Meet the Griffins

presented by

Griffith City Library

References Books and articles The Architecture of Walter Burley Griffin : Canberra manifestations / Jeffrey Turnbull The City plan of Griffith / Walter Burley Griffin, in Irrigation Record 1 June and 15 June 1915 The Dream of a Century : the Griffins in Australia’s Capital / Christopher Vernon. National Library of Australia Grand obsessions : the life and work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin / Alasdair McGregor The Griffins in Australia and India / Turnbull, Jeff and Navaretti, Peter (eds) Griffith heritage / Peter Kabaila Let’s not forget the Griffins / Christopher Vernon in Canberra Times 17 May 2014 The Magic of America / Marion Mahony Griffin [unpublished] Making magic, the Marion Mahony Griffin story / Glenda Korporaal in Canberra Times 15 October 2015 Pioneer work : the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area towns of Leeton and Griffith / Bob McKillop from The Griffin Society website Recreation, conservation and community: the secret suburban spaces of Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin / Freestone, R and Nicholls, D in Bourke, M and Morris, C (eds), Studies in Australian Garden History Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin were drawn together on Canberra / Glenda Korporaal in The Australian 9 March 2013

Websites www.adb.anu.edu.au/biography/griffin-walter-burley-443 www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/ canberra-australias-capital-city/ www.griffinsociety.org www.idealcity.org.au/win-1.html w w w. m i g rat i o n h e r i ta ge . n sw. gov. a u /ex h i b i t i o n / objectsthroughtime/1911-walter-burley-griffins-designfor-australias-capital/ www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs95.aspx www.nationalcapital.gov.au/history/history_05.htm www.newser.com/story/15373/mahony-griffin-unsunggenius.html www.powerhousemuseum.com/previous/griffin.php www.wbgriffinsociety.org/ www.womenhistory.net.au

Acknowledgements Griffith City Council kindly acknowledges the assistance of the National Library of Australia in providing source materials for this exhibition

ContentS Meet the Griffins

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The Early Years: Walter

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The Early Years: Marion

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Walter & Marion

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The Canberra Commission

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Life in Australia

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The Natural Landscape

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Feminist Ideals 12 Marion the Artist

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The Griffith Commission

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The Castlecrag Era

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Walter & Marion in India

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Marion: 1936 - 1961

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The Griffin Legacy

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Meet the

Griffins Walter Burley Griffin’s winning entry for the design of Australia’s capital, Canberra, took him and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin from their native Chicago to Australia where they made their home for 21 years. Importantly for the embryonic irrigation areas in Western NSW, a spinoff from Walter’s international success was his commission to design the new town of Griffith and extensions to the town of Leeton.

In this centenary of the City of Griffith it is fitting that this exhibition shines a light on a remarkable and creative couple that influenced not only the development of Griffith, but also played an important role in progressing elements of design in the 20th century both in Australia and overseas.

Griffin’s Canberra contract allowed him to set up independent practice while working on the federal capital. Walter and Marion Griffin worked on many commissions including the towns of Griffith and Leeton, Newman College at the University of Melbourne, Café Australia, the Chinese Nationalist Club, the office building Leonard House, the Summit and Glenard estates in Melbourne, the Capitol Theatre and 12-storey office building Capitol House, as well as numerous private houses and several urban town planning schemes including Castlecrag, Eaglemont, Croydon and Ranelagh.

It is a badge of honour for the rural city of Griffith, NSW, to acknowledge and celebrate that its design was the vision of a married couple from Chicago, USA, the architect and design duo of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.

Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Castlecrag, 1930.

Photographer, Dr Jorma Pohjanpalo. Source: National Library of Australia

The Early Years:

WalteR

Walter Burley Griffin was an architect, landscape architect and planner. He was born in Maywood, Illinois, USA, on November 24, 1876. Walter died in in Lucknow, India, on February 11, 1937, at the age of 59. The eldest of four children, Walter worked in the United States, Australia and India.

