Modern Gothic

NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
SEPTEMBER 2001

Deep in the woods of Fayette County, Pa., hidden by rhododendron and mountain laurel, there is a small footbridge that's seldom used. Take a few steps across it, over a thin creek, and you come face to face with a rain-stained crypt. Inside lie the bodies of Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann. Each year, about 140,000 sightseers pass within 100 yards of the couple, but almost no one knows they are there. That's because their shrine is not part of the official tour at Fallingwater, the weekend home designed in 1936 for the department-store magnate and his wife by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house, of course, is an American icon, the epitome of Wright's organic architecture. It appears to float over a thundering waterfall on Bear Run, a wonder of Modernist design. It is also haunted by a critical flaw -- and, some say, a ghost.

Kaufmann, who locked horns with Wright over the design, worried for the rest of his life that the architect had put too little steel in the terraces' support beams. From Day 1, the terraces tilted, threatening to tumble into the stream. Today, they sag as much as seven inches and are in danger of collapse. Engineers have found other hidden problems and have begun an $11.5 million restoration, a job that will offer an archaeological glimpse into the ribs of Wright's most daring creation.

But to peel back the sinews of Fallingwater is to invite a peek at the family that inspired it. It is a story of high art, social ambition, infidelity and death. And it begins 72 miles north, with the prosperous department store in Pittsburgh that still bears the Kaufmann name.

Edgar J. Kaufmann (E.J., as friends called him) was a dashing, brilliant man who married his first cousin Lillian to help gain control of the family business. Lillian, who later changed her name to to the more exotic Liliane, was blond, ambitious and in every way her husband's equal in business.

In the 1920's, their store ranked among the retail giants. By the 30's, Kaufmann, a connoisseur of modern architecture and design, had lined its walls in black marble and installed handsome Art Deco display cases.

In those years, department stores were the centerpiece of consumer culture, according to Richard Cleary, an associate professor of architectural history at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of ''Merchant Prince and Master Builder,'' an insightful study of Kaufmann and Wright. ''At the time,'' Cleary explains, ''attractive, modern displays were essential features of that process.''

Kaufmann was an astute marketer. He not only knew how to appeal to the aspiring middle classes, but he also understood the power of publicity. After Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, Kaufmann installed an airplane in his store as part of a flag-waving exhibition that drew 50,000 visitors in one week.

Not to be eclipsed, Liliane Kaufmann brought Paris to the provinces. She turned the store's unprofitable 11th-floor women's shop into a moneymaking boutique, Vendôme. She traveled to Europe to stock it with art, antiques and rarefied bric-a-brac.

To Mary Michaely, who worked as her secretary, Liliane glittered like royalty. Returning from a buying trip abroad, she would sweep through the store's front door, her chauffeur in tow, hands loaded down with bags, dozens of fawning salespeople in her wake. ''It was,'' Michaely says, ''like a queen coming home.''

For his part, Kaufmann played the role of generous benefactor to his employees. ''He knew the names of every elevator operator, always asked how their wives were doing,'' says Earl Friend, who worked on the Kaufmanns' dairy farm at Fallingwater and who benefited directly from the Kaufmanns' largess -- they helped to place and provide for his crippled daughter at a state nursing home.

Together, the Kaufmanns made a striking couple. They lived in a Norman-style mansion, La Tourelle, in the horsy suburb of Fox Chapel. They rode steeplechase with the country-club set and raised orchids in their greenhouse. But because they were Jews, there were barriers to their ascension in Pittsburgh society, which was dominated by Mellons and Carnegies. Still, Kaufmann was proud of his city. He fought to improve its air quality. He played a key role in the Pittsburgh renaissance, which kept the city from sliding into decay in the 1940's. He lobbied for massive public works projects, but few were ever realized. ''Kaufmann was successful, but he was also a frustrated person,'' says Franklin Toker, an art history professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has researched Fallingwater and Kaufmann's personal and professional life. ''It's a major factor in why he built Fallingwater,'' he explains. ''He built it in compensation.''

