polymath Park PhotoJournal

When I shared about our tour of Fallingwater recently, I promised another set of photos coming soon because we also visited Polymath Park on that trip. Polymath Park is about a half hour from Fallingwater, and about an hour from Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands. 

There were two homes originally on this site, both designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice and colleague named Peter Berndtson. These properties were eventually purchased by the Papinchak family with the intent of preserving the homes and eventually opening them to the public. In 2006 they purchased and relocated a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home, the Duncan House, which had originally been in Lisle, IL. And in 2019, the Wright-designed "Mäntylä" house was acquired and relocated from Cloquet. MN.

This is the Treetops Restaurant at the 'headquarters' of the site, which was originally the home of the Papinchaks:

Guests can tour all four houses or just the Wright houses. On our visit, we chose to visit just the two Wright houses.

The Duncan House was one of the prefabricated houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was interested in mass production of housing throughout his career, and in the 1950s he worked with builder Marshall Erdman was already offering prefab houses. Wright offered to design better homes for Erdman that would sell at even more modest prices. The Duncan House is an example of the Prefab #1 design - a single story, L-shaped home with a bedroom wing and a living and kitchen area wing all centered on a large fireplace. The design also included a storage shed connected to the house by a carport.

The R.W. Lindholm house, named Mäntylä, was designed in 1952 by Wright. The name is from a Finnish word meaning "of the pines" which was appropriate for its original location in the Minnesota forest. The house was in danger of demolition due to encroaching development, and in 2016 the house and furnishings were donated and the relocation project began. Mäntylä at Polymath Park opened for tours in 2019.

I loved both of these homes. As beautiful and innovative as I found the other Wright homes we've toured, they were all designed for very wealthy families with household servants and plenty of money for luxuries, and so there was a bit more of a museum quality to them. The houses at Polymath Park were designed for families that prepared their own meals and spent time in their own kitchens, and drove their own cars instead of having a chauffeur. Just the design of a kitchen that was part of the family's living space added a hominess that I really felt.

For more about Frank Lloyd Wright, visit  the original post at Homeschool Coffee Break, and the most recent post, A Fallingwater PhotoJournal. You can also check out some previous posts about Frank Lloyd Wright: A Kentuck Knob PhotoJournal; Frank Lloyd Wright - Blogging Through The Alphabet; A National Building Museum PhotoJournal

 

  

Thanks for joining me as I looked back on this tour, and I hope you enjoyed it! Have you visited any Frank Lloyd Wright buildings? Leave a comment and let me know!

This post is adapted from the original on Homeschool Coffee Break.

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