Watercolor from the Canberra DesignArtist's Studio (Section). Watercolor and ink by Marion Griffin 1894Design for Suburban Residence Exhibit plan 2Design for Suburban Residence Exhibit Plan 1
Marion Mahony Griffin (néeMarion Lucy Mahony; February 14, 1871 – August 10, 1961) was an American architect and artist. She was one of the first licensed female architects in the world, and is considered an original member of the Prairie School.[2] Her work in the United States developed and expanded the American Prairie School, and her work in India and Australia reflected Prairie School ideals of indigenous landscape and materials in the newly formed democracies. The scholar Debora Wood stated that Griffin "did the drawings people think of when they think of Frank Lloyd Wright (one of her collaborating architects)."[3] According to architecture critic, Reyner Banham, Griffin was "America’s (and perhaps the world’s) first woman architect who needed no apology in a world of men."[4]
She produced some of the finest architectural drawing in America and Australia, and was instrumental in envisioning the design plans for the capital city of Australia, Canberra.[5][6][7][8]
Mahony was born in 1871 in Chicago, Illinois, to Jeremiah Mahony, a journalist, poet, and teacher from Cork, Ireland, and Clara Hamilton, a schoolteacher.[9] After the Great Chicago Fire in 1880, her family moved North of Chicago to nearby Winnetka.[10] Scholars note that it is very likely that her family was heavily involved in the intellectual and Unitarian community there at the time, as both her parents were deeply ambitious about education and art.[11][12]: 25 Winnetka's Unitarian Chapel often held discussions about the arts, politics, and social issues heavily revolving around democracy.[13] Mahony often recalled her childhood in Winnetka in her memoir, TheMagic of America, describing how she had become fascinated by the freeing nature and quickly disappearing landscape as suburban homes filled the area.[12]: 25 At the time, Winnetka was known to be more "like a pioneer town than a suburb."[13] This landscape inspired Mahony's focus on nature in her architectural practices, and her family's involvement in the intellectual community further influenced her democratic principles and philosophy.[12]: 24-25
After Mahony's father died by suicide in 1882, her mother decided to move out of Winnetka to the West Side of Chicago where she became an elementary school principal in a Chicago Public School to support her children.[14][15] Her mother became a pioneer in public education, and was involved in many women's groups across the city. Mahony described her mother as "the most democratic of human beings", and firsthand saw her involvement with many social reformers, activists, artists, and intellectuals. She grew up with a range of female role models in Chicago.[16]: 25-26 Anna Wilmarth, who was part of their inner circles personally funded Mahony's education at the Massuchusetts Institute of Technology after she was influenced by her cousin, architect Dwight Perkins, to pursue an architectural degree.[16]: 152, Chapter IV After Sophia Hayden, Mahony was the second woman to have studied architecture and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894.[16]
After completing her degree at MIT, Mahony returned to Chicago and started her professional career at her cousin's, Dwight Perkins' practice in Chicago’s Steinway Hall, a shared office of more progressive artists and architects during the time.[17] Perkins himself was a former MIT student, however he never completed his architectural degree. Although more educated than him, he fostered the significant improvement of her drafting and design skills as she gained hands-on experience. Subsequently, she became the first licensed female architect in Illinois in 1898.[18]: 26 Through Perkins, Mahony met Frank Lloyd Wright.[19] She was later hired, and worked with Wright from 1895-1909 in both Chicago, and his Oak Park studio. She went to work designing buildings, furniture, stained glass windows, and decorative panels.[20]Barry Byrne, a coworker of Mahony's described her as “the most talented member of Frank Lloyd Wright’s staff."[21]
From the progressive educational philosophies, and inner circles of women and social reformers that she was exposed to from a young age, Mahony's values heavily revolved around collaboration and spilled into most of her architectural work. In a field of competitve individualists, she saw architecture as a collective endeavor. Her reform mission was inherently seen in her design work throughout her life. These values prompted a mix of both professional and private idenities and relationships reflected in her design work. Further, her philosophy, reflecting the later formed Prairie School ideals, was rooted in the human relationship to nature and democracy. Almost always, she integrated architecture with the natural world, creating perspectives of the landscapes working together with structures in her renderings.[22]: 30
Her beautiful watercolor renderings of buildings and landscapes became known as a staple of Wright's style, though she was never given credit by the famous architect. Over a century later she would be known as one of the greatest delineators of the architecture field, but during her life, her talent was seen as only an extension of the work done by male architects. She was 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 has "contributed nearly half [of the drawings] which appear attributable."[23] Architectural writer Reyner Banham called her the "greatest architectural delineator of her generation."[24] Her rendering of the K. C. DeRhodes House in South Bend, Indiana, was praised by Wright upon its completion and by many critics.[25]
Wright understated the contributions of others of the Prairie School, Mahony included. A clear understanding of Marion Mahony's contribution to the architecture of the Oak Park Studio comes from Wright's son, John Lloyd Wright, who says 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 made valuable contributions to Prairie-style architecture for which Wright became famous.[26] During this time Mahony designed the Gerald Mahony Residence (1907) in Elkhart, Indiana for her brother and sister-in-law.[27]
David M. Amberg House, 2009
When Wright eloped to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney in 1909, he offered the Studio's work to Mahony but she declined. After Wright had gone, Hermann V. von Holst, who had taken on Wright's commissions, hired Mahony with the stipulation that she would have control of the design.[28] In this capacity, Mahony was the architect for a number of commissions Wright had abandoned. Two examples were the first (unbuilt) design for Henry Ford's Dearborn mansion, Fair Lane and the Amberg House[29] in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin gardening in the backyard of "Pholiota", Heidelberg, Victoria, 1918
Mahony recommended Walter Burley Griffin to von Holst to develop landscaping for the area surrounding the three houses commissioned from Wright in Decatur, Illinois. Griffin was a fellow architect, a fellow ex-employee of Wright, and a leading member of the Prairie School of architecture. Mahony and Griffin worked on the Decatur project before their marriage; afterward, Mahony worked 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 is the largest collection of Prairie Style homes surrounding a natural setting.