He began his architecture career in Chicago, spending 15 years in the ‘windy city’ before arriving in Australia in 1914.

Walter Burley Griffin was inspired by ideals of equity and democracy and a passionate regard for nature and he resolved to create his own kind of modern architecture independent of past styles.

Illinois he also took classes in landscape gardening and forestry.

His first job was in the office of architect Dwight Perkins in Steinway Hall, Chicago, an office building where some of the most progressive architects were based. Perkins also happened to be Marion Mahony’s cousin.

For the next two years he worked on a casual basis for a number of the Steinway group, until going to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park studio where he became an important assistant, working there from 1901 to 1906.

Griffin was allowed to undertake his own personal commissions. The most significant was the Emery House at Elmhurst, which showed his originality and an independence from Wright’s work.

Walter Griffin left Frank Lloyd Wright’s office in late 1905 and set up his own private practice at Steinway Hall. By 1909, he had a wide variety of commissions including more than 12 houses, a clubhouse, and a library.

When Griffin entered the design field, nature was to be his great source of inspiration. This was combined with a search for pure form – a geometric, abstract ideal – inspired by the patterns of nature. This love of nature was evident not only in his and Marion Mahony Griffin’s work, but also in their personal lives.

Griffin’s visits as a school student in 1893 to the World Columbian Exposition, which became known as the Chicago Fair, were inspirational for him, and he was motivated to become a landscape architect. However there was no tuition in this discipline at the time so he studied architecture instead, graduating from the University of Illinois in 1899. Whilst at Chicago, 1912

Walter Burley Griffin designed houses, Chicago. Photographer: Peter Wille. Source: State Library Victoria

The Early Years:

MarioN

Marion Mahony Griffin was born in 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 schoolteacher. Her family moved to nearby Winnetka after the Great Chicago fire.

Growing up, she became fascinated by the quickly disappearing landscape as suburban homes filled the area.

Marion graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1894. She was the second woman in the United States to gain a degree in architecture. In 1898 she was the first woman to complete registration examinations to qualify for the practice of architecture.

After graduation, Mahony worked in her cousin Dwight Perkins’ architecture firm, which was located in Steinway Hall. The space was shared with many other architects, including Robert C. Spencer, Myron Hunt, Webster Tomlinson, Irving Pond and Allen Bartlitt Pond, Birch Long and Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1895, Mahony, the first employee hired by Frank Lloyd Wright, went to work designing buildings, furniture, stained glass windows, and decorative panels. Her beautiful watercolor renderings of buildings and landscapes became known as a staple of Wright’s style, though she was never given credit by the famous architect.

Marion was associated with Wright’s studio for almost 15 years and was an important contributor to his reputation, particularly for the influential Wasmuth Portfolio, for which Mahony created more than half of the numerous renderings.

When Wright eloped to Europe in 1909, he offered the studio’s work to Mahony. She declined.

Hermann V. Von Holst, who had taken on Wright’s commissions, hired Mahony with the stipulation that she would have control of design of the more difficult commissions.

Marion Mahony was the architect for a number of commissions Wright had abandoned. Two examples were the first (unbuilt) design for Henry Ford’s Dearborn mansion, Fair Lane and the Amberg House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Though highly talented, she sometimes struggled with her place in both society and the architectural field. Over a century later she would be known as one of the greatest artistic renderers in the field of architecture, but during her life her talent was seen as only an extension of the work done by male architects. It may be asked why this strong woman was content to remain in the shadow of her husband.

Celebrated for her graphic and artistic skills, Marion was the functional backbone of the offices in the US, Australia, and India. She never sought personal credit for any of her output under the banner ‘Walter Burley Griffin: Architect and Landscape Architect’.

WalteR & MarioN Marion Mahony recommended Walter Burley Griffin to Von Holst to develop landscaping for the area surrounding the three houses in a private street in Illinois.

