[Fallingwater hatchway, looking from east]
View at the main (living room) level, from east.
A "hatchway" connects the living room vertically to a shallow spot in the stream (Bear Run) via the stairs visible at the bottom of the picture. The living room opens onto the terrace in the foreground from double doors on either side of the hatchway stairwell, those on the left set back. The trellis above adds to the vertical theme of the hatchway. It is open to the sky, and also extends horizontally into the living room, two of the many suggestions of the continuity of inside and outside. Click here for slightly different view.
Original photo, used by permission.
ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY by Anthony McCune

The spatial and immaterial values discussed earlier can be illustrated by tracing my own slow discovery of some recondite but powerful elements of Fallingwater's design. These are visible in drawings and photographs, but their actions and interactions are unlikely to be sensed until experienced on the site. To begin with, my father, in examining the plans, questioned the value of steps leading down from inside the living room to the stream. The water was shallow in this stretch, impractical for even a dip. The steps would be extravagant to build and would complicate the structure of the house. Granting this I felt that Wright wanted to keep the main room in touch with the movement and energy of the run, and I pleaded for trust in Wright's intuition.Wright himself considered the steps not so much a proposal as a decision. Eventually my father agreed and the steps were built. Only later I began to think about the steps in conjunction with the glazed trellis above them. Clearly Wright had gone to some length to achieve transparency along a vertical axis here; the eye could look down to the run and up to the sky. Diagonally across the room stood the great, solid chimney wall. I then saw the pair as a column of stone and a column of air making a precinct, and was pleased with the discovery though ashamed of recognizing it tardily.

- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House, p. 172.



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