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9TH ANNUAL GRIFFIN SOCIETY MEETING, LECTURES & TOUR
JUNE 14, 2008 IN GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
The ninth annual meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America will be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday, June 14th. The morning meeting and lectures will be held at the Fountain Street Church, a 1923 Italian Romanesque style building with a chapel designed by Alden Dow.
For driving directions go to Google and type in “Fountain Street Church” . The first option on Google is the Fountain Street Church homepage along with a map. Click on the map for complete driving instructions.
You can also visit the Fountain Street Church website at: www.fountainstreet.org
Events begin bright and early, with the registration desk open at 8:30 am. The general meeting will commence at 9:00 am with the first of three lectures planned for the morning session. Our first speaker will be Tom Logan. Tom and his wife, Anne, are the owners of the D. M. Amberg House. Tom’s talk will cover several topics including some background and history of Grand Rapids, and the development of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Tom will also talk about the historical context for the construction of the Meyer May House and the D. M. Amberg House. Paul Kruty’s lecture will focus on Marion Mahony, Frank Lloyd Wright and the May and Amberg Houses. Following a coffee break, Richard Mohr will lecture on the art tiles in Prairie School buildings. We will then have an introduction to the afternoon tours and the reception which follows. The meeting will conclude by 12 noon and lunch will be on your own.
The afternoon tours will focus on a walking tour of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Within this walking tour are three main attractions.
- First is the Rowe House, which is a local architect’s interpretation of a Frank Lloyd Wright’s “fireproof house for $5000”. The Rowe House will be open to our group between the hours of 1:30 pm and 3:30 pm.
- The next house is the Meyer May House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908 and built in 1909. The Meyer May House will be open to our group between the hours of 2:30 pm and 4:30 pm.
- The final stop on the tour is the D. M. Amberg House, which was designed in 1909 by Von Holst and Marion Mahony. The Amberg House will be open to our group starting at 4:00 pm. This is also the location of the reception for our group, which should end by about 6:00 pm.
In addition to this walking tour we are offering two optional driving tours of the Grand Rapids area. We will have maps available for you to pick up at the meeting, or if you plan to arrive in Grand Rapids the day before the meeting, we can provide these maps by email or regular mail. If you would like to receive these maps in advance, please send an email to: info@wbgriffinsociety.org
Accommodations are available at several hotels and B&B’s in Grand Rapids. Downtown hotels include:
- Courtyard by Marriott Downtown, 11 Monroe Avenue, NW, 616.242.6000 or 800.321.2211
- Days Hotel Downtown, 310 Pearl Street, NW, 616.235.7611 or 800.329.7466
- Radisson Riverfront, 270 Ann Street, NW, 616.363.9001 or 800.333.3333
PLEASE REGISTER by JUNE 1ST for this program by emailing the Society at: info@wbgriffinsociety.org
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ROCK CREST / ROCK GLEN HOUSE TOURS
JUNE 21, 2008 IN MASON CITY, IOWA
Schedule of the tour day & details:
- 8:00 AM MacNider: Art Museum, 303 2nd St SE.
- Orientation slide show and instructions for the day.
- Walking tours of homes begin after orientation, end at 4:30.
- Lunch on your own, nearby restaurants -- maps available at MacNider Museum.
- Stockman House open 9:00 till 4:30. Tours take about 45 minutes.
- TOURS LIMITED TO 125 people.
- Application Deadline June 1
- Charge for Tour: $30.00 / person.
Please reserve your tour slot by sending check with name, address, phone, email address to:
Bob McCoy Chair,
Stockman House Operating Committee
River City Society for Historic Preservation
431 First St. SE
Mason City, IA 50401
(Net proceeds will go to funding construction of Mason City Architectural Interpretive Center in association with Stockman House.)
BUILDINGS ON TOUR:
Frank Lloyd Wright house:
- George & Eleanor Stockman house 1908
530 First St. NE
Five Walter Burley Griffin houses:
- Sam Schneider house 1915
525 E. State Street
- Art Rule house 1912
11 Rock Glen
- Harry Page house 1912
21 Rock Glen
- James Blythe house 1913
431 First Street SE
- Joshua Melson house 1912-14
56 River Heights Drive
Two Barry Byrne houses:
- Hugh Gilmore house 1915
511 E. State Street
- E V Franke house 1917
507 E State Street
William Drummond house:
- Curtis Yelland house 1910
7 River Heights Drive
Curtis Besinger Usonian house:
- Tom MacNider house
15 Rock Glen
Frank Lloyd Wright Bank and Hotel:
- Park Inn Hotel
- City National Bank Building
4 & 15 W State Street
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8TH ANNUAL MEETING AND TOUR
The annual meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society was held on Saturday, June 16, in Decatur, Illinois. Over 100 people attended the meeting.