Every weekend in the summer months from 1909 to 1911, Mahony and Griffin would go on extended canoeing expeditions, exploring the streams and rivers of Illinois. They married in Michigan City, Indiana, on June 29, 1911.

After their marriage, Marion went to work for Walter, becoming his partner professionally and personally. Marion became chief draftsman in the Griffin office. She began to use her pen to breathe life into all of Walter’s designs.

horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad eaves, windows assembled in horizontal bands, solid construction, craftsmanship, and restraint in the use of decoration.

The joint life work of Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin amounts to some 281 architectural, planning and landscape projects of which 178 were built.

In the United States around 76 out of 114 projects were realized; in Australia 95 out of 130; and in India 7 out of 37. Houses and planned communities made up the bulk of the American commissions. In their 21 years in Australia (1914–1935) the range of work included Canberra, five new towns, several suburban communities, three campus plans, houses, industrial buildings (primarily incinerators) and some commercial buildings.

Marion’s autobiography The Magic of America describes her role in the partnership with Walter, both as ‘a forceful intellectual and spiritual muse to a more retiring, yet equally strong minded Walter’.

The Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony designed community that is home to an outstanding collection of Prairie School dwellings, Rock Crest Rock Glen in Mason City Iowa, is seen as the most dramatic American designed development of the decade. Prairie School style architecture is usually marked by its integration with the surrounding landscape,

Left: Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Castlecrag, 1930.

Photographer, Dr Jorma Pohjanpalo. Source: National Library of Australia

The Canberra CommissioN On May 23, 1912, the Griffins received a telegram in their offices in downtown Chicago from Melbourne, Australia that would mark a defining point in their careers.

The Griffins had spent nine weeks from September 1911 preparing and submitting the design and presentation of an entry for the international competition for the design of Australia’s federal capital.

They first heard about the competition while on honeymoon and worked feverishly to prepare the plans. There were 137 entries from around the world, and the Griffins’ entry, No 29 in the name of Walter Burley Griffin, was announced by the Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley, on May 23, 1912, as the winner.

Top: Perspective of the Canberra development drawn by Marion.

Above: Perspective view of Canberra drawn by Marion c1912

Sydney Morning Herald 19 August 1913

Back in 1908, the Canberra site was chosen for Australia’s national capital after years of contentious debate over proposals for at least 60 locations. Canberra was to be built on sheep grazing land, approximately halfway between Sydney and Melbourne. In 1911, an international competition for the design of the capital was announced. King O’Malley, a member of the Federal House of Representatives and Minister for Home Affairs declared Australia’s national capital would rival “London in size, Athens in art, and Paris in beauty.”

Walter’s design allowed him to fully integrate his ideas on landscape, town planning and democracy. Marion’s drawings of Walter’s plans were immense in scope; eight feet wide and 30 feet long, beautifully visualising and illustrating his plans.

His design was hailed internationally for its creativity in layout and ability to incorporate the natural setting. Generous green space was included, tree lined avenues were part of the comprehensive road system, and residential areas had open spaces, playgrounds, churches, clubs and public transport. All these elements would be later incorporated into the design of Griffith.

Canberra under construction.

Source: New York Times, 16 January 1927

Walter was quoted as saying: “The Australian authorities may merely adopt my ground plan and fill in the architectural details to suit themselves.

However, if my plan is carried out in all its details, I think the Australian capital will be the most beautiful city in history. I do not know now whether I will be called to Australia to superintend the construction... I hope so. I rather expect I shall. It would only be fair to me. I do not know what type of architecture I should adopt. I have planned a city not like any other in the world. I have planned not in a way that I expected any government in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city - a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future...”

