Griffin Society 13th Annual Meeting
Set For 23 June 2012
In Minneapolis, Minnesota
The thirteenth annual meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America will be held in Minneapolis on Saturday, 23 June 2012, with an optional tour on Sunday, 24 June. Because of the nature of this year’s meeting, pre-registration and pre-payment are required by 15 May. The cost will be $45 for the Saturday meeting and tour, and $15 for the optional Sunday tour. As usual, registrants must also have paid their annual dues of $25 to the Society. The meeting is being co-sponsored by the Northwest Architectural Archives. [Registration Form]
Similar to last year, the meeting will be centered around the work of the Griffins’ mentors and associates among the architects of the Prairie School, including most importantly Purcell & Elmslie. A special showing of the Griffin material held at the Northwest Architectural Archives (NAA) of the University of Minnesota has been arranged. The meeting is being coordinated by architectural historian Richard L. Kronick and Griffin Society member John Clouse.
The meeting will begin Saturday morning at the Elmer L.Andersen Library of the University of Minnesota, 222 21st Ave South, Minneapolis (located on the West bank campus and home to the NAA). The registration desk will open at 8:30am, with the meeting to begin at 9:00am. Morning lectures include a “show and tell” by archivist Barbara Bezat of material from the archives related to the Griffins; Paul Kruty’s account of the relationship between Walter Burley Griffin and William Gray Purcell; and a discussion of the spiritual meaning and symbolism found in the architecture of Purcell & Elmslie presented by Richard Kronick, who will also introduce us to the buildings to be visited on the afternoon tour.
Because we are meeting in a major urban area, we have organized the afternoon events in a more controlled manner than is our norm. Thus, we will be traveling to the sites in a single bus. To keep to our schedule, we will be providing a box lunch beforehand. There are also entrance fees to two of the sites. Thus, we will need to charge $45 a person for the meeting. We will be limiting the number of attendees to 56 (the number of seats on the bus) and require that everyone planning to attend register by 15 May.
A box lunch will be delivered to each registrant at the Andersen Library at noon and at 12:45pm we will board a bus for the afternoon tour. Sites open to us will include three buildings by Purcell & Elmslie: the E. M. Powers house (1910), the Purcell-Cutts house (1913 & 1915), and the Stewart Memorial Church (1909); and a wonderful Prairie style house by local architect Kirby T. Snyder (1915). The tour will last from 1:00—5:00pm. Note: Richard Kronick, our tour guide, provided a good introduction to Prairie School and Arts & Crafts architecture in Minneapolis—including information and photos of all four buildings on the tour—in last fall’s issue of Style 1900 (v.24 no. 3), pp. 54-61.
Saturday evening is open.
The Sunday optional tour, the cost of which is $15, will take us to Owatonna, some fifty miles south of Minneapolis. Taking your own cars this time (and leaving Minneapolis by 8:00am!), we will meet at 9:15am at Louis Sullivan’s National Farmers’ Bank (being opened specially for us on this Sunday, courtesy of John Clouse’s winning charm and with pertinent remarks by Paul Sprague, who first wrote about the bank more than forty years ago); then visit Purcell & Elmslie’s J. H. Adair house (1913), and two houses on the Gainey campus of the University of St. Thomas in Owatonna: the Gainey house (1953) by Edwin Lundie and Frank Gehry’s Winton guest house (1982), originally built on Lake Minnetonka but, facing demolition, subsequently moved to Owatonna and opened last fall. The tour will be over by 1:00pm. Lunch is on your own (there are plenty of restaurants in Owatonna), but you are advised to bring a few munchies along.
While in Minneapolis, members might wish to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts at 2400 Third Avenue South, which has a wonderful permanent exhibit about the Prairie School era. The museum is open only until 5:00pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but has late hours on Thursday—until 9:00pm.
The nearest hotel to the Andersen library is the Holiday Inn Metrodome at 1500 Washington Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55454 (1-612-333-4646 or 1-800-593-5708).
To join in these exciting events—and we hope to see you all—please register using this registration form ASAP. Remember, we can only accept the first 56 people, and will have to close registration on 15 May. The tour has only 15 openings - sign up soon!
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