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SYMPOSIUM ON MARION MAHONY GRIFFIN
HELD AT NORTHWESTERN’S BLOCK MUSEUM
By Sarah Downey
The long anticipated educational symposium on the life and work
of Marion Mahony Griffin drew scores of scholars and students
to Northwestern University on November 5, 2005. This symposium
was a highlight of the four-month long exhibition of her work
at the university's Block Museum of Art.
The discussion began with a presentation by James Weirick, professor
of landscape architecture at the University of New South Wales
in Sydney, who focused on the juxtaposition between Mahony’s
elaborate artistic style and its motifs, and the mystery of the
fundamental gaps the strange omissions and silences, as he called
them, found in her accounts of herself and her life with Walter
Burley Griffin.
Speaking next was Alice Friedman, professor of art and co-director
of the architecture program at Wellesley College, who placed Mahony
in the context of other female architects at the turn of the 20th
century, reflecting in particular on the dramatic story of Sophia
Hayden and her thwarted commission to design the Women’s
Building at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
In the wake of those events, many held fast to the belief that
women weren't cut out for the profession, noted Friedman, and
it would be Mahony's innate talent, in conjunction with her later
associations with Frank Lloyd Wright and Griffin, that helped
her beat the odds. After lunch, Paul Kruty, professor of architectural
history at the University of the Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, examined
the origins of the Marionesque drawing style which became world-famous
as the way of presenting Wright's buildings and from which several
of her contemporaries culled inspiration, including Harry Robinson,
who became an expert at mimicking the style (indeed, Kruty argued
that one of the drawings on exhibition long thought to be by Mahony
was actually by Robinson). Kruty also showed how, through its
evolution, Mahony’s creation became a rendering style universally
associated with American architectural modernism.
Christopher Vernon, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture,
Landscape and Visual Arts of the University of Western Australia
spoke extemporaneously about Mahony’s botanical artworks,
which complemented his thorough essay in the exhibition catalog
and revealed intriguing details about the friendships that helped
Mahoney thrive artistically and personally during some of the darker periods
following the project for the new Australian capital, Canberra.
An enlightened account of the period often characterized as
Mahony’s tragic widowhood came from Dr. Anna Rubbo, associate
professor in architecture at the University of Sydney. While devastated
by her husband's death, Mahony’s activities when she returned
to Chicago were representative of somebody who's actually having
an interesting time, and underscored by her work with social reformer
Lola Maverick Lloyd, who after her divorce from one of Winnetka's
most prominent men began to develop education-based communities
in Texas and New Hampshire for the World Fellowship Center.
Lloyd's death in 1945 would preclude Mahony from fully executing
those project designs, but afterward she devoted more time to
“The Magic of America”, the 1,100-page memoir she
completed in 1949. What started as a tribute to Griffin gave her
a chance to present her philosophy to the reader, noted Rubbo.
David Van Zanten, the Mary Jane Crowe Professor of Art and Art
History at Northwestern University and the person most instrumental
in shepherding the Mahony exhibition and symposium from its inception,
moderated the panel discussion that wrapped up the informative
and often exciting day.
Comments segued from the latest home prices in Castlecrag (astronomical)
to publication of ‘The Magic of America,’ (overall,
imperative). Weirick stated that he thinks the number one thing
is to get “The Magic of America” published, which
drew applause from many in the audience. As efforts toward that
end continue at the Art Institute of Chicago, visitors to the
Block Museum could see a few pages from the manuscript on display.
Debora Woods, the Block's senior curator, says at least 80 to
100 people a day have been coming to the exhibition since the
highly successful opening night in September. |
“A HOUSE IN THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES”
Editor’s Note: Continuing the series begun in the last
issue of reprinting documents contemporary to Griffin’s
American practice, we offer here an essay by Griffin published
in “Country Life in America” (24 no.1, May 1913, p.38)
as part of a series entitled “My Ideal for the Country Home.”Following
his fame as winner of the Canberra competition the previous year,
Griffin was now chosen to be among a select group of prominent
domestic architects that included Wilson Eyre, Horace Mann, Myron
Hunt, and Harrie Lindeberg. As the example of his work offered
to illustrate his essay, Griffin chose the Benjamin Ricker house
in Grinnell, Iowa, site of this year’s Griffin meeting.
Rather than describe or explain the Ricker house in his essay,
which he titled “A House in the Spirit of the Times,”
Griffin used the opportunity to critique the course of contemporary
American architecture.
The basis of resemblance of the buildings of a place and period
is what constitutes an architectural style.
This basis cannot rest alone in physical utilitarian characteristics,
emotional aesthetic qualities nor in the intellectual stimulus
of associated thoughts, but concerns itself with the varying ratios
of all these three determining characteristics of a complete work
of art, so it must be evident that it cannot be in the individual
field of creative effort to consider style. That is a final resultant
of minds, forces, and time, and offers a proper study for historians
and philosophers.
It is admitted that the architect may consciously choose in
case of just one of his factors, the intellectual incident, to
appear to the educated tastes of traveled or book-informed clients
on the basis of some association. But that does not produce a
style, neither is it a democratic nor a reasonable course. Can
any one claim that it is necessary to the perpetuation or dissemination
of “The glory that was Greece, the splendor that was Rome”
to set up now their buildings made over to suit, as may be, our
practical every-day modern needs? Let’s preserve the relics
in museums, the records in libraries, and save the representation
for the theatres, or other branches of art so well adapted to
give us the thought, habits, and ideals of other times and places.
Would it not be better to free the architecture of our homes from
this impossible burden of a literary message, or language, if
you please?
