By Christopher Walker. An $11 million restoration project to save Falling Water, the 1936 Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece located 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, from falling into Bear Run has been completed, restoring the world-famous house to near original condition.
"Falling Water still tilts a little bit toward the bucolic stream," the Associated Press reported, "but is no longer in danger of being renamed 'Fell-in-water.'"
While cracks appeared almost immediately after the house was completed, the possibility of complete collapse was not recognized until the mid-1990s. In 1997, engineers installed steel supports on the bed of Bear Run to hold up the section of the house cantilevered over the stream, compromising the home's aesthetic integrity.
Now an invisible system of steel cables buried under the stone floors keeps the house standing. Hydraulic jacks pulled the cables, which reinforce the existing concrete beams, over three days until the structure lifted a half-inch off of the temporary steel supports.
