Fallingwater
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Fallingwater trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Fallingwater is the house that made Frank Lloyd Wright famous all over again. Built in the 1930s as a country home for a wealthy Pittsburgh family, it sits directly on top of a waterfall in the wooded hills of the Laurel Highlands, and it has been drawing admirers ever since. This quiz turns the best fun facts about Fallingwater into questions: how the design came together, what went wrong during building, the odd details Wright insisted on, the people who stayed there, and how a private retreat became one of the best-loved homes in the country. It suits design fans, students, teachers and anyone planning a trip to see the house. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing the stories behind the daring terraces.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which natural feature juts through Fallingwater's living room floor, kept at Edgar Kaufmann's insistence?
A boulder
A boulder about seven feet long pokes up in front of the hearth. Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to shave its top flat, but his client overruled him.
Q 02Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly matched Fallingwater's ocher concrete to a dried leaf of which plant?
Rhododendron
Rhododendron was the leaf Wright is said to have picked up on site, and he ordered waterproof paint from DuPont to match its dried color.
Q 03Which wry nickname did Edgar Kaufmann Sr. give Fallingwater because of its many leaks and damp?
Rising Mildew
Rising Mildew was his joke on the name of a house that at first leaked in 50 places. Later studies traced the leaks to mistakes by the builders.
Q 04Fallingwater inspired the villain's house in which Alfred Hitchcock thriller that ends on Mount Rushmore?
North by Northwest
North by Northwest gave its villain a lair in Wright's style, modelled on the Pennsylvania original. It was only a film set, as no such home exists near the monument.
Q 05Which Hollywood actor and architecture buff marked a birthday with a private tour of Fallingwater in 2006?
Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt had wanted to see the house since a college architecture course, a curator said. He spent two hours touring it with Angelina Jolie.
Q 06Which toy company sold a model of Fallingwater as an early set in its Architecture series?
Lego
Lego teamed up with Adam Reed Tucker, a trained architect who built landmarks from its bricks as art. The house was among the first six sets in the range.
Q 07Edgar Kaufmann Sr., who commissioned Fallingwater, made his fortune from which kind of Pittsburgh business?
A department store
A department store, Kaufmann's, was the largest in Pittsburgh, and Wright also designed a private office inside it for the owner.
Q 08What happened to Fallingwater's first visitor pavilion within days of its opening in April 1979?
It burned down
It burned down, so the pavilion had to be built a second time with an $800,000 grant from the Kaufmann family's foundation.
Q 09Which famous physicist did the Kaufmanns invite to Fallingwater during his 1939 trip to the Pittsburgh area?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein had come to western Pennsylvania to meet Jewish leaders about helping Jews still trapped in Germany. The trip was so sombre that he gave no public lectures.
Q 10Which New York museum joined Fallingwater on the World Heritage List among eight Wright buildings?
The Guggenheim
The Guggenheim, finished in 1959, was the last of the eight to be built. UNESCO listed them together in 2019 as Wright's masterpieces.
Q 11A glass hatch in Fallingwater's living room opens onto concrete stairs that lead down to what?
The stream
The stream runs right under the room, and the Kaufmanns kept the hatch open all summer. The steps end at a landing just above the water, beside a shallow plunge pool.
Q 12Which building technique, which Wright likened to tree branches, holds up Fallingwater's terraces?
Cantilever
Cantilever construction fixes each concrete terrace at one end only, like a diving board. Neither it nor reinforced concrete was common in houses when Wright used them here.
Q 13Fallingwater is held up as the masterpiece of which design philosophy championed by Frank Lloyd Wright?
Organic architecture
Q 21Fallingwater helped inspire buildings in which Ayn Rand novel about an uncompromising young architect?
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead follows Howard Roark, a hero partly modelled on Wright. Rand always denied that the architect shaped the book's plot or its philosophy.
Q 22Fallingwater is built over a waterfall on which creek in Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands?
