We started our Thursday with breakfast in another UWVA favorite spot called Terra Cafe. This one reminded Dana and me a bit of Gainesville's beloved Chaucer's. In each place we've eaten, the service staff, predominantly made up of the local college kids, couldn't be any nicer. That's been the main takeaway from Morgantown, as we were to spend the entire day exploring historic houses outside of the city limits.
After learning earlier in the week that we were close to the Pope-Leighey House, a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home near Alexandria, we got to talking Wright with Scott, whose own home's redesign was inspired, in part, by Wright's thoughts on the importance of a structure working in harmony with its outdoor surroundings. When he mentioned that Fallingwater, considered by many to be Wright's crown jewel, was not all that far away in Western Pennsylvania, I'm not sure whether it was Maddie or Dana who got more excited. Regardless, by the time we had arrived to our hotel in Shepherdstown that night, they had cooked up a potential plan to make the pilgrimage. They just needed to know from me on what day we could make it work. Thursday it was!
As I'd mentioned yesterday, we were initially going to visit Arthurdale on the way into Morgantown, and that was the only "must" in my book for this area. Once we modified to be able to explore more of the George Washington Heritage Trail, it meant that our Thursday would be all about houses and history. Which wound up making for a rather fabulous day.
I had stumbled upon information about Arthurdale during one of my several research sessions for this trip, though I couldn't remember exactly how or where. After following yet another curving, hilly country road for about 20 minutes, the modest sign indicated we had arrived. As we stood reading the sign outside the main community house, a dear woman, perhaps in her late 60's, came running out, shocked and thrilled to see visitors there. She had recruited Roger, her recently retired husband to be a tour guide for the day (though I'm sure she's reassured him that nobody would come), and they were both incredulous/ecstatic that we had somehow discovered them. They reminded us a bit of Luigi and friends in Cars, so thrilled that a visitor had taken an exit off the big highway to come see them. Daniel played James Taylor's "Our Town" as we left just to insure I shed a tear or two.
What followed was the most charming tour we may have ever had, filled with details of Roger's own life as a country mouse in another part of West Virginia and how he and his wife settled on Arthurdale, living down the hill in a house once built as part of the original community, as a location that was big enough for her city girl self but still quiet enough for him. She seemingly runs the Arthurdale operation, one of only two of the 99 communities such as this one that were created during FDR's tenure. Their sister property is somewhere in Arkansas.
This one was the first and Eleanor's baby. She would come out from DC often to check on the construction, offer suggestions and mandates (each kitchen must have an electric refrigerator, she insisted), and rewarded the diplomas at every single high school graduation. She strongly believed - and clearly made a convincing case to her husband - that providing people who had lost everything during the Depression with a lovely home with all the modern amenities, a community gathering place where they could come to know and rely on their neighbors, and the means to provide for themselves by giving them the land and livestock to start productive farms, would help lift the nation. The government supported this endeavor, which seemingly was a smashing success for the families who lived here, until 1947, when they allowed the area to become privatized by selling off their holdings.
When some former residents returned to begin planning a reunion in the early 1980's, they were appalled to find the area had largely fallen into disrepair. They formed Arthurdale Heritage, Inc. and have been slowly acquiring, refurbishing and restoring the history ever since. Roger raved about Molly, their Americorps employee for the past three years who just completed her Masters in Public History. She's about to head off to Charleston for a big, important job, but she sure did revolutionize the place and update their many historic displays while she's been there. She also seemed quite lovely.
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| When Eleanor visited, she lived in the bottom floor of the house across the street from the Esso Station. |
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| Roger talks FDR |
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| The map of the original houses |
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| Reminded me a bit of our kitchen |
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| At one point, the land was used as a factory to make target kites, something ingenious I'd never heard of before. The boat would fly them to provide gunners practice with targeting enemy planes from afar. |
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| compression |
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| EXPANSION :) |
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| Chilling in the master bedroom |
Next stop was Fallingwater, and it did not disappoint. Though we couldn't tour the interior, we were able to go everywhere else, and the property is gorgeous, the exterior balconies ample, and the windows transparent ;) We even caught parts of a couple of private tours to fill in some information we otherwise wouldn't have known. For instance, the family originally assumed the home would be built on the land we now stand to get that iconic view, but Wright was far more interested in integrating the home with their beloved waterfall then simply giving them a great view of it.
As we arrived to Polymath, all of our phones began blaring with a tornado warning. Unsure what to do, we pressed on. The tour guides were also concerned but opted to press on. We had little weather disturbance at all during our entire time at Polymath, the short drive back to Fallingwater, or our entire few hours roaming around that architectural gem. That said, falling water took on a whole new meaning, as Maddie took the wheel to drive us back to Morgantown. What a torrential storm! Maddie drove like a champ, and we managed to duck into our little riverside restaurant on the Wharf before the next huge wave, complete with hailstones this time, came through.
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