Our day began with six lectures/presentations at the Kirkland Fine Arts Center on the campus of Millikin University:
Peter Griffin, president of the Society, welcomed everyone and presented the highlights of the organization's annual report.
Mike Jackson gave an in-depth talk on "The Restoration of the Dana-Thomas House", Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece in Springfield, Illinois.
Anthony Rubano talked about the "Tax Incentives for Historic Houses" in Illinois. If you own a historic house and are planning to restore/renovate it, contact Anthony for his tax advice.
Paul Kruty, board member for the Society, presented "Understanding Griffin's Gilbert Cooley House".
Lauren B. Wagner, from the Cooley House Foundation, talked about their organization and "Rescuing and Restoring Griffin's Cooley House".
Paul Kruty then prepared us for the afternoon tours with "An Introduction to Millikin Place".
Also on display at Kirkland Fine Arts Center were Mati Maldre's fabulous exhibit "Photographs of the Prairie School in Decatur, Illinois and Monroe, Louisiana"
In the afternoon, we toured the four exquisite houses on Millikin Place (#1,#2, #3, #4) .
To cap off a perfect day, a reception for all attendees was held at the Adolph Mueller House (#4 Millikin Place). A good time was had by all!  |
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EVANSTON HOSTS SOCIETY'S SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING AND TOURS
By Peggy Lami
Some 150 scholars and admirers of the work of the Griffins gathered at the Evanston Public Library on the third weekend in June for the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America. On this beautiful Saturday morning, members and interested guests met, got acquainted, or were reacquainted, while gathering the day’s materials from a concrete bench as they waited for the building to open. Once inside the first-floor lecture room, Peter Burley Griffin welcomed the group, which included those traveling from across the Midwest and from as far away as Buffalo, NY, and central Florida. The day began with a series of presentations in preparation for an afternoon of touring in Wilmette, Evanston, and Rogers Park.
Marion Mahony Griffin and The Magic of America
Mary K. Woolever, Art & Architecture Archivist at the Art Institute of Chicago, described the six existing drafts of Marion Mahony Griffin’s memoir, The Magic of America. The final and most complete revision is held at the New York Historical Society. Woolever recapped Mahony Griffin’s 40-year effort which combines typed essays, transcriptions of letters, sketches, and drawings in a chronologically reversed summation of the Griffins’ partnership in their work and in their lives.
Some 40 years after the author's death, the oft-excerpted tome has never been published. Surviving in print, on microfilm, and on DVD, the manuscript will be given an additional method for viewing by 2007, according to Woolever. Digital scanning will allow reading and searching by the use of keywords. Internet access to copy the text and graphics from all 1400 pages of The Magic of America will finally place this rich resource before the public.
Researching and Writing the History of the Chicago Architectural Club
Intending to compile a history of architecture clubs and their influence on American building, Will Hasbrouck of Prairie Avenue Bookshop, Ltd., uncovered enough information to base an entire volume solely on the Chicago Architectural Club (CAC). In The Chicago Architectural Club: Prelude to the Modern, Hasbrouck recounted the history of the CAC and Walter Burley Griffin’s connection to the organization. Founded by Irving K. Pond in 1887, the CAC held its last show in 1931. In 640 episodic pages, Hasbrouck explains the origin of the CAC and many other architecture clubs as a support system for fledgling architects seeking instruction and networking opportunities. He shared slides of meeting notices, news reports, and exhibit catalogs. Members of the club circulated in and out of various downtown Chicago firms before gaining reputations that would warrant opening their own offices.
The famed studio in the shared attic of Steinway Hall is particularly featured in Hasbrouck's book. He recounted how Dwight Perkins, working for Daniel Burnham, designed Steinway Hall, and soon gained the confidence and experience to take a large space in Steinway Hall to establish his own firm. Both Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney worked for Dwight Perkins.
