Wright, Pittsburgh and Fallingwater
The greatest living architect poured scorn on the idea. Frank Lloyd Wright, famous in these parts (and elsewhere for that matter) for Fallingwater, his iconoclastic residential design set off in the woods of Fayette County, criticized the notion of saving the Pittsburgh “Triangle,” as he put it, on the basis of the “old fort.”
Such a “stupid” thing would “only add to Pittsburgh’s present lack of grace a note of bathos no self-respecting community should tolerate,” he wrote.
The year was 1947, and Wright had submitted drawings for a 13-story structure, a sloping, tiered, circular monument to genius whose many features included a “Grand Auto Ramp” 4.5 miles long and a 15,000-seat auditorium.
Wright proposed to top his design with a “glass shaft 500 feet high – a light-shaft memorial to Fort Duquesne – equipped for light concerts and broadcast music.”
Replying was Park H. Martin, the civil but firm leader of the Allegheny Conference, the group that was seeking to reclaim the Point in Pittsburgh from a mess of warehouses, slum housing, and narrow streets. Martin conceded Wright had been told to submit a plan “on a scale of magnitude,” but added, “it was agreed that you would submit a simple treatment of the park area.”
The least Wright might have delivered, Martin noted, was a plan that gave “the historical background of the Point.”
Instead of Wright, Pittsburgh civic and political leaders turned to designers Ralph Griswold and Charles Stotz, who submitted a decidedly less grand design for the Point. It took another 27 years – until July 1974 – to complete the Griswold-Stotz vision with the unveiling of the Point State Park Fountain.
In an exhibit at the Westmoreland Museum of American Arts in Greensburg that runs through Jan. 14, the familiar fountain and park are the things that never happened. In their place is the Wright design. So realistic is the exhibit’s animation of the Wright plan for the Point that you would swear the architect had his way with Martin, Mellon, and Lawrence. (The latter two being financier Richard King and mayor David L., respectively.)
The sweep and grandeur of the animations are compelling, although one wonders about the practicality of an auditorium with seating for just 15,000 in the age of big ticket, big crowd concerts. (Example, and do I need to mention this: Last June, Swifties more than filled Acrisure Stadium’s 68,000 seats to see their beloved Tay Tay in action – on consecutive nights, no less.)
As for the “Grand Auto Ramp,” one suspects that would have gotten old in no time.
The zoo, planetarium, aquarium, local government offices, restaurant, bar (with seating for a thousand), heliport, blimp moorings – yea, that’s right, blimp moorings – and the other sights and sounds of Wright’s never-built, “unrealized,” spiraling, gigantic, city-within-a-city would have, it figures, rendered most of the remainder of downtown Pittsburgh unnecessary, if not superfluous.
At minimum, the thing would have dominated the skyline.
It certainly dominates the screens at the Westmoreland. Awesomely conceived by Skyline Ink Animators — Illustrators, out of Oklahoma City, the visualization of the Wright design for the Point is stunningly persuasive. So much so that one shudders to think what might have been had such technical artistry been around in 1947. Park Martin and company might well have had their minds’ blown. Up goes Wright, down goes the Golden Triangle.
The free exhibit – “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southwestern Pennsylvania'” – “celebrates the genius of Wright’s design in a new and approachable way, but it also asks visitors to question how these projects might have changed the Pittsburgh region,” commented Fallingwater Director Justin Gunther in a statement last summer.
As glad as one might be that Wright’s Point design withered on the vine, there’s the never-built apartment building he proposed for the Mt. Washington cliff overlooking the Point. Targeted for Grandview Avenue in the vicinity of the Duquesne Incline, the Point View Residences are the subject of another skillfully rendered Skyline animation.
What a loss! What would have taken millions to live there would have been free to sightseers strolling by or gazing up from Point State Park or, better, PNC Park.
In addition, the exhibit focuses on plans for structures that never graced the Edgar Kaufmann family property at Fallingwater – a chapel, an overseer residence, and housing for visitors.
All in all, the exhibit, including architectural drawings, mock ups, and photos, depicts Wright’s plans for Southwestern Pennsylvania in such exciting detail that they seem to literally spring from the drafting table to actuality.
The whole experience is, well, mind blowing.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.