Walter Burley Griffin
By Paul Kruty
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Burley Griffin (1876-1937) was born on 24 November 1876 in the
Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois, the eldest of the four children
of George Walter Griffin, an insurance agent, and Estelle Melvina
Burley. Griffin, whose family moved to nearby Oak Park and to
Elmhurst during his childhood, attended Oak Park High School.
In 1899 he received a bachelor's degree from the University of
Illinois in the architecture program instituted by Nathan Clifford
Ricker that stressed a scientific and rational approach to the
subject, with less emphasis on design and the historic styles.
Returning to Chicago, for the next two years Griffin served as
a draftsman in the offices of Dwight H. Perkins, Robert C. Spencer,
Jr., and H. Webster Tomlinson, three among the handful of progressive
Chicago architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School.
Like Frank Lloyd Wright before him, Griffin came under the intoxicating
spell of Louis H. Sullivan, whose call for a modern American architecture
that was free from historic allusion was being answered by the
architects for whom Griffin worked, and whose oration, "The
Young Man in Architecture," delivered in June 1900, as Griffin
recalled, completely changed the young architect's life.
In July 1901, Griffin passed the new Illinois
licensing examination he was obliged to take before entering private
practice, and began working for Frank Lloyd Wright in Wright's
famous Oak Park studio. Although not an actual partner, Griffin
soon had a greater role in all phases of Wright's practice than
his associates. He was also project supervisor for some of Wright's
most important buildings, including the Ward Willits house (1902)
and the Larkin Administration Building (1904). Wright permitted
Griffin to maintain a small independent practice, which included
the campus plan for the State Normal school at Charleston, IL
(1901), and the William Emery house, built in Elmhurst, IL,
in 1903. In 1904, Griffin began to supply landscape plans for
Wright's buildings, and for five months in 1905 he took charge
of the entire office while Wright was in Japan.
Early in 1906, Griffin established his own practice.
During the next seven years he produced more than one hundred
projects, ranging from suburban estates to low-cost housing units.
Beginning in 1909 these included an increasing number of landscape
plans and schemes for subdivisions. His early buildings, including
the houses for his brother Ralph (Edwardsville, IL, 1909), for
Harry Peters (Chicago, 1906), and for Frederick Carter (Evanston,
IL, 1910), are distinguished from the Prairie houses of Wright
by their heavier massing, their greater emphasis on symmetry and
verticality, their interlocking, multi-level interior spaces,
their termination in gabled rather than hipped roofs, and their
use of diamond forms. Griffin's double house for Mary Bovee (Evanston,
1907) in its abstracted rectilinear massing anticipated by two
years Wright's famous house for Mrs. Walter Gale (Oak Park, 1909).
During 1910, when the Architectural Record still
characterized Griffin's work as "strongly influenced by the
success of Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright," his designs underwent
a remarkable transformation. Bereft of overhanging eaves, buildings
like the "Solid Rock" house for William Tempel (Winnetka,
IL, 1911), were massive, flat-roofed and cubic, surmounted with
roof gardens. Beginning in 1912, Griffin often added an expressive
veneer of thick, rough-hewn coursed limestone in such buildings
as the Joshua Melson house (Mason City, IA, 1912) and the Stinson
Memorial Library (Anna, IL, 1912), two of his masterpieces.
Also in 1910, Griffin produced his first extant
urban planning design. (Nothing survives of his reputed plan for
an enlargement of Shanghai, China, of ca. 1905-06). Griffin, although
mainly concerned with sub-division plans for suburban developments,
including the Trier Center Neighborhood (Winnetka, 1912) where
he planned to live himself, produced several campus plans as well,
including the University of New Mexico (1913) and the Wisconsin
State Normal School at Milwaukee (1914), and such complete new
towns as Idalia, FL (1911) and Mossmain, MT (1915), all four
of which remained projects.
