Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is a Pa. tourist attraction, but you can actually spend the night at Lynn Hall
Two Florida men purchased Lynn Hall in 2017 for $250,000 and have since spent $1 million on its restoration.
Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright marvel that floats above a waterfall in Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, might be the most iconic house in America.
The man who handcrafted Wright’s stone, glass, and concrete design in 1936 began building his own organic modernism gem — Lynn Hall — a year earlier, 200 miles north, in McKean County.
Fallingwater, a national historic landmark and tourist attraction above the waters of Bear Run, only offers tours, but visitors can spend the night at Lynn Hall thanks to owners Rick Sparkes and Adam Grant. The determined dreamers from Florida found the abandoned and dilapidated building online, visited, and purchased the property in 2017 for $250,000.
They’ve since dropped over $1 million into its restoration.
“It just had a magical feel to it,” Grant said. “We couldn’t believe no one was saving it.”
According to author Ed Byers, who wrote about Lynn Hall for the Pennsylvania Wilds tourism website, Walter J. Hall was already building his project when Wright was asked to design a home for a Pittsburgh businessman. Hall, a fan of Wright’s work, envisioned Lynn Hall as a rest stop on scenic Route 6, featuring hotel rooms, a restaurant, a dance hall, a gas station, and housing and office space for his family.
Wright, according to Lynn Hall’s website, discovered Hall’s “innovative use of poured concrete and mosaic stonework” and asked him to join the Fallingwater team at Bear Run. According to Byers, Hall put a pause on Lynn Hall to help construct Fallingwater, and he and the famous architect often butted heads.
“Walter’s penchant for ‘artistic license’ and making changes ‘on the fly’ in Wright’s absence drove Wright mad,” Byers wrote.
While Byers wrote about a “controversy” between Fallingwater and Lynn Hall regarding which piece of organic modernism came first in Pennsylvania, Sparkes and Grant say the two properties get along just fine. The team at Fallingwater, Grant said, was instrumental in helping Lynn Hall land on the National Register of Historic Places.
“The folks at Fallingwater very much understand the importance of Lynn Hall,” Grant said. “It’s all part of a movement beyond one or two examples.”
Sparkes and Grant, in researching Hall, found that his son, Raymond Viner Hall, helped usher in an era of “Allegheny Modernism,” designing and building approximately 120 Usonian homes, inspired by Wright, and 27 schools and public buildings in the region.
“They’re little-known masterpieces,” Sparkes said.
Lynn Hall is on Airbnb, with two accommodations: the Usonian Cottage and the Architects Suite. It’s located in Port Allegany, approximately 290 miles northwest of Philadelphia.