and owners of an ice
cream manufacturing
company, who lived here
full time for 28 years.
It was purchased by
Peter Palumbo (aka Lord
Palumbo) in 1986 for
$600,000 and opened to
the public a decade later –
Wright himself never saw
the house in its finished
state. In general, it’s a
cozier, family friendly,
more modest application
of Wright’s genius than at
Fallingwater.
Of a comparably
small scale and a fairly
plain exterior typical
of Wright’s Usonia-
style (which stands for
United States of North
America), the obsessively
designed interior – note
the hexagonal design and
honeycomb skylights –
and creative attention
applied to the most
trivial detail is singularly
Wright. Every nook and
cranny of the 22,000 sq
ft home balances form
and function, especially
Wright’s signature built-
ins, like the room-length
couch and cabinets. While
incredibly impressive and
inspiring, a visit might
lead to a little dispiriting
self-reflection upon
comparison to one’s own
living situation: matchingtowels to a shower curtain
no longer seems like
much of an achievement.
House tours last
about an hour and you
can return to the visitor
center, with a small shop
and cafe, via a wooded
path and a sculpture
garden with works by
Andy Goldsworthy, Ray
Smith and others.The Drive » US 40 east,
part of the historic National
Road, passes by Farmington
(p165), Fort Necessity National
Battlefield and Christian W. Klay
Winery, the highest mountaintop
vineyard east of the Rockies.
Carry on down the mountain and
around the city of Uniontown
to PA-43 north before mergingWHEN HISTORY TURNED IN THE HIGHLANDS
George Washington surrendered once: on July 3, 1754 at Fort Necessity (www.nps.
gov/fone; 1 Washington Pkwy, Rte 40, Farmington; h9am-5pm daily) when he was a 22-year-
old colonel. The first of the French & Indian War battles pitted the undermanned
British against the French and their Native American allies. Burned to the ground,
the small and rudimentary fort was reconstructed in the 1930s. An excellent
visitors center run by the NPS explains the significance of the battle and the war, as
does the museum at Fort Ligonier (p158).
A year later and only 2 miles northwest of the fort, Washington officiated at the
burial of Major General Edward Braddock, the commander in chief of all British
forces in North America and the man responsible for blasting through the forests
leading to the major French outpost at Fort Duquesne (now Point State Park in
Pittsburgh). Much of Braddock’s Road eventually became part of the National
Road, the first federally financed highway and the busiest in America in the
early 1800s. A 90-mile corridor of today’s Rte 40 follows the general route of the
National Road, which originally led from Maryland to Illinois and was the primary
thoroughfare for Americans making their way to the western frontier. Alas, new
technology brought change and when the first locomotive-powered train reached
the Ohio Valley in 1853, the road’s demise began in earnest.
In a curious historical coda, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone –
friends and business partners – hopped in their Ford motorcars in 1921 to explore
the area along Rte 40 (primarily western Maryland, but they did make it to the
Summit Inn in Uniontown, PA). They spent two weeks every summer from 1915
to 1925 exploring the country, preferring dirt roads like Rte 40 to their paved
counterparts. Historians point to their trips as the first to famously link camping,
cars and the outdoors and perhaps popularize the idea of the road trip.NEW.JERSEY.&.PENNSYLVANIA.TRIPS.13
.PITTSBURGH & THE LAUREL HIGHLANDS