{"id":156919,"date":"2025-09-14T20:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T20:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/156919\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T20:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T20:48:10","slug":"i-explored-pennsylvanias-hidden-architectural-treasures-with-my-son-for-spring-break-heres-what-we-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/156919\/","title":{"rendered":"I Explored Pennsylvania\u2019s Hidden Architectural Treasures With My Son for Spring Break\u2014Here’s What We Found"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most 11-year-olds want to go to Disneyland<\/a> for spring break. Mine wanted to see architecture. While there is no shortage of iconic buildings in our hometown of New York City, Pennsylvania<\/a> arguably has a more esteemed collection. So last spring, we packed up my boyfriend\u2019s vintage Mercedes station wagon and hit the road for five days of design hunting, food, and, if there was time, antiquing. A thousand miles later, we looked at the state in an entirely new way.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Day 1:\u00a0The Brutalist <\/p>\n

We began our drive early Sunday, so we could be at Canal House Station<\/a>, a restaurant in Milford, New Jersey, before the lunch crowd. The founders, cookbook authors Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, have created a magical space that highlights the season\u2019s best produce. After a transportive lunch that involved fresh peas and rhubarb, we arrived at the Wharton Esherick Museum<\/a> in Malvern, Pennsylvania, for our 2:30 tour.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never heard of Esherick, a polymath best known for his handcrafted furniture, but this museum had popped up when I searched for Louis Kahn, the Brutalist architect who was based in Philadelphia. While walking through the Hobbit-like home and studio that Esherick built from 1926 to 1966, it was hard to imagine him befriending Kahn\u2014their styles were so different. But as stories of Esherick\u2019s love of martinis and parties emerged, their connection made more sense. On the drive to Philadelphia, we stopped at Erdman Hall<\/a>, the three-cube dorm Kahn built at Bryn Mawr College, and Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s magnificent, Japanese-inspired Beth Sholom Synagogue<\/a> in the town of Elkins Park. Though the synagogue was closed by the time we arrived, it was worth the detour just to see the exterior.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

We checked in to the Lokal Hotel Fishtown<\/a>, a Modernist hotel in a trendy part of Philadelphia<\/a>. Our two-bedroom duplex was perfect\u2014except for the trains that regularly passed outside our windows. Next time, I would book a room on the hotel\u2019s quiet side, or try Lokal\u2019s Old City location.\n<\/p>\n

From left: George Nakashima Woodworkers, a design studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania; the Beth Sholom Synagogue, in Elkins Park.<\/p>\n

From left: George Nakashima Woodworkers SA, Ltd. New Hope, PA; Beth Sholom Congregation<\/p>\n

Day 2:\u00a0One Night Only <\/p>\n

We spent the day touring Philadelphia with the sunroof open, taking in such architectural highlights as Christ Church<\/a>, finished\u00a0in 1744; the Greek Revival\u2013style Second Bank of the United States<\/a>, completed in 1824; the International Style PSFS\u00a0Building from 1932 (now a Loews hotel); Louis Kahn\u2019s former office on Walnut Street (now an AT&T store) and the medical-research labs he designed at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1950s; and the Comcast Center<\/a>, the 58-story shimmering glass skyscraper by Robert A. M. Stern, completed in 2008.\n<\/p>\n

After lunch, we drove four hours west to the small town of Acme, to stay in a house designed by the modern master himself, Frank Lloyd Wright. In the 1960s, two Pittsburgh couples commissioned Peter Berndtson, an acolyte of Wright\u2019s, to build a pair of summer homes on a 130-acre site that would later become Polymath Park<\/a>. The estate now also includes two Wright homes from the Midwest that were saved from demolition and relocated, including our home for the night: M\u00e4ntyl\u00e4<\/a>, a three-bedroom house from 1952.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

My stepmother had driven from Virginia to join us, and it\u2019s fair to say that the four of us didn\u2019t talk (or eat) much that evening\u2014we were so moved by our remarkable surroundings. It\u2019s one thing to tour Fallingwater. It\u2019s quite another to inhabit Wright\u2019s concept of \u201ccompression and expansion\u201d while walking barefoot to your bedroom across his trademark \u201cCherokee Red\u201d concrete floors.\n<\/p>\n

