Architects Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin

The connection between like-minded architects, often across a period of time or in different continents, continues to impress. Consider Australian architect Best Overend, who had worked with Canadian architect Wells Coates in London;  Overend returned to Melbourne with radical Wells Coates ideas on inner city bachelor pads. Or Viennese lad Harry Seidler who studied at Harvard where he was taught by the great names of Bauhaus architecture, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Later Seidler dotted the Sydney landscape with Bauhaus architecture. One student suggested I should examine another architectural connection i.e between Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin, the designer of Australia’s capital city.

Let us start with 1] Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) who was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who became known as the Prairie School.

2] Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) was born in Maywood near Chicago. In 1900, as a recent graduate and inspired by the said architect Louis Sullivan, Walter Burley Griffin wanted to create his own kind of contemporary architecture.

After graduation, Burley Griffin worked for 3] Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), leaving the older man’s arch­it­ectural practice in late 1905 to set up his own private practice at Steinway Hall.

4] Marion Mahony (1871-1961) was born in Chicago and became only the second woman to graduate in architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1894. After graduation, Mahony worked in an architecture firm that was located in Steinway Hall. The space was shared with many other architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright.

Apparently Frank Lloyd Wright ran away to Europe with the wife of a client in September 1909. He left his practice to Hermann Von Holst who imm­ed­iately engaged Marion Mahony to design their more complex projects. And note another connection! It was Mahony who recommended Walter Burley Griffin to von Holst, to develop landscaping for the three houses commissioned from Wright in Decatur Illinois!

Lloyd Wright

Henderson House, 1901

Elmhurst Illinois

Sullivan

Bradley House, 1909
Madison Wisconsin

Burly Griffin
Carter House, 1910
Evanston, Illinois

Glenda Korporaal tells of an Iowan connection between the architects. Thanks to the work of Mahony and others in Wright’s studio, the Park Inn Hotel in Iowa opened in Sep 1910. More than a century later, Wright’s Park Inn has been lovingly restored by local citizens and is the only remaining hotel designed by Wright. Now called the Historic Park Inn with its elegant 1910 Grille restaurant, this small place has been lovingly restored with a touch of Arts and Crafts style. For Australians, it is a unique chance to stay in an original Wright building and a great base from which to tour the last group of houses designed by Griffin and his wife Marion before they left the USA for Australia in 1914.

Appropriately The Park Inn was the site of the last meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America.

Five Griffin houses cluster around Willow Creek, in walking distance of the hotel. Looking at these houses it is not hard to believe that Griffin might have become one of the leading Prairie School architects of America, had he not decide to move to Australia to build his ideal city in Canberra.

Korporaal also recommended that visitors stop at the town of Owatonna to see one of Louis Sullivan’s famous jewel box banks. Designed by the Chicago architect who inspired both Wright and Griffin, this bank still has its spectacular, high-ceilinged building with its historic murals and Arts and Crafts-inspired décor. The links between Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony are not difficult to find.

Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony married in 1911. This was just two months after the international competition for the design of the new Federal capital of Australia was announced. They must have worked up a feverish sweat on their honeymoon, to prepare the plans in time for the Australian government’s deadline.

Assisted by others in Steinway Hall, all of whom joined the Griffins in Australia in 1914, SHE produced the elegant set of drawings illustrating Griffin's ideas. HE won the competition in May 1912 with a grandly conceived arrangement for a national capital of 75,000. Taking advantage of the impressive landscape around Canberra, the plan was loosely based on the design ideas which Griffin had observed in the Chicago World Fair (1893) and the Burnham and Bennett architectural plan for Chicago (1909).

Walter and Marion spent twenty years in Australia (1914-1935). Marion managed the Sydney office and was responsible for the design of their private commissions. When Canberra finally got its central lake years later, Prime Minister Robert Menzies named it Lake Burley Griffin. Today the population of this elegant city is 400,000.

Preliminary plan for the development of Canberra 

by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney, 1914.

The design was based on circles and rectangles, joined by long avenues. The city had to fit in with the natural landscape of the valley.

Alasdair McGregor’s book
Grand Obsessions

When the couple moved to India in 1935, Mahony oversaw the design of 100+ Prairie School buildings there. Sadly Burley Griffin died in India unexpectedly in 1937, so Mahony completed their work and returned to Australia for 2 years.

Mahony and Griffin had definitely spread the Prairie Style to two large countries (Australia and India), far from its Chicago origins. But she credited Louis Sullivan as the inspiration for the Prairie School philosophy rather than Frank Lloyd Wright, as we might have expected. As Neil6 has so clearly shown, the relationship between Burley Griffin and Frank Lloyd Wright had gone cold following Griffin's departure from Wright's firm, way back in 1906. Thirty years later, Mahony still had not forgiven her old boss.

Readers might like to locate photographer-architect Alasdair McGregor’s book Grand Obsessions: The Life and Work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. Published by Penguin in 2014, the book charts their lives, from their university years and meeting in Chicago under Frank Lloyd Wright, to their projects in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, and their years in India.