Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater becomes second UNESCO World Heritage site in Pennsylvania

When it comes to UNESCO World Heritage sites, Pennsylvania is blowing it out of the wooder.

Fallingwater, the house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to be built over a Pennsylvania waterfall, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site on Sunday. It joins Independence Hall, which was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979, as the second such landmark in Pennsylvania.

So let’s just be clear — while we’re very proud of you Western Pennsylvania, Philly did it first.

The Fallingwater home in Mill Run, about an hour southeast of Pittsburgh, is one of eight structures by Wright voted in Sunday by UNESCO’s World Heritage committee under the umbrella of “The 20th Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.” Other Wright-designed buildings on the list include the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill.

“These buildings reflect the ‘organic architecture’ developed by Wright, which includes an open plan, a blurring of the boundaries between exterior and interior and the unprecedented use of materials such as steel and concrete,” a news release on UNESCO’s website said.

Also voted in Sunday as a World Heritage site was Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene, or the area in Northeastern Italy where Prosecco is made. We’re actually pretty shook that this wasn’t already a World Heritage site, given the profound effect Prosecco has had on our lives, and the lives of so many others.

Still, we’re glad it’s all sorted out. Now everyone from Pennsylvania to Italy has a reason to celebrate and drink Prosecco today!

With only 24 World Heritage sites in the United States and 1,121 around the world, Sunday’s designation made Pennsylvania one of the few states to have two UNESCO sites within its borders.

UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — designates places as World Heritage sites because they “are of outstanding universal value to humanity” and should “be protected for future generations to appreciate and enjoy," according to its website. World Heritage sites include everything from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the Great Wall of China.

In 2015, Philadelphia became the first city in the nation to become a World Heritage City. To join the Organization of World Heritage Cities, a municipality must have had a notable impact on the world and be home to a UNESCO World Heritage site. Today, only Philadelphia and San Antonio, Texas, have made the cut in the United States.

In 2017, the Trump administration announced it was going to withdraw from UNESCO, citing a need for fundamental reform in the organization. At the stroke of midnight last New Year’s Eve, it officially did.

But with Sunday’s designation of Wright’s architecture as World Heritage-worthy, perhaps UNESCO considers it all water under the bridge. Or, in this case, water under the house.