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Marion Mahony Griffin
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Marion Lucy Mahony Griffin (February 14 1871 in Chicago – August 10 1961 in Chicago) was a celebrated American architect and consummate artist.
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Marion Lucy Mahony Griffin (February 14 1871 in Chicago – August 10 1961 in Chicago) was a celebrated American architect and consummate artist. She was one of the first licenced female architects in the world. She is considered an original member of the Prairie School.
Mahony graduated from MIT in 1894, where she studied with Professor Constant-Désiré Despradelle. Mahony went to work the next year in the Chicago studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, designing buildings, furniture, stained glass windows and decorative panels. She would be associated with Wright's studio for almost fifteen 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. Architectural writer Reyner Banham called her the "greatest architectural delineator of her generation". Her rendering of the K. C. DeRhodes House of South Bend, Indiana, was praised by Wright upon its completion and by many critics thereafter.
Wright customarily understated the contributions of others of the Prairie School, Mahony included; unfortunately, the views of most architectural historians from the 1950s through 2000 followed Wright's lead unquestioningly. A clear understanding of Marion Mahony’s contributions to the architectural advances of the Oak Park Studio comes from Wright’s son John Lloyd Wright who writes about those exciting days for the emerging Prairie School. John Lloyd Wright relates that William Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne, Walter Burley Griffin, Albert Chase McArthur, Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts and George Willis were the draftsmen--the five men and two women who each were making valuable contributions to Prairie style architecture for which Wright became famous. During this time Mahony designed the Gerald Mahony Residence (1907) in Elkhart, Indiana, for her brother and sister-in-law.
When Wright hurried off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney in 1909, Wright offered the work of the Studio to Mahony; this, she declined. But after Wright had gone, architect Hermann V. von Holst, who had taken on Wright's commissions, hired Mahony with the stipulation that she would have control of the architectural designing. In this capacity, Mahony was the architect for a number of commissions Wright had abandoned. Two examples of these include Henry Ford's Dearborn mansion, Fair Lane and the Amberg House in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Mahony recommended to Von Holst that he hire Griffin to develop a landscape plan for the area surrounding the three houses initially commissioned from Wright in Decatur, Illinois. Mahony and Griffin worked closely on the Decatur project immediately preceding their marriage. After their marriage, Mahony went to work in Griffin's practice. A Walter Burley Griffin/Marion Mahony designed development that is home to an outstanding collection of Prairie School dwellings, Rock Crest Rock Glen in Mason City, Iowa, is seen as their most dramatic American design development of the decade. It remains the largest collection of Prairie Style homes surrounding a natural setting.
Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin were married in 1911, beginning a partnership that would last for 28 years. Griffin was a fellow architect, a fellow ex-employee of Wright, and a leading member of the Prairie School of architecture. Marion's watercolor perspectives of Walter's design for the new Australian capital city of Canberra were instrumental in helping secure the first prize in the international competition for the plan of the city. As a result, in 1914 the couple moved to Australia to oversee the design of the new capital. Marion managed the Sydney office and was responsible for the design of all of the private commissions that they obtained. They pioneered what was called a Knitlock construction method, which was inexactly emulated by Wright in his California textile block houses of the 1920s. The Griffins had a fruitful practice in Australia and are remembered as gifted contributors to the built environment by Australians.
Later, they practiced in India and in less than a year, Mahony oversaw the design of over one hundred Prairie School influenced buildings there. Upon Walter's death in 1937, Mahony completed their remaining work and then returned to the United States. In this way, Mahony and Griffin spread the Prairie Style to two continents far from its origins. Mahony always credited Louis Sullivan as the impetus for the Prairie School philosophy; similarly, she considered Wright's habit of taking credit for the entire movement as the reason for its early demise in the United States.
Mahony died in 1961 and is buried in Graceland Cemetery, Irving Park Road & Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois, fittingly, among many other illustrious architects: David Adler, Louis Sullivan, Daniel H. Burnham, Bruce Goff, William Holabird, Howard Van Doren Shaw and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Architectural Work Attributable in Part or In Full to Marion Mahony – Partial Listing
- All Souls Church (demolished), Evanston, IL – 1901
- The Gerald Mahony Residence (demolished, Elkhart, IN - 1907
- David Amberg Residence, 573 College Avenue, Grand Rapids, MI – 1909
- Edward P. Irving Residence, 2 Millikin Place, Decatur, IL – 1909
- Robert Mueller Residence, 1 Millikin Place, Decatur, IL – 1909
- Adolph Mueller Residence, 4 Millikin Place, Decatur, IL – 1910
- Niles Club Company, Club House, Niles, MI - 1911
- Henry Ford Residence “FairLane” (unbuilt initial design) – 1913
- Koehne House (demolished 1974),Palm Beach, FL - 1914
- Cooley Residence, Grand St. at Texas Ave., Monroe, LA
- Fern Room, Cafe Australia, Melbourne, Australia - 1916
- Capitol Theatre, Swanston Street, Melbourne, Australia – 1921-23
- "Stokesay" Mr. & Mrs. Onians Residence, 289 Nepean Hwy, Seaford, Victoria, Australia - 1925
- Ellen Mower Residence, 12 The Rampart, Castlecrag, New South Wales - 1926
- Creswick Residence, Castlecrag, Sydney, New South Wales - 1926
- S.R. Salter Residence (Knitlock construction), Toorak, Victoria, Australia - 1927
- Vaughan Griffin Residence, 52 Darebin St., Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia - 1927
Architectural drawings--primarily created by Mahony--and other archival materials by and about the Griffins are held by numerous institutions in the United States, including the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University; the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the New-York Historical Society, as well as by several repositories in Australia, including the National Library of Australia, National Archives of Australia, and the Newman College Archives of the University of Melbourne.
Further reading
- Brooks, H. Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Braziller (in association with the Cooper-Hewitt Museum), New York 1984; ISBN 0807610844
- Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School, W.W. Norton, New York 2006; ISBN 039373191X
- Brooks, H. Allen (editor), Prairie School Architecture: Studies from "The Western Architect", University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo 1975; ISBN 0802021387
- Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1972; ISBN 0802052517
- Waldheim, Charles, Katerina Rüedi, Katerina Ruedi Ray; Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives, University of Chicago Press, 2005; ISBN 0226870383, 9780226870380
- Wood, Debora (editor), Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois 2005; ISBN 0-8101-2357-6
External links
- New-York Historical Society
- an exhibition of Mahony Griffin’s graphic art at the Block Museum, Northwestern University, United States of America
- online version of Marion Mahony Griffin's unpublished manuscript, made available through The Art Institute of Chicago
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