The Kaufmanns met Wright in 1934, one month after their son, Edgar Jr. (he preferred to lowercase ''junior''), had become an apprentice at Wright's commune-cum-studio at Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wis. Edgar Sr. eventually hired Wright to design his office at the store and to build a weekend house in the hills.

It is, by now, the most recounted birth of an architectural project in modern history. Wright, months behind schedule, essentially designed the house in under three hours -- as Kaufmann drove from Milwaukee to Taliesin to go over the plans.

What Wright designed reflected the wilderness of the landscape. Hallways flow like forest trails, doubling back. They open onto rooms like sudden clearings, their windows pulling the outdoors inside -- most strikingly on the first floor, an open space for living and dining areas, as well as a library and dining room. The entire place would cost $155,000 to build, far more than Wright's original $35,000 estimate.

When Kaufmann reviewed the plans, he was delighted, but instantly concerned. He hired an independent engineering firm that found the design faulty in various areas, including a lack of support for the monolithic cantilevered terraces. The consultants suggested doubling up the steel in the beams.

Wright was livid at the meddling and at his client's lack of faith. He fired off a typically acid reply to Kaufmann, accusing him of acting with the ''provincialism'' of a woman by second-guessing his genius. With the construction in its second month, he wrote, ''I have put so much more into this house than you or any other client has a right to expect, that if I don't have your confidence -- to hell with the whole thing.''

Edgar Tafel, a Wright apprentice, says: ''There was fighting back and forth on both sides. It was terrible. Kaufmann was a bit out of gear. But things of this nature happened with Wright throughout his life. He had to have an enemy because it was always someone else's fault. He was never guilty of anything.''

Kaufmann eventually mollified Wright (the two men remained mercurial friends for 25 years with Kaufmann commissioning, but never building, more than 20 projects), but his engineers did slip in the extra steel. If they hadn't, the house would have fallen long ago. From the start, cracks appeared in the parapets of the master bedroom terrace. And recent studies show another problem.

Using radar, ultrasonic pulses and magnetic detection, along with a computer model that calculated stresses in the building, engineers have found that Wright had used specially strengthened mullions in the living room windows to help support the second-floor master bedroom terrace. (Previously, the second floor was thought to be self-supporting.) The extra weight adds further tension on the first-floor beams, a design flaw, the engineers say, that has put Wright's masterpiece in jeopardy.

''The living room beams are at the point of failure,'' says Robert Silman, whose New York firm, Robert Silman Associates, was brought in to fix the problem. ''We don't know why the mistake was made, it's a simple engineering problem. But Wright was very arrogant and he thought he knew best.''

Eric Lloyd Wright, who apprenticed at Taliesin in the 1950's, says: ''My grandfather would always tell his clients: 'Well, you know, you're my guinea pig. I hope you can take experiments.' He was very strong-headed, and so was Kaufmann. That's why they admired each other.''

The Kaufmanns indeed had ideas of their own. After all, these were their woods, their home. As avid outdoorsmen (they hiked miles through the forest and surprised friends by sunbathing nude), they wanted Fallingwater to feel luxuriously rustic. Among the changes they wanted was the addition of a plunge pool for morning dips.

''The Kaufmanns came here to renew themselves with nature,'' says Lynda Waggoner, the director of Fallingwater, which is run by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Waggoner met Edgar Jr. when she began working at Fallingwater as a tour guide in 1965. ''They were very active people,'' she says, ''who created for themselves a great sense of gracious living in the woods.''

While Wright designed the beds, desks and shelving, the Kaufmanns nixed his proposal for living-room lamps and round-backed dining-room chairs. Liliane chose instead the baroque chairs she had brought back from Florence. She also rejected Wright's rugs as too formal, opting for the skunk, raccoon and beaver skins caught by a local trapper. She mixed Adirondack-style furniture, like the tree-trunk side tables that Wright abhorred, with artwork by Picasso and Diego Rivera and Japanese woodblock prints. But the boldest interior touch probably came from Kaufmann, who convinced Wright that the boulder protruding through the living-room floor at the fireplace should stay exposed. It is one of the more daring -- and enduring -- charms of the home.

