Fallingwater & Beyond: Frank Lloyd Wright's Laurel Highlands

I had no idea this existed before I was researching the Laurel Highlands.

And by the way, before I said it was near Pittsburgh, which is true.

But if people understand the state of Pennsylvania, it's southwestern, kind of in the southwestern area.

But anyway, so Polymath is this park that's about 25 minutes from Fallingwater, and it's a private park.

conservation effort by the people who own it and operate it.

And that's Tom and Heather Pepinchak.

And polymath, I was curious to know what that meant.

It really means basically somebody who's got just this encyclopedic knowledge and they've got a lot of skills and education.

So they bought a house in the area, just a regular house, and they lived in it.

But during this time, the park became available, this 130 plus acre area.

which had those two homes, the Balter House and Blum House.

And these houses were made, they were designed by the apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, which was named Peter Bernston.

And they were designed to somber retreat.

So these two homes came available.

And so he wanted to rehabilitate the homes because they were really into disrepair.

So then after repairing them, he rented them out to visitors who really enjoyed staying in these dwellings because they knew that it had been designed by a Wright apprentice.

So that was an interesting background thing.

And then they took on a couple other projects and they did the Duncan House, which was a Wright house.

And this one I found fascinating because it was taken apart piece by piece, moved from Illinois to Polymath Park and reconstructed Piece by piece by piece.

And the other one, Montilla, was another Wright-designed home, which was built in Minnesota, that also piece by piece by piece in the same painstaking manner.

So piece by piece.

That's the thing, you know? Piece by piece, and then you get to go spend the night.

Yep.

Wow.

So is there like a map, like a road trip map you can follow for this kind of thing? Because what I've heard of Laurel Highlands, it's a beautiful road tripping area in general.