Wright employed tidewater red cypress, glass, and native sandstone to build the home, and capped it with a copper roof at a cost of $96,000.

A stone planter terminates the low retaining wall on the west side of the courtyard, and it features a copper light fixture accented with a triangular-shaped shade.

As friends of the Kaufmanns, owners of nearby Fallingwater on Bear Run, the Hagans asked their architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a deluxe Usonian home for them.

At 86, and hard at work on the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Beth Sholom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, and about 12 residential homes, Wright said he could "shake it (Kentuck Knob) out of his sleeve at will", never even setting foot on the site, except for a short visit during the construction phase.

Since 1996, the Palumbo family has balanced their occupancy with a public tour program, a method of historic property management more common to their native Britain than to the United States.

Found object art pieces include a French pissoir, red British telephone boxes, and a large, vertically upright concrete slab from the Berlin Wall.