Griffin’s Canberra entry placed Capitol Hill at the centre of the city, as the nation’s physical and symbolic centre. Wide tree-lined avenues radiated from it towards all state capital cities. The plan was distinctive in how its structure and geometry sensitively related to the natural terrain of the site. A land and a water axis linked key elements Mount Ainslie and Capitol Hill. A water axis linked Black Mountain and a series of lake basins to its east. A third axis ran parallel to it from City Hill to Russell Hill. Lines through these points formed a great triangle at the city’s heart.

Griffin’s win of this international competition made him an instant celebrity in Chicago and in Australia. He was invited to visit the Canberra site in July of 1913 and he fell in love with the Australian landscape.

He returned to Chicago after three months restless about his future.

Around this time he received a letter from the University of Illinois offering him the position as head of the Department of Architecture. But the lure of Australia won Walter’s heart and soul.

He had been offered the role of Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction on a threeyear contract. He was also granted six months’ leave to settle his affairs.

Before departing for Chicago, Griffin made revisions to his initial plan for the capital and also finalised the conditions for a Parliament House competition open to international and local entrants. He received many requests for explanations of the Federal Capital project in Australia and he delivered about 15 public lectures across several US states.

Above: Renderings of Canberra by Marion.

Right: View of the Molonglo River [?] possibly somewhere near the site for Canberra.

Source: National Library of Australia

Life in

Australia By the time Walter and Marion Griffin left Chicago for Australia in 1914 to create the new capital city, they had produced a remarkable body of work of more than 130 designs.

The Canberra design commission was difficult.

Walter spent years battling to see his ideas come to fruition in Canberra. After six years of work, the frustrating obstacles created by the bureaucrats and politicians became too great and Walter Griffin was forced to resign from the project on December 31, 1920.

As well as ‘Canberra’ work in Australia, Griffin designed innovative suburban residential subdivision estates starting with Mount Eagle (1914) and Glenard (1916) in Heidelberg, Melbourne. Both featured curving streets following topography and allowing enjoyment of views and appreciation of the landscape, with internal block reserves at the rear where children could safely play.

He also suggested controls on the size, type and materials of houses to be built. As well, he designed campuses for three universities. This was in addition to his inclusion of the Australian National University site in his Canberra plan, schemes for the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne’s Newman College and a competitive design for the University of Western Australia.

Just as the Griffins stressed the necessity for creating architecture in sympathy with its landscape setting, so their designs for furniture and interiors expressed the aesthetic of their architecture. These elements included striking modernist carpets and stained glass lighting, windows and decorative plaster work. Such was the importance to Walter and Marion of integrated interior schemes that they even designed their own furniture for their offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

Top right: Café Australia Source: National Library of Australia Centre right: Portrait of Walter Burley Griffin in the Roy Lippincott house, Heidelberg, Victoria, ca. 1921, sitting in a couch chair designed by Griffin for Newman College, University of Melbourne. Source: National Library of Australia Centre right: Front elevation of proposed Opera House for Sydney, ca. 1935, designed by Walter Burley Griffin. Source: National Library of Australia Bottom far right: Walter & Marion “Lippincott”, Heidelberg, Victoria, 1918. Source: National Library of Australia. Right: Chair designed by Walter Burley Griffin.

determined the authorities are that nothing beautiful shall be left in Sydney, or anywhere else in this beautiful country”.

The Natural

Landscape The Griffins immersed themselves in social circles and often bushwalked around Melbourne, Canberra and Tasmania, getting to know native soils, plant communities, and growing requirements.

Marion Mahony prepared extensive lists in books grouping native plants by seasonal flower colour, for use in Walter’s ‘colour-specific’ landscape schemes. Plans for re-vegetating Canberra’s then degraded hills such as Mugga Mugga, Red Hill, Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie aimed to ‘paint’ the hills in single colour vegetation assemblages using wattles, bottlebrushes and other native plantings.

Marion Mahony’s beautiful series of ‘forest portraits’ - 28 tree studies in pen and ink and wash - records the diversity of forest types, the unique beauty and form of these ensembles at a time most Australian gardens were rose, dahlia and gladioli-mad, and relatively few were championing native plants.