On 29 June 1911, Griffin married the architect
Marion Lucy Mahony, whom he had known for many years in Wright's
office and who was then working for the Chicago architect, Herman
V. von Holst. Mahony, a fiery, theatrical figure, was the perfect
match for the obsessive if serene and even-tempered Griffin. Mahony,
who was one of the century's most talented renderers, became Griffin's
de facto business partner as well.
Shortly before the Griffins' marriage, the Australian
government announced an international competition for the design
of a capital city of 75,000 residents for the newly federated
nation. Barely completed in time for the deadline in early 1912,
Griffin's plan for Canberra was presented in the stunning renderings
by Mahony. On 28 May 1912, Griffin's design was selected as the
winner from among 137 entries. The young architect was suddenly
thrust into the limelight, both in the professional and popular
press. After a period of negotiation, the government offered to
bring the winner to Australia for three months to inspect the
Canberra site. An ecstatic Griffin embarked on 19 July 1913, leaving
Mahony in charge of the Chicago practice. Griffin's letters home
reveal how quickly he was enthralled by the Australian landscape.
Griffin's emerging prominence persuaded the University
of Illinois to offer its famous alumnus the vacated position of
head of the Department of Architecture. After a period of discussion,
the actual offer was cabled to Melbourne in late September at
the very moment that Griffin was negotiating with the Australian
government for a three-year contract to oversee the actual construction
of the new city. At the Canberra site Griffin had found that work
already had begun which compromised his plan and he was anxious
to rectify the situation. Tempting as the Illinois offer was,
Griffin rejected it in order to remain overseas. He was soon embarked
on a long, hard, and ultimately futile fight to save his capital
plan. Griffin also received commissions for town plans, subdivisions,
and one of his masterpieces, Newman College, the Catholic residential
college of the University of Melbourne.
After years of professional abuse, Griffin resigned
as Federal Capital Director in February 1921. For several reasons,
including the closing of his Chicago office in 1917 after mismanagement
by F. Barry Byrne, Griffin decided to remain in Australia, maintaining
offices both in Melbourne, where the prospect of the commission
for the Capitol Theater and office building loomed large, and
in Sydney, where he had just acquired a substantial parcel of
land which he intended to develop as Castlecrag, a planned community.
His major works during years of financial hardship in the 1930s
were an extraordinary group of garbage incinerators for local
councils. He briefly returned to America in 1925 and again in
In September 1935, Griffin's design was accepted
for a new library for Lucknow University in northwest India. In
October, he agreed to travel to the site. Griffin was as exhilarated
by the Subcontinent as he had been twenty years earlier by the
Antipodes. He persuaded Marion to join him in May 1936. Commissions
began to pour in, as the Griffins seemed to be reborn--Walter
producing some of the most original designs of his career and
Marion providing yet another set of ravishing renderings.
In February 1937, Griffin became ill after a
banquet given by his benefactor, the Raja of Mahmudabad, and died
of peritonitis several days later, on 11 February. His wife closed
the office in India, leaving the Australian practice in the hands
of Griffin's partner, Eric Nicholls, and returned to Chicago to
write her memoirs.
Griffin stands as the third great member, after
Sullivan and Wright, of the Chicago movement to create a decorated
modern architecture for the twentieth century. His buildings,
landscapes, and town plans record a lifetime's dedication to this
The majority of the surviving
drawings for Griffin's buildings, many of them executed by his
wife Marion Mahony Griffin, are located in three American collections:
the Avery Library at Columbia University, New York; the Block
Gallery at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; and the Art
Institute of Chicago. Part of the holdings of the Block Gallery
are reproduced in David T. Van Zanten's Walter Burley Griffin,
Selected Drawings (1970).
The most important contemporary
accounts of Griffin's American work are William G. Purcell's "Walter
Burley Griffin, Progressive," Western Architect
18 (September 1912): 93-95, and Western Architect 19
(August 1913): 66-80 and 16 plates, which offered an entire issue
devoted to Griffin. Others articles of note include "Some
Houses by Walter Burley Griffin," Architectural Record
28 (October 1910): 307-10; and Robert C. Spencer, Jr.'s "The
Suburban House," House Beautiful 14 (October 1908):
Biographies of Griffin include James Birrell’s Walter
Burley Griffin (1964) and Donald Leslie Johnson's The
Architecture of Walter Burley Griffin (1977), which have
been complemented with the posthumous publication of Peter Harrison's
Walter Burley Griffin, Landscape Architect (, 1995).
