Fallingwater nominated to be a World Heritage Site
Fallingwater is again nominated to be added to the World Heritage List by UNESCO, which recognizes natural and cultural sites with “outstanding universal value.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently announced its 2019 nominees. The new sites will be selected in July when the World Heritage Committee meets in Baku, Azerbaijan.
This is a second try for Fallingwater, the former weekend getaway of the Kaufmann family in the woods near Mill Run, Fayette County. It was one of a group of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings first nominated together in 2008. The 10 buildings’ serial nomination to the list in 2015 was deferred in 2016, and the list was pared down and revised again.
This nomination, coordinated by the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and submitted in November by the National Park Service, includes Fallingwater and seven other Wright-designed buildings in the U.S.: the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago; Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wis.; Hollyhock House in Los Angeles; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Taliesin in Spring Green, Wis.; Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill.
Built at a cost of $155,000, Fallingwater was used by the family that owned Kaufmann’s department stores from 1937 until 1963, when Edgar Kaufmann Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. In 1964, the conservancy opened the house to the public as a museum that has since attracted nearly 5 million visitors.
Lynda Waggoner, Fallingwater’s longtime director, has led the group nominations process since it began in the early 2000s. She retired in April but kept working on
the nomination as director emeritus. She plans to join the Frank Lloyd Wright contingent in Azerbaijan when the nomination is considered.
Weighing in at about 350 pages, “it’s a book,” she says of the updated nomination. “They want to know everything about these properties.”
To be nominated, a site of “outstanding universal value” must meet at least one of 10 other criteria, which include “to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius” and “to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.”
Ms. Waggoner believes the Wright buildings meet several of the criteria. “It’s absolutely never a slam dunk,” she says.
She was in Istanbul in 2016 when modern architecture by Le Corbusier was added to the list after its third nomination.
If Fallingwater needs a third try, she will not be a part of it, she says. “I feel as if I’ve given it my best shot.”
To make the list with a group of modern architectural sites would be an achievement, especially since most of the 23 U.S. sites are natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon.
“It’s a club we all want to be part of. It’s like getting an Oscar,” Ms. Waggoner says.
Being on the World Heritage List certainly will boost tourism, and while Fallingwater is almost at capacity, she thinks it will raise the profile of all Wright properties, even those not specifically part of this nomination.
Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau executive director Ann Nemanic agrees. “The works of Frank Lloyd Wright allow a visitor to travel into the realm not only of design and space, but [also] placement in nature. By visiting any or all of these eight sites one will recognize the landscape of the United States became his sketch pad.”
The U.S. officially quit UNESCO on Jan. 1, after the Trump administration announced its intention to do so in 2017. The State Department did tell UNESCO officials that the U.S., which is a signatory to the World Heritage Convention, intends to stay involved in aspects including protection of World Heritage sites.
Ms. Waggoner says that the U.S. decision to pull out of UNESCO won’t help her group’s effort, but it shouldn’t preclude their nomination being approved.
Visiting World Heritage sites is “actually a great way to travel,” she says, describing how she recently did so during a trip to Portugal. “Some of them are really hidden gems.”
Also nominated for 2019 are the Mafra Palace in Portugal, the “Pink City” of Jaipur, India, and the sunken city of Port Royal, Jamaica.
You can find the full list of sites, and of criteria to be added to the list, at https:// whc.unesco.org/en/list.