Her breathtakingly beautiful works included the publication of her 1918-1919 Tasmanian Forest drawings. She found that in Tasmania, the “color runs riot” and the bark of the Eucalyptus tree “completely red, so fiery that paint cannot reproduce it. It was like a flame shooting up to meet the setting sun.”

Mahony especially captures this in the exhibits striking Eucalyptus Urnigera Tasmania/Scarlet Bark, Sunset, where she not only shows a landscape crimson with sunset, but transcends the traditional way of illustrating plants as isolated specimens in favour of depicting them intertwined into a rich ecosystem.

The Griffins did not exclusively use natives, also favouring the odd dramatic exotic plant such as a bougainvillea or wisteria draped over a pergola.

However care was taken to make gardens fit with, or complement, their natural setting rather than shout their difference.

Marion loved the natural landscape and it’s reported that she even bandaged up ring-barked trees! In a letter to Miles Franklin she stated “it is enough to make one’s hair stand on end how

Left and Top: Paintings and booklets created by Marion Above: Marion (front left) and Walter (rear right) in the mountains with friends

Feminist

IdealS Scholars suggest that Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin first met famous Australian author (Stella) Miles Franklin at Hull House in Chicago.

Hull House from its inception in 1889 became “a community of university women” whose main purpose was to provide social and educational opportunities for working class people (many of them recent European immigrants) in the surrounding neighbourhood. The “residents” (volunteers at Hull were given this title) held classes in literature, history, art, domestic activities (such as sewing), and many other subjects.

Hull House also held concerts that were free to everyone, offered free lectures on current issues, and operated clubs for both children and adults.

Miles Franklin, best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, met and befriended some prominent feminists, including Rose Scott and Vida Goldstein. These friendships kindled her interest in women’s suffrage and inspired her next adventure – a move to the United States in 1906. She spent nine years in Chicago working for the National Women’s Trade Union League of America.

Miles authored a memoir for The Catholic Women’s Review in Sydney, describing her visits to Hull House. Miles and Marion shared a common culture. It is reported that Miles and the Griffins had a friendship that lasted three decades.

Letter to Marion from Stella Miles Franklin.

Source: New York Historical Society ‘Leeton June 17 1937

Dear Mrs Griffin, Here I am in this beautifully planned new town and I had forgotten that it owed its distinction to the same master who created Canberra.

The kurrajongs are particularly lovely and the lines of gums everywhere are commanding.

Stella Franklin’ Left: Stella Miles Franklin, c1906

Marion:

The Artist Many believe that Marion Mahony Griffin’s drawings were a major factor in the Canberra design entry’s success. Florence Taylor, the first woman to qualify and practice professionally as an architect in Australia wrote that the Griffins’ submission ‘stood out with wonderful force’, not just because of the design but equally due to ‘the wonderful manner in which the work was depicted’. Marion also illustrated much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early work.

Her superb renderings are works of art in their own right. They are infused with sepia, gold and other luminescent tones. Marion could have been one of the most famous architects of the period in her own right, with her now being recognized as an “unsung genius”.

In addition to her professional architectural work, Marion Mahony was a keen horticulturist, graphic designer and painter. Her artwork includes portrait miniatures, a large mural, ‘Fairies Feeding the Herons’ in a Rogers Park school (1931) and portraits of Australian trees on silk.

Left: Workman with pottery, 1912 Centre: Pedestal for flower basket, 1912 Right: Woman at china cabinet, 1912 Above: Faries feeding the herons, 1931

The Griffith CommissioN In parallel with the plans for a national capital for the recently created Commonwealth of Australia, the New South Wales Government was creating its own nation-building scheme based on a vision of greening the parched interior by damming the waters of the Murrumbidgee River for irrigation.

The Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission (WC & IC), formerly the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Trust, was a statutory body established to manage matters related to the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) as well as the construction and management of future irrigation areas and districts.