When the house was completed in 1939, the Kaufmanns plunged into their retreat with typical panache. They had costume parties, dressing up in lederhosen, Chinese robes and traditional Mexican dress. Kaufmann had been known to celebrate the New Year by having his guests join him on the terrace at midnight to toss their Champagne glasses into the falls.

''There was fighting back and forth on both sides. It was terrible. Kaufmann was a bit out of gear. But things of this nature happened with Wright throughout his life. He had to have an enemy because it was always someone else's fault. He was never guilty of anything.''

''They were both such engaging personalities and wonderful hosts,'' Waggoner says. ''They never duplicated a menu. The Irish linen was changed every night. The servants set fresh fruit and water by the beds.'' This no doubt pleased visitors like Einstein, Frida Kahlo and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.

While the guests and public at large stared in awe at Wright's genius, Liliane was not always happy with the house. It turned clammy in the dead of summer from the falls' moisture, and the terraces made the bedrooms (husband and wife had separate ones) hot. She often retreated to the guest house, where she could lounge in solitude and swim in the hillside pool.

Their privacy, however, was not always complete. One winter night in the 40's, the Kaufmanns arrived to find unexpected guests. An enterprising butler, who had the run of the house during the coldest months, had set up a brothel for businessmen from Pittsburgh.

Which is almost as provocative as the story of the ghost, the one that is said to haunt Fallingwater's master bedroom. She is allegedly a woman in a white nightgown staring out the window. She never speaks, just looks sadly at the falls. A night watchman, who has since been replaced, is supposed to have seen her while making his rounds. Is it Liliane Kaufmann, who died of a broken heart and a drug overdose? There is no otherworldly evidence for the watchman's story, but a real basis for his tale.

Throughout his life, Kaufmann was a notorious philanderer. Women half his age were drawn to his dark eyes, athletic build and the saber scar on his cheek, the result of a youthful fencing match in Heidelberg, Germany. Yale-educated, he had elegant gestures, as noted in a 1940 Fortune profile, and powerful, beautiful hands. Those hands got him into a number of tight spots. In 1929, he fathered a daughter with a store model. He once corralled the entire chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies for a weekend in Atlantic City. And his mistresses, according to Franklin Toker, were so numerous that he had the store mint platinum charge cards for them.

Kaufmann's cousin, Joan Mendelsohn, said there was never any talk of Kaufmann's infidelities in the family, but Kaufmann couldn't hide his dalliances when word of an affair hit a local society newspaper in September 1933. He had ordered thousands of dollars in jewels and designer hats charged to his account at a rival department store and sent to his then mistress. But when his affections faded just weeks later, he tried to return them. The rival store refused to take back the merchandise, saying it was used. A noisy lawsuit ensued.

Liliane rode out her rocky marriage with grace and strength, according to Leon Harris in his 1979 book, ''Merchant Princes.'' She did, however, move out frequently and threaten to divorce Kaufmann, according to Harris.

When Kaufmann sold the store to the May Department Stores Company in 1946, the couple found themselves with plenty of free time. Edgar Jr., unwilling to take over the family business, went on to become a leading architectural historian, working at Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art.

The Kaufmanns had begun traveling to Southern California to escape Pittsburgh's gloomy winters; and the dry heat also helped Kaufmann's back.

It was there that they met Richard Neutra, a former apprentice of Wright's, who agreed to build them a house in Palm Springs. Unlike Fallingwater, which sought to harmonize the man-made with nature, Neutra's sleek modern pavilion -- floating planes of glass, steel and stone -- stands in sharp contrast to the craggy hills. It is a pure and rational-looking alien on the snarled landscape.

But this home seemed to leave Liliane cold, and by then her strained marriage was obvious to even the casual observer. Julius Shulman, who shot a famous photograph for Life magazine of Liliane lying by the house's pool, noticed immediately: ''She seemed preoccupied and indifferent. Mr. Kaufmann was very excited about the house, but she didn't seem to care. Mr. Kaufmann said to Mr. Neutra, 'Don't worry, she didn't like the Fallingwater house at first either.'''

