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[stairs to west terrace, Fallingwater]
Stairs from dressing room to west terrace.
Perhaps it is in keeping with the theme of bold horizontal and vertical lines throughout the house that Frank Lloyd Wright decided to make what would normally be a diagonal handrail a series of step-like surfaces instead, both on top and on the bottom. The door at the top of the stairs leads to the third floor study, and under the staircase a glass door leads to the second floor dressing room. The foreground in the photo is the floor of the west terrace. Notice that the stone floor is essentially the same used inside the house, such as in the dressing room or living room. This terrace extends quite a ways west from the western tower, as can be seen in the autumn photo of Fallingwater.
Photo by the National Park Service
Click here or on photo for a larger (670x951 pixel, 250k) version.

Extending westward from this [western tower] block is a cantilevered terrace not level with the floor slabs to the east, making clear that the tower interrupts the continuity of the reinforced slab system. The special treatment of the west end of the house is balanced to the east by another mutation: the concrete slabs repeatedly slotted to form the trellis areas over the driveway and the living room.

- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House, p. 110.


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