Our visit to Fayette County was nothing short of insightful. Though we were only there for a few days, I feel I have a much better understanding of the area than I would have ever gained from engaging purely in “armchair” research. Reading about Fayette County, one constructs a mental image of a forgotten corner of Appalachian Pennsylvania struggling to reach stability. The projected landscape is a desolate tapestry of long-abandoned coal patch towns and insular hostility–what else could come to mind when a place is described as “left behind?” Spending actual time in Fayette revealed a much different story. Fayette County is full of natural beauty, strong communities, and unique character.
In our precursory research, the Urban Studies group identified Fallingwater to be a key asset worth investigating during our time in Fayette County. Fallingwater is a midcentury modern home designed by the legendary American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Perhaps Wright’s most famous work, Fallingwater was commissioned in the 1930s by the Kaufmann family, owners of Kaufmann’s Department Store in Pittsburgh. The property was later donated to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which has since operated Fallingwater as a museum and preservation site open to the public. Given its worldwide reputation as a triumph of modernist architecture and its relationship to the history of Southwestern Pennsylvania, we sought to understand the role this asset plays in the broader community. Speaking with director of visitor services Jenny Wagner, we learned that Fallingwater is indeed a major destination in Fayette County, attracting millions of visitors each year. Through educational programs, Fallingwater and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy at large invite students from local schools to study at the site. Fallingwater also maintains partnerships with surrounding businesses in the hospitality and food service industries, directing tourists to patronize other service-based businesses in Fayette County. Considering the general shift of the county’s economy towards the tourism industry, Fallingwater is an essential asset for drawing people into the area. Through its partnerships, Fallingwater capitalizes on its privileged position as a popular destination to ensure that the positive economic activity it generates is spread through a network of other local businesses. Rather than being an insulated organization that is reluctant to acknowledge its location, Fallingwater is an enmeshed community institution that actively invests in supporting Fayette County.
The recent ascendancy of ecotourism nationwide presents an opportunity for the county, which is rich in natural assets. Chief among them is Ohiopyle State Park, located in the southeastern corner of Fayette. We briefly visited with park manager Ken Bisbee as he was preparing for the local buckwheat pancake festival to get a better sense of Ohiopyle’s role in the county’s future. Ohiopyle is the largest state park in Pennsylvania, offering a wide array of outdoor activities and features, most notably whitewater rafting. Like Fallingwater, Ohiopyle attracts millions of visitors every year, who come from near and far to experience the park’s unique natural amenities. Ohiopyle is connected to Connellsville by the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail. Ohiopyle invites students from local schools to explore the park and learn about topics of natural preservation. A small town of the same name is nestled within the park, populated almost entirely by businesses that cater to ecotourists, including bike and boat rentals, restaurants, gift shops, and outfitters. Overall, we understand Ohiopyle to be a vital part of what makes Fayette County unique, and an important asset for revitalization efforts to build from.
During our visit, we attended a luncheon with various community members and leaders at the Connellsville Canteen, a cafe and museum operated by the University of Pittsburgh’s community partners at the Fayette County Cultural Trust. As the lunch progressed, I grew to appreciate the mission of the Fayette County Cultural Trust more and more and was struck by the way it was embodied in the canteen. When we arrived, various patrons in the public seating section were enjoying their meals and conversing. The atmosphere was casual and friendly, and I got an understanding of the canteen’s role as a social space for locals. Beyond this social function, the Connellsville Canteen also professes to be the only museum of the Second World War in the area, and the walls are densely packed with all manner of war memorabilia. Many of these artifacts have a direct connection to Fayette County, and the museum strives to honor the memories of soldiers from the area who fought in the war. In working to preserve and portray this part of Fayette County’s history, the canteen is ensuring that the area stays connected with its past, even as the Cultural Trust looks to the future. An impressive model train display is also included in the canteen, a lifelong passion project of a local enthusiast that portrays the production chain and movement of coal and coke that historically formed the basis of the region’s economy. A passion and pride for local history seemed to be a commonality among the Fayette County residents I spoke with throughout the visit.
Later in the day, our group visited the East End United Community Center, a nonprofit organization in Uniontown’s East End neighborhood. We spoke with executive director Steve Strange, as well as local business owner and longtime community partner Aaron Lantz of Lantz Funeral Home. In contrast to the environment of cooperation and connection we experienced in Connellsville, the story from the East End United Community Center was one of isolation and difficulty. Steve discussed issues of capacity, mentioning how a sheer lack of volunteers places immense strain on the organization. The work is shouldered by a small team of people who are overstretched, and the community center is unable to fulfill many of its ambitions because of this limitation. Steve also mentioned how the East End as a neighborhood is largely isolated from the rest of Uniontown due to socioeconomic factors, meaning that the community center has little in the way of a supportive network to draw from for help. In the future, cohorts of this research initiative should endeavor to locate more of these disconnected organizations and seek to improve their linkages to other institutions in Fayette County. The cooperative efforts in Connellsville have yielded positive results, but supportive institutional networks ought to be a county-wide principle. The East End United Community Center is an exemplary case of an asset that is undeniably a credit to its community, but whose impact is severely limited by isolation.
From Fallingwater to the East End, it became clear to me during our site visits that connections are the key to Fayette County’s future. The Connellsville Canteen and the Fayette County Cultural Trust are perhaps the most vital assets in this vein, playing a key role in bringing members of the community into contact with each other. Likewise, Fallingwater’s business partnerships provide a good framework for what a mutually beneficial relationship between Fayette’s larger destinations and smaller businesses should look like.
The next steps for this project will involve comparing the research completed by each of the disciplinary sub-groups. Identifying common ideas from interviews, similarities shared between success stories, and overarching themes from the site visits will be the short-term priority. Down the road, lessons learned from this collaboration will inform a more holistic accounting of Fayette County’s strengths and weaknesses, which will in turn identify opportunities for revitalization.