Kentuck Knob
Kentuck Knob is a house in Stewart Township, near the village of Chalkhill, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the Usonian style, the residence was developed for I. N. Hagan, the owner of a local ice-cream firm, along with his wife Bernardine. It is built on the southern slope of a knoll known as Kentuck Knob, overlooking the Youghiogheny River gorge. The name of the house and knoll is derived from an 18th-century settler who was planning to move to Kentucky. The house is designated as a National Historic Landmark.
I. N. and Bernardine Hagan had learned of Wright's work through Edgar J. Kaufmann, a businessman who had hired Wright to design the Fallingwater house in Fayette County. The Hagans purchased of land near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in July 1953 and asked Wright to design a Usonian home for them. Despite being busy with multiple other projects, Wright agreed to design a house at Kentuck Knob, which was completed in 1956. The Hagans lived at Kentuck Knob until 1986, when they sold the property to Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo. The house was damaged by a fire shortly afterward, and the Palumbo family renovated the house afterward. Kentuck Knob has been open to the public for tours since 1996, and a visitor center there was completed in 2003.
The estate, accessed by a driveway from Pennsylvania State Route 2010, includes approximately 8,800 trees and a sculpture garden for the Palumbo family's art collection. The house itself is made of redwood and locally-quarried stone, with an overhanging copper roof and two exterior terraces. It is laid out around a hexagonal floor plan, which consists of two wings that partially surround a courtyard, converging at a hexagonal core. The interior covers and consists of seven rooms in an open plan arrangement. The kitchen, within the house's core, is surrounded by a living room to the west and a dining room to the west. Extending northeast of the core are three bedrooms, which are partially embedded into the hillside. The house's carport, which includes an art studio, is attached to the bedroom wing.
Site
Kentuck Knob is situated in Stewart Township, near the village of Chalkhill, in the Laurel Highlands of Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania, United States. It is located approximately southeast of Pittsburgh. The estate was originally owned by the Hagan family and spanned ; it has been expanded over the years to more than. The estate is next to the Youghiogheny River, although the river gorge is not readily visible from the house due to the presence of trees. The building itself is on the southern slope of a hill also known as Kentuck Knob, the peak of which is variously cited as measuring or high.Geography and site usage
The house is accessed via a gravel driveway leading from Pennsylvania Route 2010, which winds through some woods and passes above a waterfall called Cucumber Falls. In addition to the main house, the property includes a greenhouse, farmhouse, barn, and wooden sheds; the greenhouse was salvaged from the nearby Fallingwater. The site had originally been farmland, but after the Hagans acquired it, they planted about 8,800 trees on the hill. There are numerous boulders on the estate. which are arranged to give the appearance that they had ended up there naturally, even though the boulders were installed when the house was built.After the family of Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo, acquired the house, they added a sculpture meadow, which is accessed by a winding trail that connects to the visitor center. The meadow includes works by artists such as Harry Bertoia, Scott Burton, Anthony Caro, Andy Goldsworthy, Alvar Gullichsen, Allen Jones, Phillip King, David Nash, Claes Oldenburg, Eva Reichl, George Rickey, Ray Smith, Wendy Taylor, and Michael Warren. Other pieces in the sculpture garden include two graffitied pieces of the Berlin Wall, a restroom structure, English telephone kiosks, and a pissoir. The sculptures are generally made of materials like granite, steel, and wood, complementing the design of the main house.
Surroundings
The Sugarloaf Knob mountain is southeast of the house, while the Fort Necessity National Battlefield is to the southwest. In addition, a conservation easement for Ohiopyle State Park abuts the estate. Kentuck Knob is one of four buildings in southwestern Pennsylvania designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The others are Fallingwater, a drive to the northeast, as well as Duncan House and Lindholm House at Polymath Park in Acme, Pennsylvania. Aside from Fallingwater, Kentuck Knob is the only other house in Fayette County that Wright designed.The name originates from David Askins, a settler who wanted to move to Kentucky in the late 18th century before moving to a hill in Fayette County, which he called Little Kentuck. The Askins site, formed through the merger of the Mitchell, Morris, and Thorpe families' farms, later became Stewart Township's Kentuck District. Because the area is mountainous, it has remained largely undeveloped over the years. Just before the Hagan family bought the site, it was occupied by two Eastern European immigrants, Donath and Anna Peles, who had lived there since World War I.
