Fallingwater’s Roof Is Leaking. Can This $7 Million Renovation Protect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece?

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Leaky roofs and windows have long plagued the famous home in Pennsylvania. Experts say the three-year project will address decades of water damage and prevent similar problems from worsening in the future

Sonja Anderson

– Daily Correspondent

September 5, 2025

The iconic house known as Fallingwater, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, was built atop a 30-foot waterfall in the 1930s. As it turns out, the home’s name doesn’t only refer to its unique location. Since its construction, Fallingwater has had a leaking problem.

The house is currently in the midst of a three-year, $7 million renovation project aiming to fix this problem, which is scheduled to wrap up next spring. Workers have been replacing and reinforcing Fallingwater’s roof, exterior walls and window and door frames. Located in Pennsylvania, Fallingwater is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Historic Landmark, and it’s cared for by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

The conservancy’s renovation project aims to “eliminate water infiltration challenges,” Fallingwater director Justin Gunther tells the Washington Post’s Ashley Stimpson. “In the Wright community, we describe our houses by how many buckets it requires to capture all the leaks. … We’re hoping to get to no buckets.”

Born in 1867, Wright became a leader of the Prairie School of architecture, which attempted to build structures that stood in harmony with nature. “Weather is omnipresent, and buildings must be left out in the rain,” Wright once said. However, some of Fallingwater’s most iconic features—such as its terraces, flat roofs and expansive windows—made it especially vulnerable to the precipitation of southwestern Pennsylvania.

“Because Fallingwater is so integrated into its landscape, the effects of time and weather have really pushed the building systems to the ends of their useful lives,” says Gunther in a video made by the conservancy.

Time Lapse of scaffolding being erected around Fallingwater to support ongoing preservation work

The house was built as a private vacation home for Edgar J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department store owner, who used it as a weekend retreat for his family and guests. Despite its seclusion, the house “was hardly up before its fame circled the Earth,” recalled Kaufmann’s son, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., in 1963, when the house was entrusted to the conservancy. In 1964, Fallingwater opened for public tours, and it’s since received more than 6.3 million visitors.

Back in 2000, the conservancy carried out a major structural strengthening project, Clinton E. Piper, Fallingwater’s senior administrator of special projects, tells Smithsonian magazine. Apart from regular maintenance, the current renovation is the organization’s first major conservation effort in 25 years. Workers are also creating a 3D scan of the building, which would assist with repairs in the case of a future catastrophe.

“There’s different technology that we can use now than what Wright used originally,” Piper says. “But still, to maintain the same integrity and materials … It’s a challenging undertaking.”

Workers have replaced chunks of damaged concrete, installed waterproof materials beneath terraces and injected almost 12 tons of grout into Fallingwater’s walls, according to the conservancy’s blog.

The house is filled with custom furniture and paintings by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera, making it a fragile workspace. “When you’re working on Fallingwater, you can’t drop anything,” senior maintenance specialist Ben Morrison tells the Washington Post. “Not a nail, not a drill bit, not anything.”

Morrison says the prestigious house requires slow, cautious interventions. “You can’t do things half at Fallingwater,” he tells the Washington Post. “What would normally take you an hour to do at home—you can’t do it like that here.”

Throughout his career, Wright’s artistic vision reputedly outweighed practical, structural concerns. The self-proclaimed architect admitted to “honest arrogance” and “would often joke that his architecture was like leaving fine art out in the rain,” Gunther tells the London Times’ George Grylls.

Around the same time that he designed Fallingwater, Wright also created Wingspread, a pinwheel-shaped mansion in Wisconsin. When its new owner, businessman Herbert F. Johnson Jr., called Wright to complain of a leak in the ceiling, the architect replied, “Well, Hib, why don’t you move your chair?”

“He was pushing the boundaries of the traditional ways of building,” Gunther tells the Times. “That meant there were always some challenges with keeping the water out.”