Paul Mayén: Fallingwater’s Lesser-Known Architect

Almost a year ago the boyfriend and I visited Fallingwater, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous residential projects, while in southwestern Pennsylvania for the boyfriend's family reunion. As I noted in a post last August, one thing that isn't mentioned during the tour of the home is that Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who inherited the house upon death of his parents, was gay. The tour guides only note that "he never married." Thanks to a recent comment from a reader, I was provided with some information about "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say. It turns out that in many ways Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., did "marry" - or at least to the extent most of us in the American LGBT community still find ourselves "marrying" our life partners. Kaufmann met Paul Mayén (pictured above) in the early 1950's and the two spent their lives together thereafter until Kaufmann's death more than 30 years later in 1989. What's even crazier is that the visitor center/pavilion at Fallingwater (the cafe is shown in the photo below) was designed by Kaufmann, Jr."s partner, Paul Mayén. It is sad that in this day and age, false "family values" still continue to hide gay achievements and relationships. Here is some information that provides the rest of the story:
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Frank Lloyd Wright may have designed Fallingwater in the 1930s, but it was Paul Mayén (5/1918-11/2000) who designed its gift shop. Both structures host over 130,000 architectural devotees and laymen every year. Both structures are internationally recognized for how seamlessly they blend into their environments. Both men were artists and architects and shared many of the same friends. But while Wright has achieved an almost-movie-star-like fame, Paul Mayén remains practically unknown...
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In the early 1950s, he met a fellow art student, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., with whom he would share his life until Edgar’s death in 1989. Edgar’s father was the founder of Kaufmann’s department store in Pittsburgh; it was his father who commissioned Wright to build the now-famous vacation house for his friends and family near a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania. Wright, exceeding the original budget by almost a factor of ten, instead designed and built Fallingwater over the waterfall. In 1955, Edgar inherited the property and Paul and he visited the site together on mountain retreats until the property was entrusted to a conservation in 1963.
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In 1956, the couple assisted I.N. and Bernadine Hagan in choosing the furniture for the Hagan’s Frank Lloyd Wright house at the architect’s suggestion. In 1959, Paul designed the jacket of a book about Wright, Drawings for a Living Architecture, which was edited by Giuseppe Samonà.
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In 1975, he built a country house for them in Garrison, New York. From 1979 to 1981, he oversaw the building of the Fallingwater pavilion which houses a café, gift store, and visitor’s center. When Edgar Jr. died, Paul scattered his ashes at Fallingwater. He died in 2000 and also had his ashes scattered there.
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Sadly, even Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.'s obituary -while mentioning Mayén as Kaufmann's "longtime colleague and companion" ends with the sentence "There are no survivors."

A Visit to Falling Water

Part of this weekend's whirlwind trip so far included a trip to Fallingwater,perhaps one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous homes that he designed for the wealthy Kaufman family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The house is amazing in many ways and the uniqueness of the design and the way in which the home is incorporated into the rock out cropping and waterfall is remarkable. I was fascinated both by the house itself and Wright's design. I was also intrigued by the Kaufman's son, Edgar J. Kaufman, Jr., who played a role in the home's creation.

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Much like once was the case when one visited Jefferson's Monticello when Sallie Hemmings went unmentioned, the same occurred during our tour. While our tour guide was a sweet young woman who described the younger Kaufman's accomplishments - it was he who donated the home to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy - one part of the true history was omitted: the younger Kaufman was gay. The official history given out in the tour is that "Edgar, Jr., never married" as if being gay is still something shameful. It would be nice if the truth were told and perhaps a few minds and hearts could be opened to a better appreciation of the fact that being gay is something natural and not in need of being hidden. Here's some brief biographical facts on Edgar J. Kaufman, Jr.:

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Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. (1910 – July 31, 1989) was an American architect, lecturer, and author. He was the son of Edgar J. Kaufmann, a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman and philanthropist who owned Kaufmann's department store. Edgar Jr. attended the School for Arts and Crafts at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art in Vienna in the late 1920s, studied painting and typography for three years with Victor Hammer in Florence, and was an apprentice architect at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Foundation from 1933 to 1934. He strongly supported his father's decision to commission Fallingwater by Wright in 1936.

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In 1940, Edgar wrote to Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, proposing the Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition, won by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen. He served in the US military during World War II. Afterwards, he was Director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art. Edgar's greatest accomplishment during his tenure was the Good Design program of 1950 to 1955, in which the museum joined forces with the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, promoting good design in household objects and furnishings.
After his father’s death in 1955, Edgar Jr. inherited Fallingwater and continued to use it as a mountain retreat until 1963. Then, following his father’s wishes, he entrusted it and several hundred acres of land to Western Pennsylvania Conservancy as a conservation in memory of his parents.

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From 1963 to 1986, Edgar was an Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Art History at Columbia University. He authored several books on Wright architecture and modern design, and was a contributor to Encyclopædia Britannica. Following his death in 1989, Edgar was entombed alongside the remains of his parents in the family mausoleum on the grounds of Fallingwater.