Griffin's Ridge Quadrangles
Walter Burley Griffin’s Ridge Quadrangles development was presented by Paul E. Sprague, Professor Emeritus of Architectural History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Sprague compared and contrasted the Griffin-designed development at the boundary of Evanston with another of his projects planned for Grinnell, Iowa. Sprague explained many interested facts, including just how the latest date for the design of the Ridge Quadrangles appears to be December 1911. All of this will appear in the complete catalog of Griffin's American work that Sprague is finishing with his colleague, Paul Kruty.
Restoring Griffin's Moulton House
Betsy Downs, Chicago architect and, with her husband, Moulton house owner described her restoration of this Griffin house from 1908. The house in the Birchwood Beach section of Rogers Park was included in afternoon tours. Betsy Downs grew up in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sam Epstein House, a Usonian in The Acres development of Galesburg, MI. In 1998 she and her husband purchased the Moulton House with intentions to slowly bring it back to its original form. Ice damage following a winter storm in 1999 brought the project immediacy. Using clues revealed through removal of damaged elements, Downs is returning most of the house to its original appearance, while updating infrastructure and amending some decorative elements.
Griffin designed the house for J. Benjamin Moulton, an auditor for International Harvester, his wife, their son, and Mrs. Moulton’s mother. Large spans of the nearly twenty-four-foot square living room were accomplished by iron tie-rods hung from the rafters. Included in “Some Houses by Walter Burley Griffin” from a 1910 Architectural Record, Griffin used photographs of the exterior and the living room for the first appearance of his work in a major publication.
Touring Evanston and Rogers Park with Griffin and Hunt
Paul Kruty, Professor of Architectural History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, prepared participants for the afternoon tours in Wilmette, Evanston, and Chicago. With his usual clarity, he explained what would be seen, where it would be seen, and why it would be seen. (Actually, some of us would listen if this speaker read the telephone book.) The tour has been organized by Jon Pohl, a Chicago architect, newly arrived from Orlando, Florida, but who lived in Evanston for twenty years before moving to Florida ten years ago. Jon is clearly a great addition to our Griffin group.
Lining the streets around Griffin's Hurd Comstock houses and the Carter house are buildings by many architects known to the group, i.e. the Griffins, W.W. Boyington, Joseph Lyman Silsbee, George Maher, Charles R. Ayars, Atchison & Edbrooke, Holabird & Roche, Asa Lyon, Myron Hunt, and William A. Otis. An annotated map prepared by Jon Pohl was provided for exterior tours of the area, to fit into the schedule for the afternoon, or for a leisurely return visit on another day.
Following a lunch break, the tours began at 1:00pm. The following houses were specially described in the tour notes and, except for the Comstock and Bovee houses, all were open to the group. Included in the tour were six houses designed by Walter Burley Griffin: the R. V. Schwartz House (1909) at 116 6th Street in Wilmette, the two Hurd Comstock Houses (1911-12) at 1016 Church and 1631 Ashland in Evanston, the Mary Bovee Two-Flat House (1907-08) at 1710 Asbury in Evanston, the Frederick Carter House (1909-10) at 1024 Judson in Evanston, and the J. Benjamin Moulton House (1908) at 1328 W. Sherwin in Chicago. Two Myron Hunt houses were on the tour: the Myron Hunt House (1896) at 1627 Wesley in Evanston and the House for Higinbotham (1898) at 1606 Wesley in Evanston. We also toured the Emil Bach House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1915 at 7415 Sheridan Road in Chicago.
On Saturday evening the entire group was treated to an open house at the William Emery House in Elmhurst. Homeowners Tom and Terri Zusag provided food and beverages to all attendees in order to celebrate the completion of the Emery House renovation project. The house has been magnificently restored and is now a shining example of the work of architect Walter Burley Griffin. The Society wishes to thank Tom and Terri not only for their hospitality, but for their dedication over many years in restoring this masterpiece.
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GRINNELL IS A JEWEL FOR SOCIETY'S 2005 ANNUAL MEETING & TOURS
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The Walter Burley Griffin Society of America held its Sixth
Annual Meeting & Tours over the weekend of June 17-19,
2005 in Grinnell, Iowa. The focus of the program was the
Griffin designed Benjamin J. Ricker House (1911), which
is now owned and maintained by Grinnell College. However,
the City of Grinnell is known as “The Jewel of the
Prairie” because in addition to the Ricker House there
is the Merchants National Bank building designed by Louis
H. Sullivan in 1914, and the Charles R. Morse House designed
by George W. Maher in 1894.
