Kentuck Knob is a light and attractive family
home, easier to imagine living in than Wright's nearby Fallingwater.
The house is undoubtedly esoteric: it is built on a hexagonal grid, with 60 degree angles
pervading everywhere (except for the bathrooms, where the square corners to accommodate
the baths are the only right angles in the house). The hexagonal theme generates
interesting rooms without feeling as gimmicky as it sounds.
The low, expansive roof is largely cantilevered
from a strong stone core built around the hexagonal kitchen. Spared of their supporting
role, the walls stop short of the roof, the gap filled in much of the house by a wooden
ventilation screen with unglazed holes cut in abstract geometric shapes.
The house is built entirely of tidewater red cypress and native fieldstone. Walls of
continuous glazing, the ventilation screen described above, and a large 'invisible' window
in the sitting room, break down the barriers between inside the house and out. The sitting
room's large window is a single sheet of glass set directly in the stone surround, with a
matching (and appearing to be continuous) moss garden on each side of the glass.
Simon Glynn 1999
(updated 2006)
How to visit
Kentuck Knob runs guest tours
seven days a week, with an option of more -in-depth
tours. For times, prices and reservations (which are recommended), please
visit
www.kentuckknob.com, telephone +1 724 329 1640, or email
information@kentuckknub.com.
Unlike the larger Fallingwater, there is no child care center - but there is a
sculpture garden for entertainment. The house is a short ride by courtesy bus up the hill
from the visitor center; you can go down again by bus, or walk on a good path through
woods, a meadow and the sculpture garden.
Kentuck Knob is between 1.5 and 2 hours' drive
east of Pittsburgh. Go south on Route 51 to Uniontown bypass. Righht on bypass (119 South
to 40 East). 40 East to Chalk Hill. Turn left on Chalk Hill/Ohiopyle Road. Kentuck Knob is
about six miles on your right.
It is also just the other side of Ohiopyle from Fallingwater. From Fallingwater, drive south on 381
through Ohiopyle. Turn right after crossing the Meadow Run bridge a the south end of
Ohiopyle. Follow winding road for 1.5 miles. At the intersecation at the top of the hill
turn left. Kentuck Knob is almost immediately on your left.
Books and other web
sites
Click the book titles to view and to order
direct from
A practical visitors' guide to thirty six
publicly accessible Frank Lloyd Wright sites, with a straightforward one or two page
description of each, with black and white photographs.
www.geocities.com/SoHo/1469
provides both its own Frank Lloyd Wright content and a set of links to other Frank Lloyd
Wright sites on the web.
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