The major exhibition of his work held in Sydney, Australia, produced
a far-ranging catalog of essays by leading Griffin scholars, edited
by Anne Watson, called Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony
and Walter Burley Griffin—America, Australia, India
(1998). Griffin's surviving American buildings are fully documented
in photographs in Mati Maldre and Paul Kruty's Walter Burley
Griffin in America (1995). The complete catalog of the Australian
work appears in Jeff Turnbull and Peter Navaretti’s The
Griffins in Australia and India (1998). See also, James Weirick,
Anna Rubbo, and Conrad Hamann's Walter Burley Griffin, A Re-View
(1988), the catalog to an exhibition held at Monash University
in Australia; and Meredith Walker, Adrienne Kabos, and James Weirick's
Building for Nature: Walter Burley Griffin and Castlecrag
(1994). The most complete account of the India adventure appears
in Paul Kruty and Paul E. Sprague’s Two American Architects
in India: Walter B. Griffin and Marion M. Griffin, 1935-1937
The Australian capital
competition is fully explored in John Rep’s Canberra
1912: Plans and Planners of the Australian Capital Commission
(1997). For the history of the city itself, see Paul Reid’s
Canberra Following Griffin: A Design History of Australia’s
National Capital (2002). See also, Christopher Vernon, ed.,
The Griffin Legacy: Canberra, the Nation’s Capital in
the 21st Century (2004).
Among the many articles
that have appeared on particular aspects of Griffin's American
career are Robert E. McCoy's "Rock Crest/Rock Glen: Prairie
School Planning in Iowa," Prairie School Review 5
no.3 (1968): 5-39; Paul E. Sprague's "Griffin Rediscovered
in Beverly," Prairie School Review 10 no.1 (1973):
6-23; James Weirick's "Walter Burley Griffin, Landscape Architect,"
Landscape Australia (March 1988): 241-256; and Paul Kruty's
"Walter Burley Griffin and the University of Illinois,"
Reflections 9 (1993): 34-41. For the role of Griffin
in Wright’s office, see Paul Kruty’s “At Work
in the Oak Park Studio,” Arris 14 (2003): 17-32.
For a discussion of Griffin’s landscape architecture, see
Christopher Vernon’s “Walter Burley Griffin, Landscape
Architect,” in John Garner, ed., The Midwest in American
Architecture (1991). Two books that provide additional information
on Griffin and his milieu are Mark L. Peisch's The Chicago
School of Architecture: Early Followers of Sullivan and Wright
(1964) and H. Allen Brooks's The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd
Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries (1972).
Lucy Mahony Griffin
By Paul Kruty
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Marion Lucy Mahony Griffin (1871-1961), architect
and artist, was born on 14 Feb. 1871 in Chicago, Illinois, the
second child and eldest daughter of the five surviving children
of Jeremiah Mahony, a journalist from Cork, Ireland, and Clara
Hamilton, a school teacher. Mahony grew up in Chicago and in what
is now part of suburban Winnetka, Illinois. She showed a facility
for drawing and an interest in art fostered by her mother. Following
in the footsteps of her first cousin, Dwight H. Perkins, she studied
architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from
which in 1894 she became the second woman to graduate. Her thesis
project, "The house and studio of a painter," has been
suggested as a prototype for the studio Frank Lloyd Wright built
four years later adjacent to his suburban home. Returning to Chicago,
Mahony drafted for Perkins for a year before beginning work in
1895 for Wright, then in his third year of independent practice.
In 1898 she passed the new Illinois architects' licensing examination,
the first such law in the nation, and became the first licensed
woman architect in the country.