History
Development
The house on Kentuck Knob was developed for the Hagan family, which owned a major dairy company in Western Pennsylvania. The family then lived in an undistinguished brick house in Uniontown, Pennsylvania; they collected textiles and pottery, which did not fit the style of their Uniontown house. Isaac Newton "I. N." Hagan and his wife Bernadette were acquainted with the family of Edgar J. Kaufmann, who built the nearby Fallingwater in the late 1930s. Kaufmann had first met I. N. Hagan several years before Kentuck Knob's construction, when he asked Hagan about whether he could bottle local farmers' milk. The Hagans learned about Wright's work through the Kaufmanns, whom they sometimes visited. After multiple trips to Fallingwater, Bernardine came to regard it as "a very beautiful, unusual place", while I. N. said that he had become more attracted to Fallingwater on each successive visit. As I. N. later said, "My wife and I have always had our hearts set on living on a Wright home." Their son Paul, an aspiring architect, had also taken an interest in Fallingwater's design.Site acquisition and Wright commission
The Hagans bought a 79-acre tract in the mountains south of Uniontown in July 1953, where they wanted Wright to design a house. They commissioned Herman Keys to buy the tract on their behalf for $9,000, and Keys immediately resold the tract to the Hagans for a nominal fee of $1. The Peles family, who had sold the tract, retained ownership of a farmhouse and several outbuildings next to the road, where they continued to farm. At the time, few people in Uniontown lived in the mountains because of the negative connotations associated with mountain living, but the Hagans wanted to "partially remove" themselves from Uniontown's more urban character. The growing popularity of the automobile, in any case, meant that they could easily drive to Uniontown.I. N. reached out to Kaufmann, who advised the Hagans to call Wright, not write to him, to ask whether he would design them a house. In August 1953, the Hagans brought Paul and his friend James Baker to Fallingwater just before Paul's wedding. The same day, I. N. wrote to Wright, asking the architect to design them a home. Wright took his time responding, even though, according to the scholar Donald Hoffmann, the Hagans' mountainside site "should have immediately appealed to him". The Hagans called Wright, who invited them to his Taliesin studio in Wisconsin, and they traveled to Taliesin later that August. The family requested that Wright design a one-story stone-and-wood structure with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and Wright claimed, "I could shake a design out of my sleeve." To determine how the house should be designed, Wright asked about their hobbies and what they wanted in a house. He also asked the Hagans if they were "nesters or perchers" to determine whether to design the house beside the hill or atop it. Wright decided to build the house on the southern slope of the hill, instead of on its summit.
When the family returned to Pennsylvania, they toured the Richard C. Smith House, Unitarian Meeting House, and Jacobs First House, all designed by Wright. These influenced the final design of Kentuck Knob; the Smith House and Meeting House were both arranged on a grid with 60-degree angles, and the Hagans liked the Meeting House's copper roof and the Smith House's dentils and trellises. The Hagans also traveled to New York City to see an exhibit about a Usonian house. I. N. described the site in a letter to Wright that September, saying that the peak of the knoll "probably presents a pretty discouraging picture". The Hagans returned to Fallingwater after Kaufmann offered to give the family stones from a quarry on his property. Wright's secretary Eugene Masselink wrote to the Hagans in November 1953, saying that design would begin shortly. By then, the Hagans were considering a house with a board-and-batten facade and a flat roof, rather than the stone structure Wright envisioned.
Design
At the time he took the commission, Wright was either 86 or 87 years old, and he was simultaneously designing structures such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Beth Sholom Synagogue in Pennsylvania's Delaware Valley, and the Price Tower in Oklahoma. Accordingly, Wright delegated many of his other projects to apprentices. John H. Howe, Wright's chief draftsman and longtime apprentice, drew up the plans for the house. The initial plans were completed in February 1954; the design included a drawing of the site with random boulders scattered throughout. The plans called for a glass-walled structure with two wings radiating from a core, enclosing a central entrance court. Since Howe had not visited the site, the early drawings were riddled with errors; for example, the house was oriented the wrong way, and the drawings misrepresented the topography. Wright also did not visit the site until the design was completed, instead relying on contour maps.The Hagans soon requested changes to the plan, saying that some design features, such as the living room and kitchen, were too small for their needs. Though Wright was known to be generally irascible and resistant to change, he readily agreed to the Hagans' requests. He lengthened the living room, relocated the living-room windows away from the house's terrace, moved the basement stair, and added a painting studio for Bernadette. Wright modified the kitchen's floors and countertops and added a screen to the kitchen, and he expanded the dining room upon learning that the Hagans did not frequently eat out. The main facade, which originally faced in a more southerly direction, was rotated about 15 degrees clockwise. He overruled some of the Hagans' other requests, such as insulated glass panes, a wider terrace, and a wider hallway.
The Hagans ultimately traveled to Taliesin and Wright's other studio, Taliesin West, five times to negotiate elements of the design. Since the Hagans intended to spend $60,000 on the house. Wright billed the Hagans $3,000 for the initial drawings. He later billed them an additional $3,750 in late April 1954, having decided to raise the construction budget to $75,000 without consulting with the Hagans, who were dismayed at the sudden cost increase. Because Wright was known to exceed clients' budgets, Kaufmann had advised the Hagans to tell Wright half the amount that they wanted to spend. By May 1954, the house was expected to cost more than twice its original estimate, $124,000, in part due to its secluded site. Herman Keys, who was retained as their general contractor, told them that the first floor alone would cost $35,000. According to the historian Donald Kaufmann, the cost increases were in line with the various changes made to the design, which included upscale furnishings, expanded rooms, and updated materials.