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Engineers are planning to reinforce the main cantilever of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most acclaimed residences, Fallingwater, in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, putting an end to a problem that has been plaguing the structure since it was built in 1936.
The cantilevers, Fallingwater's distinguishing features, have become the source of the building's most troubling problems. Steel-reinforced concrete beams and the concrete cantilevered decks they support have deflected. Two terraces have been closed to visitors, and a temporary steel beam was placed under the first-floor cantilever in 1997 as a precautionary support, says Linda Waggoner, the director of Fallingwater, which in 1976 was listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is now a house museum overseen by the Pittsburgh-based Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. A $70,000 grant from...