A living area in Fallingwater, the Wright masterpiece in Mill Run.<\/p>\n

Christopher Little\/Western Pennsylvania Conservancy<\/p>\n

Day 3:\u00a0A Classic Revisited <\/p>\n

The winding, 25-minute drive to Fallingwater<\/a> from Acme showed off the landscape that Edgar Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department-store tycoon, and his wife, Liliane, chose for their\u00a0weekend home. They commissioned Wright to design it\u00a0in 1934. He sited the structure over a rushing waterfall, with\u00a0cantilevered terraces.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

I had visited Fallingwater decades ago, but was moved anew by this marvel\u2014one of America\u2019s greatest contributions to architecture. Details revealed by our fantastic guide (we sprang for the enhanced tour) seemed newly relevant, including the cold-plunge pool for Mrs. Kaufmann and the separate bedrooms and terraces for each family member.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

More than a living work of art, Fallingwater is a place that teaches us to think closely about how we use our homes. After the two other tour-goers left (the 8:45 a.m. reservation turned out to be a smart move; we had the place to ourselves), my son grabbed my phone and snapped photos of each room so he could sketch them in the car. It was fascinating to see what caught his eye.\n<\/p>\n

After lunch in the Fallingwater Caf\u00e9, we made our way to Pittsburgh, passing Kaufmann\u2019s Department Store, now an amenity-rich apartment building. We drove on to the Industrialist Hotel<\/a>, fittingly housed in a Beaux-Arts building. After check-in, we had delightful tapas at\u00a0the award-winning Morcilla<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Day 4:\u00a0Pittsburgh, Old and New <\/p>\n

A walking tour of Pittsburgh\u2019s old downtown spanned eras, starting with the Allegheny County Courthouse & Jail<\/a>, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and completed in 1888. Modern highlights included the hulking 1971 U.S. Steel Tower<\/a> and the neo-Gothic PPG Place<\/a>, designed by Philip Johnson and his partner, John Burgee, and completed in 1984, with 231 spires clad in black glass. Downtown was quiet, so we were happy to stumble upon Bluebird Kitchen<\/a> for breakfast.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

As in Philadelphia, there was so much architecture to see. After swinging by Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Hall of Science at Duquesne University and I. M. Pei\u2019s City View Apartments<\/a>, we went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History<\/a> (great dinosaurs, confusing layout) and, at my son\u2019s request, the kid-friendly Carnegie Science Center<\/a>. While the 1991 building didn\u2019t stand out, I was interested in its architect, Tasso Katselas, a Pittsburgh native who had been tapped to design a chapel (never built) at Fallingwater.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

After an early dinner at the neighborhood joint Vandal<\/a>, we raced the sunset to see a 1960s monastery that Katselas had built at St. Vincent Archabbey & College<\/a>, in the town of Latrobe. Angular bay windows jutted out from the brick fa\u00e7ade and glowed in the silent evening. Through the windows, we could see cassocked monks. I had read that Katselas spent time with the monks to understand how they live; his building spoke movingly of his dedication.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Day 5:\u00a0A Post-modern Family <\/p>\n

On our drive back home, there was one more architectural stop to make. In Harrisburg, we tried to find the Olivetti-Underwood Factory that Louis Kahn completed in 1970. It was so altered, we didn\u2019t recognize it while idling out front. We consoled ourselves at the Antique Marketplace of Lemoyne<\/a>, a shop so good that we\u2019re planning a return. We also had an exceptional burger and fries at the Jackson House<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Then we made a beeline to New Hope, where the architect George Nakashima settled after being released from a Japanese internment camp in 1943. He mastered the live-edge wood furniture that would be embraced as a counterpoint to the rigidity of Modernism. His property, George Nakashima Woodworkers<\/a>, is now a historic landmark. During our visit, my son was mesmerized by the towering stacks of Persian-walnut slabs.\n<\/p>\n

Nakashima\u2019s daughter, Mira, now in her 80s, leads the design studio, housed in a building she designed with her father that is surrounded by graceful Japanese maples and cherry trees. Also working in the studio are her grandson Toshi, daughter-in-law Soomi, and a dedicated team of woodworkers. To be there is to experience the harmony of nature and architecture. No wonder the tours sell out months in advance. (Luckily, we\u2019d made an appointment to commission a table.) We signed up for the mailing list, eager to create our own tradition and, perhaps, become a family of designers, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A version of this story first appeared in the November 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline \u201cDesign Within Reach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most 11-year-olds want to go to Disneyland for spring break. Mine wanted to see architecture. While there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-156919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}