Beginning in 1898, Mahony commuted to Wright's
new studio attached to his suburban Oak Park residence. She remained
in his office on a regular basis until ca. 1904, and thereafter
worked at irregular intervals until the studio was closed in 1909.
Mahony thus found herself at the heart of the progressive movement
to create a modern American style of architecture. Centered in
Chicago and inspired by the charismatic figure of Louis H. Sullivan,
this group of architects, which included Wright, Perkins, Robert
C. Spencer, Jr., and Walter Burley Griffin, has come to be called
the Prairie School. In Wright's office, Mahony designed furniture,
glass, and decorative panels, including the fountain in his Susan
L. Dana house (Springfield, Illinois, 1904). She also made presentation
drawings intended for publication and for prospective clients.
In 1906 she created a rendering style, partly based in Japanese
prints, which became the hallmark of Wright's office for the next
ten years. For Wright, Mahony produced several of the most famous
architectural drawings of the twentieth century.
Because Wright allowed his employees to accept
outside commissions, Mahony occasionally prepared plans after
regular business hours. In 1903, she designed All Souls church
for a family friend and mentor, the Rev. James Vilas Blake, which
was built in modified form in 1904 in Evanston, Illinois. Its
crisp forms and geometric ornament betrayed the influence of Wright,
coupled with Mahony's own decorative sense. In 1905, she painted
an altar mural for the church.
Records for Mahony's life between 1906 and 1909
are incomplete. By 1906, she was living in Elkhart, Indiana, in
the house she remodeled that year for her brother Gerald's family,
and she was working part-time as an independent architect. In
1908 she designed a house for William Burke in Three Rivers, Michigan,
that, once again, was a variation of Wright's Prairie style. In
that year she also entered a competition for a concrete house
with a remarkable design that, with its rectilinear massing and
cantilevered, flat roof, extended Wright’s forms invented
for Unity Temple to a residence.
In September 1909 Wright turned over his practice
to Hermann Von Holst, a Chicago colleague, and left for a yearlong
European sojourn. Von Holst promptly hired Mahony to serve as
chief designer for this work, which involved completing buildings
under construction, finishing the design of other projects still
on the drawing boards, and, in several cases, creating entire
houses, including the Robert Mueller house in Decatur, Illinois,
and the David Amberg house in Grand Rapids, Michigan, both of
1910. These are complex compositions derived from Wrightian forms,
with characteristic ornamental designs that are Mahony's own wedded
to sometimes unresolved arrangements.
For three large houses on the private street
that included the Robert Mueller house, Mahony convinced Von Holst
to hire Chicago architect Walter Burley Griffin in 1910 to create
a landscape plan. Griffin also lent a hand to the design of the
Adolph Mueller house, and helped Mahony with the major project
remaining: a mansion for Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, which
Ford eventually chose not to build. Mahony had known Griffin in
Wright's studio, where Griffin worked between 1901 and 1906; following
their renewed acquaintance, in May 1911 Mahony and Griffin were
Joining Griffin's office, Mahony created a new
presentation format that consisted of interior and exterior perspective
views combined with floor plans united into a single design. She
also developed a technique of lithographing these ink-on-linen
images to satin-finished silk, to which she applied watercolor
washes. While Mahony contributed to Griffin's work in much the
same way she had to Wright's: designing architectural ornament
and decorative art objects, she also became his sounding-board,
similar to Griffin’s role in Wright’s office.
In May 1912, Griffin won the international competition
for the new capital city of Australia, Canberra, partly on the
strength of Mahony's renderings. In July 1913 he traveled to Australia
for five months to consult on construction of the city. Mahony
was left in charge of the Chicago office. While in Austalia, Griffin
was offered a three-year contract to continue his work at Canberra.
In spring 1914, the Griffins departed Chicago for Australia, making
their home in Melbourne. Griffin's association with Canberra lasted
until 1920, after which the couple decided to remain in Australia.
