Category Archives: 76-Western PA

76-Western PA

Flight 93 Memorial – the fourth hijacked plane on Sept 11, 2001

While in western PA we visited the Flight 93 Memorial.  It’s not finished yet, the visitors center and much of the information that will be available is not yet there.

But, they have a small area near the parking lot with some plaques showing information about the flight and passengers/crew members.  From that area there is a walkway in black concrete with a short wall on one side that leads to the memorial wall.

The walkway takes you past the area where the plane actually crashed.  It took out part of a hemlock forest and is now a grassy meadow.  Once they recovered as much debris as they could, and as many bodies as they could, they covered in the crash area (which was a big hole in the ground) to make the meadow.

The memorial wall contains 40 marble panels standing upright and connected to each other.  Each one contains the name of a passenger or crew member who was on the flight.  There are 40 in total.

This is a memorial to what I consider to be very heroic people.  They could have huddled in the back of the plane and done nothing – but instead they forced their way to the cockpit and made the hijackers go down early, instead of taking the plane to the intended target; later determined to be the capital building where both the House and the Senate were in session that morning.

Here are pictures we took while there:

 

 

76-Western PA

Falling Water – one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces

While in western Pennsylvania, we toured the Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built home called Falling Water.  It is unique in that it was built OVER a cascading stream and it incorporated large natural boulders into the house.

The land was already owned by the Kaufmann family from nearby Pittsburgh.  They had been using it for several years as a vacation spot and knew of the area where the stream cascaded over rocks.  They usually camped and stayed very near that spot.

They commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a more permanent and elegant vacation home.  Wright walked the area with the Kaufmann’s and envisioned a home that would incorporate a lot of natural materials from the area as well as provide lots of views of the stream and forest.

The Kaufmann’s expected to spend $20-30K on this vacation home, a large sum of money in 1935.  When they saw Wright’s design and plans, they knew this home would be very special.  When Wright said it would cost more they said ok.  It ended up costing over $150K!

The home consisted of a main house with 3 levels plus a staircase down from the primary level right to the stream at the top of the cascades along with a guest house.  It also included servants quarters for 4 servants and a carport that would hold 9 cars.  A caretaker and a gardener lived nearby fulltime.

Wright not only designed the house, he designed and built most of the furniture.

As you look at the photos below, each one has a description