Though one sex may wear “Empire” gowns and we can
store in our parlors a few duplicated “Louis XV” chairs,
we have already had to draw the line at “Tudor” heating
plants, “Renaissance” plumbing equipment and “Old
Colonial” illumination systems, and though we may boast
“Late Pullman” cars and “Early North German
Lloyd” steamships, fortunately we cannot take pride even
in nineteenth century automobiles nor “fin de siecle”
aero planes, so changing are our technical conditions and so limited
in capacity for literary encumbrance are these dynamic things.
But who can say for all that, that these latter creations may
not be beautiful and are not often surpassingly impressive in
their emotional appeal?
Every day new materials, new processes, new possibilities are
opening up before our imagination vast fields for exploration
and development, not only to our greater comfort and convenience,
but for the greater stimulus of our esthetic sensibilities and
the real joy of life.
So when the invitation is afforded in such a symposium as this,
though not able to answer as to proper styles in orderly fashion
because disputing the premises, I am glad to state why, summed
up as follows:
- Because individually selected associations in connection with
useful arts, not being democratic, can never be universal or
general and must result in a heterogeneous and mutually nullifying
collection of expressions. The home group is a work of useful
art where if anywhere harmony and quiet are most essential to
our well being.
- Because, moreover, the irrelevant idea of style has set apart
the architect into a mysterious aristocratic academic cult environment
where he is out of reach and touch with common life. This idea
of association in architecture not only distracts the designer’s
interest from fundamental aesthetic laws but diverts his attention
from and limits his freedom in availing himself of the innumerable
advantages in modern developments of construction which are
often only reluctantly adopted from material manufacturers,
builders, engineers and practical inventors who have had to
work blindly and often futilely without the architect’s
sympathy, his point of view, esthetic sense or training.
To instance architects’ slow avail of the opportunities
for interior freedom and openness afforded the house by circulation
heating plants, as opposed to the segregated cells necessitated
by the fireplace system, their adherence to primitive handwork
limitations in crude forms and constructive features, even to
faking defects on top of machine-finished precision for the sake
of peasant life traditions, is only to start a series of indictments
to be extended and filled out indefinitely by any observant critic. |
GRIFFIN IN GRINNELL, IOWA
The site of the 2005 annual meeting is one rich in associations
with the Griffins and the Prairie School. For this Iowa farming
community and college town, Griffin created three separate projects
during 1910 and 1911: a public fountain to memorialize Dr. E.
W. Clark, a recently deceased local doctor; a large residence
for Benjamin Ricker, a glove manufacturer; and a subdivision plan
for the northern edge of town.Important pieces of the puzzle that
were necessary to understand the relationship among these three
were missing until Paul Kruty and Paul Sprague undertook the research
for their catalog of the American work.
The Ricker house, constructed in 1911, was one of the first projects
on which Walter and Marion Griffin worked together as husband
and wife. It is the first building from Griffin’s office
to include decorative ornament set in panels on the façades,
in this case, in the form of colored Teco tiles and brick. As
this is similar to the treatment found on the façade of
the Robert Mueller house, designed by Marion Mahony for Hermann
von Holst before her marriage to Griffin and built in Decatur,
Illinois, it is presumed that she added those touches to the exterior
here. Inside, she created an abstract fireplace mural of Teco
tiles in the library that has long been admired. However, the
existence of a second, representational tile scene was not known
until restoration work on the house began in 2001, when it was
discovered that a version of the famous Mess house mural was preserved
under a plywood board that had been added many years ago above
the living room mantel.
All of this was accomplished by the Griffins before Louis Sullivan’s
Merchants National Bank was built on the corner of Fourth and Broad
streets in 1914. One of the most famous of Sullivan’s later
“jewel boxes,” the bank has been restored and adapted
for use by the Grinnell Chamber of Commerce.
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SOCIETY SALVAGES WINDOWS FROM GRIFFIN'S MARSH HOUSE
The Society recently acquired the surviving casement windows
from the James S. Marsh house built in 1910 and demolished in
2003. The Marsh house stood in the north shore village of Winnetka
until it became another victim of the "tear-down" fever
ravaging the historic neighborhoods of Chicago and its suburbs.
On a clear Sunday morning, Chicago's Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson
accompanied board members Mati Maldre and Paul Kruty to the muddy
site to rescue the windows, which are decorated with Griffin's
characteristic wooden muntins set as a central hexagon surrounded
by pairs of triangles and rectangles with pentagons in the four
corners. The Marsh house stood in the same development in which
Griffin's Orth Houses, the "Solid Rock" house, and two
other speculative houses still stand. Its loss was particularly
unfortunate and is deeply felt by admirers of Griffin's work everywhere.
After the Griffin Society, the City of Winnetka, and various preservation
groups were unable to convince the owner to save the house (and
without the legal authority of a local landmark ordinance to intervene),
the Griffin Society was able to salvage a group of windows for
dispersal to appropriate historical societies and museums.
The Society owes a debt of gratitude to James Soukoulis, owner
of the property, for allowing the windows to be saved. Thus far,
windows have been donated to the Ridge Historical Society, which
serves the Beverly/Morgan Park neighborhood; the McNider Museum
in Mason City, Iowa, which hosted last year's annual meeting;
and the Stockman House Foundation, also in Mason City.
The prototype for the lost Marsh house still stands in Chicago's
Beverly neighborhood: the house at 1712 W. 104th (Griffin) Place,
built by developer Russell Blount and sold to Edmund Garrity.
After Griffin prepared the design for Blount, who constructed
it in the spring of 1910, he offered a similar design to William
Tempel, who was simultaneously developing the family property
in Winnetka. Tempel arranged for its construction later in the
season and found a buyer in James Marsh.
The Society plans to continue distributing the windows until
homes have been found for all of them. For information, please
contact the Griffin Society at 1152 Center Drive, St. Louis, MO
63117, e-mail: info@walterburleygriffin.org.
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