Mahony designed only one building in Australia
under her own name, the Richard Reeves house, constructed in altered
form in 1916 in East Malvern, near Melbourne. Her involvement
in her husband's office varied through the years, but in general
she devoted more and more time to artistic and social causes in
Australia, to her deepening commitment to anthroposophy, and to
the eccentric milieu of Griffin's planned suburb, Castlecrag,
north of Sydney, where they moved in 1920. By the 1930s she had
virtually abandoned architecture. However, she continued to work
on the spectacular drawings for a series of Australian trees,
printed on silk and watercolored, that she had begun in 1918.
The Griffins returned to the United States in
1925 and in 1932, when Mahony designed a mural for Chicago's George
Armstrong public school.
In 1935 Griffin designed the library for the
University of Lucknow, India, and traveled in October to the site.
Other commissions followed rapidly and in June 1936, Mahony joined
her husband. She managed the office, made working drawings, and
drew watercolor perspectives of Griffin's final buildings. Once
again, she created a rendering style that matched the magnificence
of the architecture it portrayed.
In February 1937, Griffin died of peritonitis.
Mahony closed the Indian office, returned to Australia, and by
the following year was in Illinois. The outbreak of war prevented
her return to Australia. She began writing an account of Griffin's
Indian adventure that turned into a personal biography of herself
and Griffin, eventually swelling into an unworkable manuscript
of some 1600 pages. Called "The Magic of America," it
has never been published. She died in Chicago on 10 August 1961.
If Marion Mahony Griffin was a capable architect and a pioneer
among women architects, she was more importantly one of the twentieth
century's greatest architectural renderers, establishing the presentation
style for which the Prairie School is known, and giving visual
expression to the revolutionary designs of Wright and Griffin.
Many of Marion Mahony Griffin's
renderings of Griffin's work as well as her own are dispersed
among Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, the Avery Library,
Columbia University, NY, and the Art Institute of Chicago, while
her numerous drawings for Frank Lloyd Wright survive at that architect's
archives in Scottsdale, AZ. The two versions of her unpublished
autobiography, "The Magic of America," are deposited
at the Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago and at the New
York Historical Society, NY.
General discussions of
Mahony's career include S. Berkon and J. Kay, "Marion Mahony
Griffin, Architect," Feminist Art Journal (Spring
1975): 10-14; and Anna Rubbo, "Marion Mahony Griffin, A Portrait,"
15-26 in Walter Burley Griffin, A Re-View (Clayton, Victoria:
Monash University Gallery, 1988), which also includes James Weirick's
"The Magic of America: Vision and Text," 5-14. Mahony's
architectural projects are discussed in James Weirick, "Marion
Mahony at M.I.T.," Transition (Winter 1988): 48-54;
and David T. Van Zanten, "The Early Work of Marion Mahony
Griffin," Prairie School Review 3 no.2 (1966): 5-23.
A selection of her colored renderings of Griffin buildings appears
in Rassegna 74 (1998), 50-63, an issue devoted to the
Prairie School. For analysis of her rendering style, see H. Allen
Brooks, "Frank Lloyd Wright and the Wasmuth Drawings",
Art Bulletin 48 (June 1966): 193-202, and Donna R. Munchick,
"Marion Mahony's Architectural Drawings, 1900-1912,"
Southeastern College Art Conference Review 7 (Fall 1974):
5-14. The most complete analysis of her work is to be found among
the essays published in Anne Watson, ed., Beyond Architecture:
Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin—America, Australia,
India (Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 1998), including Paul
Kruty’s “Chicago 1900: The Griffins Come of Age,”
Paul Sprague’s “Marion Mahony as Originator of Griffin’s
Mature Style: Myth or Fact?,” Anna Rubbo’s “Marion
Mahony: A Larger Than Life Presence,” and James Weirick’s
“Spirituality and Symbolism in the Work of the Griffins.”
A recent exhibition and catalog of her drawings featured the Australian
“Forest Portraits;” see Debora Wood, ed., Marion
Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature (Evanston, IL:
Block Museum of Art, 2005), with essays by David Van Zanten, Christopher
Vernon, and Alison Fisher.