My spouse and I visited Kentuck Knob on a Monday morning in
mid-August 2018. Kentuck Knob is open daily from 9:00 am until 4:30 pm during
the months of March through November (with a few additional December dates).
The home can be viewed only by participating in a formal tour, which lasts
either 40-minutes or 90-minutes, depending on whether you choose the standard
or in-depth version. We reserved our standard 40-minute tour time and paid for
our tickets online, and when we arrived, we were thrilled to find that we were
the only patrons on the 11:30 am tour. We had a private tour of Kentuck Knob
for just the two of us! We stayed nearby at Nemacolin Woodlands resort, and it
took us about 20 minutes (even though it is only 10 miles) to drive between the
two places.
Although open to the public for only the past 20 years,
famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright built Kentuck Knob over 60 years ago. Original
owners I.N. (for Isaac Newton) and Bernardine Hagan (of Hagan ice cream/dairy
fame) commissioned FLW to build their home after admiring the home he built
their friends and neighbors, Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann (of Kaufmann’s
department store fame) called Fallingwater, about 6 miles away. Frank Lloyd
Wright built Kentuck Knob for the Hagans at the age of 86; it was one of the
last homes that he built. A confident man, FLW never set foot onsite at Kentuck
Knob except for a quick visit during the house’s construction because he was
busy with larger projects at the same time (including the Guggenheim in NYC and
the Beth Shalom Synagogue in Elkins Park, PA). The Kentuck Knob house was complete
in 1956, and the Hagans lived there for the next 30 years. In 1986, the Hagans
sold the house to Londoner Lord Palumbo, who opened it to the public 10 years
later.
When visitors initially access the property, they first
encounter the parking lot and restroom building. Guests then walk to the
visitor’s center/gift shop/café to check in (or purchase tickets) for your
tour. (There is a road that runs next to the shop in case you are mobility
challenged and need to be dropped off.) Be sure to check out the structure
itself, which was once the greenhouse at Fallingwater (and later gifted by the
Kaufmanns to the Hagans). A shuttle bus transports guests from the shop up a
winding road that climbs in elevation to the house. Note that the shuttle bus
does not enter the former driveway/parking area for the house; visitors must
walk from the bus to the house, and they must climb two steps to enter. (The
site isn’t really handicap-accessible.) Kentuck Knob is built using native
sandstone and tidewater red cypress wood, with a copper roof, cantilevered
overhangs (like Fallingwater), and lots of glass. A flat-roofed carport adjoins
the house, and the entire structure blends well into the landscape. Stone
planters and copper lights complete the exterior look.
Kentuck Knob is a small, one-story crescent-shaped Usonian
house built on the crest of a hill, also called a “knob”. An original late 18th
century settler in the area who intended to move from PA to Kentucky later reconsidered
and stayed in PA, naming his land “Little Kentuck”. (FYI, “Usonian” is a
made-up word that represents the “United States of America” and means a home
that is affordable for the average American citizen.) Guests tour the large
living room with its huge single-paned window and multiple doors that overlook
the yard, a very cozy dining area, and a hexagonal, stone-walled high-ceilinged
kitchen (with a cork floor, stainless steel countertops, and original
appliances). Guests also pass through an extremely narrow hallway to see the
master bedroom, guest room, and two bathrooms. Furniture and decorative objects
from both the Hagans and the Palumbos decorate the rooms. (Be sure to check out
the famous folks included in some of the framed photographs.)
After guests tour the house, they exit onto the flagstone
patio with its triangular man-made pond; if they walk further behind the
property, they can view over 30 outdoor sculptures placed around the house and
along the walking trail back to the visitor’s center. (Guests who prefer a ride
can meet the shuttle bus back where it dropped them off.) Although we did not
take the Woodland Walk back downhill to the visitor’s center (it was hot and
there were lots of gnats that day), we did see the pond and a few sculptures,
and we walked a few feet out to the edge of the knob to enjoy the awesome view
of the surrounding Laurel Highlands and the Youghiogheny River Gorge.
We loved our private tour of Kentuck Knob; we had a
knowledgeable (yet funny and irreverent) tour guide who made our visit
memorable!
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