Bear Run
Bear Run sometimes freezes in winter and shrinks to a trickle in summer. Contrary to a common belief, it flows beneath the house and not through it.
Q 23Edgar Kaufmann Jr. studied at which Frank Lloyd Wright home and school before Fallingwater was commissioned?
Taliesin
Organic architecture, in Wright's hands, meant using the same materials indoors and out, so that the house seems to grow from its wooded site.
Q 14On Fallingwater's completion, Frank Lloyd Wright gave the Kaufmanns six woodblock prints from which country?
Japan
Japan's Hiroshige and Hokusai made the six prints. They were Wright's gift, while the Kaufmanns chose the rest of the art in the house themselves.
Q 15Which metal did Frank Lloyd Wright first propose as a coating for Fallingwater's concrete walls?
Gold
Gold leaf was the idea, and nobody is sure whether Wright was joking. Edgar Kaufmann still hired a gilding contractor, who turned the job down, and ocher paint won out.
Q 16Fallingwater's ceilings dip as low as six feet four because Frank Lloyd Wright scaled the rooms to whom?
Himself
Wright measured the house against himself, at about five feet eight, assuming everyone was his height. The low hallways were also meant to stop people lingering.
Q 17Which unusual material covers the floors and walls of the bathrooms in Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater?
Cork
Cork was the suggestion of the Kaufmanns' son, who thought the bare floors Wright had specified would feel too cold after a shower.
Q 18Which type of rock, quarried on the Kaufmanns' own land, forms the walls and chimney of Fallingwater?
Sandstone
Sandstone came from a disused quarry reopened for the job, and local workers laid it in rough courses that mimic the cliff beside the house.
Q 19Which signature Frank Lloyd Wright color coats the steel window frames and doors of Fallingwater?
Cherokee red
Cherokee red appealed to Wright as the color of burning metal, a hue he thought stood for life itself. It joins gray rock and ocher concrete as the only exterior colors.
Q 20Works by which Spanish artist, including The Smoker, hang in the art collection at Fallingwater?
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso is represented by The Smoker and The Artist and his Model, hung in a house whose owners collected art from many cultures.
Taliesin, in rural Wisconsin, is where his parents came to visit him and met Wright. The younger Kaufmann had gone there after reading the architect's autobiography.
Q 24By legend, what prompted Frank Lloyd Wright to sketch Fallingwater in about two hours after months of delay?
A surprise client visit
A surprise client visit did it: Edgar Kaufmann phoned to say he was on his way, and the drawings were done when he arrived. Wright had in fact been planning the house in his head for months.
Q 25Where did the Kaufmanns expect their house to sit before Wright put Fallingwater on top of the cascade?
Facing the falls
Facing the falls was the family's wish, because they loved the view. Wright argued that they should live with the cascade, not merely look at it, and built over it.
Q 26Which North Carolina timber, chosen because it resists warping, forms all of Fallingwater's woodwork?
Black walnut
Black walnut suited a site that is damp all year, and about half of the furniture made from it is built into the walls.
Q 27Which New York institution devoted an exhibition to Fallingwater in 1938, weeks after the Kaufmanns moved in?
Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art staged a show about the new house that then toured for two years. The Kaufmanns' son later became a curator of design there.
Q 28Frank Lloyd Wright posed before a drawing of Fallingwater on a January 1938 cover of which magazine?
Time
Time ran the cover in the same month that Life and Architectural Forum featured the house, and the burst of fame helped revive Wright's career.
Q 29Edgar Kaufmann Jr. gave Fallingwater in 1963 to which organization, which still runs the house as a museum?
Western Pennsylvania Conservancy
Western Pennsylvania Conservancy took over at a ceremony with the state's governor and began public tours the next summer. The gift came with $500,000 for upkeep.
Q 30Which professional body named Fallingwater its building of the century in 2000?
American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects members had already voted it the best all-time work of American architecture in 1991, nine years before the century title.