The program began on Friday evening with a wine and cheese
reception at the Old Glove Factory, which once housed the
Morrison-Ricker Glove Company, a local manufacturer of gloves
and co-owned by Benjamin J. Ricker. In addition, attendees
were treated to the results of the Community Design Workshop
run by the Iowa Architectural Foundation. The purpose of
this workshop was to explore ways to improve Grinnell’s
Central Park area, which was once the home of the E.W.Clark
Memorial Fountain designed by Walter Burley Griffin in 1911,
and demolished in 1959.
The Saturday morning program began with Professor Paul
Kruty’s lecture on “The Griffins in Grinnell”.
Prof. Kruty talked about Griffin’s first Iowa commission,
the E.W. Clark Memorial Fountain, which he described as
practical and monumental, with its cast concrete walkways
and benches counterweighted by the “complex radial
symmetry” of its Greek cross central core-- “the
beginning of the crystalline forms which would dominate
his work.”
Benjamin Ricker, who was on the design committee for the
fountain, was so impressed with Griffin’s work, that
he commissioned Griffin to design his new house, the Ricker
House. The design of the Ricker House became a collaborative
effort between Griffin and his new wife, Marion Mahony.
The next speaker was Tim Samuelson, cultural historian for
the City of Chicago. Tim has been instrumental in celebrating
and protecting Chicago’s past for more than twenty-five
years, and has received the Studs Terkel Humanities Service
Award from the Illinois Humanities Council.
The attendees were delighted by Tim’s spirited lectures
on Louis Sullivan’s jewel-box banks on Saturday morning
as well as on Sunday morning inside the bank itself. Samuelson
said that Sullivan spent three days in Grinnell interviewing
people about the bank’s function and assessing the
streetscape as a whole before sketching the building we
see today with its unification of organic and inorganic
forms and “celebratory entrance”—part
building, part flower,” a model of beauty, comfort
and efficiency.
Donald Aucutt, editor and publisher of the George W. Maher
Quarterly was our next speaker. Don’s lecture: “A
Context for George W. Maher in Grinnell” focused on
Maher’s two Grinnell designs, the Morse House and
the Spencer House (1892). Aucutt describes these two houses
as “Edgewater” style, which “mixes arts
and crafts, Tudor and Queen Anne styles.”
The final speaker was Dustin Griffin, a grand-nephew of
Walter Burley Griffin and the older brother of Peter Burley
Griffin. Dustin’s lecture: “An Edition of the
Writings of Walter Burley Griffin” reveals that Walter
Burley Griffin was a prolific lecturer and writer from 1912
to 1937. Dustin is working on a scholarly edition of Walter
Burley Griffin’s texts, which have never been collected.
He feels that Walter Burley Griffin is under-recognized
as a writer and that he hopes his work will shed light on
the development of Walter Burley Griffin’s ideas.
On Saturday afternoon attendees took self-guided tours of
Grinnell’s architectural jewels.
This of course included the homes designed by Griffin and
Maher and the bank designed by Sullivan. In addition, several
home designed by Iowa architects were featured. These included
the Levi G. Lemley House (1914-Proudfoot, Bird & Rawson);
the J.G. Shifflet House (1919-Cleveland Mortimer); the Jesse
Fellows House (1914-18-Temple and Burrows); the W.S. Sanders
House (1914-Josselyn & Taylor); the E.H. Spaulding House
(1905-07-Hawlett and Rawson); and the Freeman House (1995),
a modern adaptation of a Prairie School style by architect
Dan Tindall.
A wine and cheese reception at the Ricker House on Saturday
evening brought all attendees together where they had the
opportunity to share their thoughts about the wonderful
architecture they had seen that day. As an added treat,
the Merchants National Bank building was opened that evening
for our attendees to view the beautiful stained glass windows
from inside the bank at sunset. This year’s program
in Grinnell attracted 136 participants. We can all feel
that our lives have been enriched by experiencing this city’s
wonderful architecture. Grinnell truly is a jewel.
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