The Commission, led by Commissioner Leslie Augustus Burton Wade, engaged Walter Burley Griffin to design the NSW towns of Griffith and Leeton, about 550kms west of Sydney, to service the MIA. Wade had a grand vision of creating a huge oasis of prosperous, intensive farms operated by energetic families recruited through a world-wide campaign. His vision went beyond the physical infrastructure and the farms. He was looking to new railways to service the area, new business enterprises to handle and market the produce, processing facilities, power generation, domestic water supplies and commercial service centres to support the expected population. The crowning glory would be new cities and towns that reflected the grandeur of the scheme and the prosperity it would bring to inland Australia.

Commissioner Wade saw the opportunity to work with Walter Burley Griffin when he learned of his visit to Australia in 1913. Wade met with Griffin in Sydney and discussed his vision for the township of Griffith, a greenfield site five kilometres north of ‘Bagtown,’ a temporary construction settlement, where old cement bags from canal construction works were used as the main building material.

Griffin subsequently visited the area in October, 1913.

Top left: Renderings of Leeton and Griffith by Roy Lippincott Publications relating to the Panama Pacific Exposition, 1915

For his efforts Walter Burley Griffin was paid 100 pounds for the General Plan of Griffith with Explanation, and 25 pounds for the Perspective for Panama Pacific Exposition of the The Central District.

The two MIA towns were quite different in their designs. Griffin’s concept for Griffith was a formal town with the Main Canal taking a sweep around the planned focal centre and providing formal water gardens for aesthetic effect and recreation.

Leeton had an organic pattern, described as similar to London’s new towns. A long promenade was to lead up to a romantic medieval setting, set off by twin crenellated water towers.

Walter Burley Griffin envisioned Griffith as the capital of a large district, and planned the city for a projected population of 30,000. His plans display his skill for working with the landscape and a movement away from the rigid classical grids of colonial Australia. He was aware of making use of Ridge Park, now known as Scenic Hill, and the Main Canal, to relieve the monotony of the riverless plain.

Griffin’s plan for Griffith, called ‘The City Plan of Griffith,’ and published in the Irrigation Record of June 1915, had three key elements: a Civic Precinct crowning the central hill, a Public Open Space Corridor planned around the irrigation canal, and wide, tree-lined boulevards such as Banna Avenue.

At least 20 percent of the city was set aside for public open space.

Griffin planned to have a grand circle (now Benerembah Street) and for seven main avenues to radiate outwards from the central precinct.

Using this circle as a basis, Griffin also wanted individual service buildings, such as shops, theatres, schools, hotels and churches to be arranged near to one another in carefully planned groups, not scattered around on odd corners of the city. While the commercial focus of the city shifted to the shopping strip along Banna Avenue, the street pattern footprint of Griffin’s original layout is still evident today.

Griffin explained: These most important structures of the city will command the commercial axis and dominate the vistas in every direction…The central group thus governing the public architecture of the town as well as its affairs comprises the headquarters of the irrigation district, the Town Hall, the court house and subordinate public offices.

The public open space corridor is the most significant landscape feature of Griffin’s

Above: from “The Magic of America” Marion Mahony Griffin

town plan, incorporating park lands along the main canal, which skirts the civic centre and the four canal bridges, at Willandra, Murrumbidgee, Walla and Griffin Avenues. The key landscape effect was to be achieved by the main irrigation channel, which Griffin saw as ‘a sweeping curve round the central portion of the city and by two enlargements of the waterway’.

Even though Burley Griffin designed Griffith, he didn’t supervise its construction. As a result, many of the things he had in mind for the town didn’t eventuate. World War 1 delayed progress and the first permanent buildings were not built until 1920. In another twist of fate Commissioner Wade died on 12 January 1915 before the project commenced. Marion later wrote “Mr Wade’s death was Mr Griffin’s first heartbreak in Australia”.