Neither Mary Michaely, Liliane's assistant for 15 years, nor Joan Mendelsohn can say how Liliane coped with the betrayals. But in 1951, Liliane wrote to Wright, who had remained a family friend despite his fleeting anger at Kaufmann for having his rival Neutra design them a home. She wrote: ''I feel sure that by now you will have seen Edgar and will have gathered that the house in Palm Springs will in no sense have anything to do with me. Edgar and I will never share a house. That also means that when he returns I must leave Fallingwater which is a great sorrow to me. Therefore I have spent the last few weekends motoring about the countryside and I believe I have found a lovely spot in which to build a small house for myself.''

Wright never responded. As Toker says, ''He knew who buttered his bread.'' Even though Kaufmann had fallen in love with his latest mistress, his nurse Grace Stoops, who had begun spending time with him at the Neutra house, by 1952 the Kaufmanns seemed to have had an uneasy peace.

That fall, Michaely and Liliane were planning a buying spree in Europe. Three weeks before the trip, the Kaufmanns spent the weekend at Fallingwater. On Sept. 7, 1952, Liliane failed to come down to dinner. Kaufmann, worried that she was not answering repeated knocks at her door, ordered the servants to force it open. He found Liliane on the bed, having overdosed on sleeping pills.

''He put her in the car,'' Waggoner says, ''and instead of taking her to a local hospital, because he didn't trust the local doctors, they drove her to Pittsburgh,'' to Mercy Hospital, two and half hours away. Edgar's suspicions may have cost Liliane her life.

What happened, in fact, is not entirely clear. Both Kaufmanns were drinkers, and Kaufmann, suffering from severe back pain caused by several bad falls from his horse, had a large stock of painkillers. Edgar Jr. told friends that his mother had killed herself.

''It was a very troubling thing for him,'' Waggoner says, ''because he and his mother were very close.'' As it turns out, Edgar Jr. may have been wrong about the suicide. A coroner ruled the death accidental. Still, the suicide rumor persists. Even Wright seemed to believe this. In a Sept. 18, 1952, letter, he wrote to Edgar Jr.: ''Your mother needs no sympathy. She shines brighter now that she no longer suffers.''

A longtime family friend says: ''She struggled with the womanizing her whole life, but accepted it so long as it was casual. But the last girlfriend was not casual. He fell in love with her. And I think it broke her heart.''

The funeral service was held at the couple's rented rooms in a Pittsburgh hotel. Stoops presided as the hostess. Two years after the death, Kaufmann married his nurse, who at 34 was half his age. In seven months, he was dead.

Grace Kaufmann sought half of her late husband's $10 million estate, most of which he had left to the Edgar J. Kaufmann Charitable Foundation. Her lawyers said she needed to maintain her way of life, which included running the Desert House, which she had inherited. But she had signed a prenuptial agreement waiving any claim on the Kaufmann estate. She battled for years, but lost. In 1961, with multiple sclerosis and confined to a wheelchair, she was alone in her apartment when a heating pad caused a fire. She died just 15 minutes before her maid arrived.

More than two million people have visited Fallingwater since 1963, when Edgar Jr. left it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. For the remainder of his life (he died in 1989), he oversaw its preservation, the careful arrangements of its furniture and artwork. But perhaps his most intimate task was the decision to have his parents' crypt built upriver, taking his mother's body from Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery, and placing it side by side with his father's, when the latter died in 1955.

The Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti was commissioned to create the crypt's immense bronze doors. They depict two solitary sticklike figures in bas-relief, a woman sitting against a tree on the right and a man standing far away on the left, facing each other across a barren valley, its dark, stormy background branches evoking William Blake's ''Marriage of Heaven and Hell.''

Though Edgar Jr.'s own body would not join them (his ashes were scattered around the grounds of Fallingwater), there was more than deep symbolism to placing his parents side by side. ''He couldn't do it in life,'' Waggoner says,''so he did it in death.''