Upstairs to the bedrooms!

We now live in an age of luxurious bedrooms and sumptuous baths. To our standards, the rooms upstairs at Falling Water are small and almost spartan. But then, as Frank Lloyd Wright must have intended, who would want to spend much time in the bedrooms anyway, with such magnificent living spaces? In the bedrooms at Falling Water, the visitor is reminded that bedrooms, after all, are for sleeping. With the eyes closed.

What more is needed, really, than a bed, a nearby shelf or nightstand, and some closet space? Oh… well… and a desk with shelves, a private deck, and of course a fireplace.

Maybe not so spartan after all. The bedrooms at Falling Water, though small, are comfortable and pleasant. As in the rest of the house, the details delight.

Here is the desk in the guest bedroom. The blinds were added later, perhaps because the windows overlook the master bedroom deck. The desk lamp is an original Frank Lloyd Wright piece, as are the night lamps by the beds.

Frank Lloyd Wright preferred methods other than blinds where he thought privacy would be necessary. Here is the sink of the master bathroom, which overlooks the master terrace. The planters are built into the fenestration.

The desk in the master bedroom has a genuine Tiffany lamp, as well as one of those wonderful windows where the glass wraps mullionlessly around the corner.

Here’s a view of that corner window as seen from the next deck over.

Yes, those are really fig trees. With real figs on them. And they’re going to ripen this year, too–or so we were told.

Here’s a nifty corner window detail found in both Edgar Sr.’s room and Edgar jr.’s above it. Each of these window pairs opens outward, leaving the corner entirely and breathtakingly open. Screens on the inside (opening inward) were added later; these unfortunately add to the heavy appearance of the windows when they are closed, but on a summer evening a person sensitive to mosquitoes can see why they were needed.

Let’s take a closer look at that desk detail (the same in both men’s rooms). It has been ever-so-cunningly designed so that the full-length window next to the desk can be opened (inwards) unhindered. Need more desk space? Er… no. You don’t.

This could be a small essay on the importance of the fenestration in the design of Falling Water. And no such essay would be complete without a closer look at the joining of glass and rock–as delicately and invisibly as possible.

Finally, each of the bedrooms has a deck/terrace (except the guest room). At least in some cases, the architect specified plantings for the terraces. The herb garden still grows outside Edgar jr.’s window.