The first auction sale of business sites was held in July 1916. However, the authorities ignored the grand circle of surveyed sites and decided to auction all the blocks along one avenue. As the sale continued, the sites along Banna Avenue became cheaper and so the prospective merchants started buying them whilst Griffin’s vision disappeared.

The railway station was supposed to be built closer to the central area about where the aquatic centre is now located, but this was relocated from the original concept. Retail and commerce naturally preferred to be located nearer the railway station and so Banna Avenue developed as the business centre, further diluting Griffin’s original concept.

Griffith was gazetted on 4 August, 1916 and was named after Arthur Hill Griffith, the first NSW Minister for Public Works.

Right: Hon. Arthur Griffith

The

CastlecraG ERA When Walter terminated his work on Canberra, the couple focused on creating a modern residential suburban development in Sydney that was sympathetic to the Australian natural environment, as they firmly believed development should not lead to the destruction of natural features.

The Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA) was formed in 1920 and within a few months it bought 650 acres (263 hectares) of land in Middle Harbour that became known as the suburbs of Castlecrag, Middle Cove and Castle Cove.

Castlecrag was developed first. The Griffins moved to Castlecrag from Melbourne in 1925 and lived there for the next 10 years. This was their most substantial ‘model suburb’ planning work in Australia, a vehicle for their diverse talents and a model to try to remake Australian society. Both were active public advocates for the estate, giving talks and writing in magazines. Walter Griffin asserted that better environments with increased numbers of lots, together with community open space, could be created by careful planning that respected the landscape character of the site itself.

He stated: “I want Castlecrag to be built so that each individual can feel the whole landscape is his. No fences, no boundaries, no red roofs to spoil the Australian landscape: these are some of the features that will distinguish Castlecrag.”

Also at the heart of the Griffins’ vision for Castlecrag was establishing a sense of community and focusing on its needs. The pair believed this could be achieved by encouraging social interaction, providing opportunities for people to contribute to their community and planning many parks and recreational spaces.

Walter designed more than 40 houses for Castlecrag but the Depression and other factors intervened and only 15 houses were built.

The Depression made a severe impact on workflow. However an association with Leonard

Kanevsky and the Reverberatory Incinerator and Engineering Company (REICo) he established, resulted in a very productive relationship during these years. In 1929 the Griffins formed a partnership with Eric Nicholls, architect in charge of their Melbourne office, to design incinerators for REICo. This resulted in highly creative and diverse designs that transformed an otherwise purely utilitarian function into sculptural elements in their landscapes that were as Griffin put it ‘attractive social conveniences’. Nearly 30 incinerators were designed, 13 of which were constructed, and 7 of which survive.

Top: House. Lot 331. (No. 15) The Citadel. Castlecrag. Sydney, Source: State Library of Victoria Top (second): Exterior view of Moon House, 12 The Parapet, Lot 54, Castlecrag, Sydney, New South Wales. Source: National Library of Australia Top left: Rendering by Marion c1936, Top (second) left: Caricature by LF Reynolds, 1926 Bottom: Cappy Deans, Marion Mahony Griffin, Walter Burley Griffin, and George Walter Griffin in the Griffin’s garden at Castlecrag, New South Wales, ca. 1930.

Source: National Library of Australia

Walter & Marion in

IndiA

Thanks to connections with a friend in India, Walter won a commission to design a library for the University of Lucknow, India.

He traveled to India in 1935 and Marion joined him the next year. He had planned to stay just three months to complete the drawings for the university library but he was entranced by India, and was inundated with new commissions. They soon developed a flourishing practice and in less than a year, oversaw the design of many buildings there.

In the two years Walter lived in India, he and Marion designed 95 projects, including 53 for the United Provinces exhibition in Lucknow that included a stadium, numerous pavilions, rotundas, arcades and towers.

Walter died in India in 1937 of peritonitis following complications after gall bladder surgery.

Marion stayed on for a few weeks finishing some of his plans before being persuaded to return to Australia. Walter Burley Griffin is buried in Lucknow.

MarioN: 1936 to 1961 Several months after Walter’s death, Marion returned to Australia but life at Casltecrag was too hard without her husband.

She decided to return to Chicago in 1938. Before she did, Marion made a final trip to see Canberra, the city she and her husband helped create, wanting to view it from the summit of Mount Ainslie. She was reported to have said: “The development of Canberra...exceeded all expectations and there was no reason why Canberra could not become one of the most beautiful cities in the world.”

When Marion went back to the US, peace activist and founder of the Campaign for World Government, Lola Lloyd (1875–1944) gave her two commissions: a World Fellowship Center in Conway, New Hampshire and the Hills and Rosary Crystals subdivision near Boerne, Texas.

The Texas plan for the Hills and Rosary Crystals subdivision revived earlier approaches to community planning. The 388-acre site for the World Fellowship Center offered Marion the opportunity to explore again ideas about community planning and democracy. Neither proceeded following Lloyd’s death.

During this time Marion wrote The Magic of America, a memorial to her life with Griffin and his life’s work. This lengthy manuscript (over 1,000 pages) is organized into four sections or ‘battles’: Empirial (sic) Battle (India), Federal Battle (Canberra), Municipal Battle (Castlecrag) and Individual Battle (the Griffins’ relationship). She finished it in 1949. It was never published but is now available online at artic.edu/magicofamerica Marion died in Chicago in 1961, aged 90.

Though she lived 24 years after Walter’s death, she did little in her elderly years to further advance her own architectural career.

In 2015, the beach at Jarvis Avenue in Rogers Park, Chicago, was named in honour of Marion Mahony Griffin. The former Australian Counsel General, Roger Price, initiated the project to rename the beach for the woman who was instrumental in the design of the Australian capital.

The Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society endorsed the dedication, stating: “The naming of one of the beaches for Marion Mahony Griffin will keep before beachgoers the model of a vastly talented woman who not only broke down barriers by entering a field still today dominated by men but became one of the foremost innovators of the twentieth century.”

The Griffin

LegacY In 1964 when Canberra finally got its central lake (as Griffin had intended), Prime Minister Robert Menzies declined to have the lake named after himself, and he instead named it Lake Burley Griffin.

This became the first monument in Canberra dedicated to the city’s designer.

Then in 1996 a major road thoroughfare “Burley Griffin Way” was named as the road connects two Burley Griffin designed cities Canberra and Griffith.

A Griffith heritage study completed in 2005 has identified the Griffin plan and ideas as an important part of its heritage, worthy of closer focus in future planning, plantings and interpretation.

Recommendations are put forward to enhance this through revised development controls to reinforce the streetscape intended by Griffin, and through design guidelines for new development and targeted street tree planting to reinforce the street hierarchy.

In 2006, the National Library of Australia acquired a vast collection from the children of the Griffins’ Australian partner Eric Milton Nicholls. The Nicholls Collection had been assembled over 40 years and included more than 2,500 items such as letters, essay drafts, newspaper cuttings, and a range of paperwork associated with an architectural office.

Recognition of these two highly significant figures in Australia’s history, Walter and Marion Griffin, continues to grow. Their belief that through architecture and the design of livable cities, civilisations can grow in harmony with the landscape highlighted a change in the power of good design.

Their activities spanning several continents and cultures, drawing on diverse conceptual sources, tackled some of the biggest jobs then available, and produced distinctive designs and structures which often seem ahead of their time. Griffin’s surviving buildings are now valued as part of Australia’s architectural history.

Their often ground breaking far-sighted environmental, community, spiritual and creative ideas underpinned their life and work, and we are the beneficiaries of their vision.

....”I am what may be termed a naturalist in architecture. I do not believe in any school of architecture. I believe in architecture That is the logical outgrowth of the environment in which the building in mind is to be located”.... WBG