Mahony and Griffin married in 1911, a partnership that lasted 26 years. Mahony's watercolor perspectives of Griffins' design for Canberra, the new Australian capital, were instrumental in securing first prize in the international competition for the plan of the city. Walter was appointed Director of Design and Construction of Canberra. In 1914 the couple moved to Australia to oversee the building of Canberra. Mahony managed the Sydney office and was responsible for the design of their private commissions.[30] Cafe Australia, Newman College, and Capitol Theatre were three architectural structures worked on by Mahony.[23] In Australia, Mahony and Griffin was introduced to Anthroposophy and the ideas of Rudolf Steiner which they embraced enthusiastically, and in Sydney they joined the Anthroposophy Society.[6] In Australia, they pioneered the Knitlock construction method, inexactly emulated by Wright in his California textile block houses of the 1920s. Following the completion of the construction of Capitol Theatre in 1924, Marion and her husband moved to Castlecrag and furthered its community development.[23]
Walter was asked to create a design for a library for the University of Lucknow in India, and went to the college in September 1935, and soon gained several other commissions. Marion arrived in April 1936, and soon took charge of the office, where she oversaw the design of many buildings.[31] While Mahony had been semiretired in Australia after the move to Castlecrag, the move to India had reinvirgorated her interest in architecture. Less than a year later, in Feb 1937. Walter died of peritonitis following a cholecystectomy. Mahony then wound up the office, leaving many projects unbuilt, and returned to Australia. Mahony and Griffin spread the Prairie Style to two continents, far from its origins. She credited Louis Sullivan as the impetus for the Prairie School philosophy. She thought Wright's habit of taking credit for the movement explained its early death in the United States.[32]
Marion Mahony Griffin did not stay long in Australia after Walter's death. By then in her late 60s, she returned to the United States and afterward was largely retired from her architectural career. "The one time she addressed the Illinois Society of Architects, she made no mention of her work, instead lectured the crowd on anthroposophy, a philosophy of spiritual knowledge developed by Rudolf Steiner."[33]
She did however spend the next twenty years working on a massive volume of 1,400 pages and 650 illustrations detailing her and Walter's working lives, which she titled "The Magic of America", which has yet to be formally published in book form. A manuscript deposited at the Art Institute of Chicago in c1949 was digitized, and since 2007 has been available online.[34] In 2006 the National Library of Australia acquired a large collection of the Griffins' work including drawings, photographs, silk paintings and ephemera from the descendants of the Griffins’ Australian partner Eric Milton Nicholls.[35][36][37]
Marion Mahony Griffin died in 1961 aged 90, and is buried in Graceland Cemetery.
In 2015, the beach at Jarvis Avenue in Rogers Park, Chicago was named in Mahony Griffin's honor. When she returned to the United States in 1939, after her husband's death, she lived near the beach. The Australian Consul-General, Roger Price, attended the beach's dedication for the woman who was instrumental in the design the Australian capital.[38]
Among the few works attributed to Mahony that survive in the United States is a small mural in George B. Armstrong elementary school in Chicago attributed to Mahony, and several homes in Decatur.
Aside from her architectural fame, she also explored poetry with themes related to the relationship between nature and architecture, the impact of the built environment on individuals, and her reflections on the role of women in the society of her time. Her poetry showcased her deep appreciation for art and her unique perspective on the world.
The Australian Institute of Architects, NSW Chapter, honored her work with an annual award, the Marion Mahony Griffin Prize, for a distinctive body of work by a female architect for architectural education, journalism, research, theory, a professional practice or built architectural work.[39]
1998–99: The Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in Sydney held an exhibition entitled "Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin".[40]
2013: An exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Canberra, held in the National Library of Australia and called "The Dream of a Century: the Griffins in Australia’s Capital", exhibited her drawings for the entire year.[37][41]
2015: An exhibition of some of her work was held at the Block Museum of Northwestern University, Illinois, USA.
2016–17: An exhibition was held at the Elmhurst History Museum, Illinois, USA.[42][43]
Birmingham, Elizabeth. "The Case of Marion Mahony Griffin and The Gendered Nature of Discourse in Architectural History." Women's Studies 35, no. 2 (March 2006): 87–123.
Brooks, H. Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Braziller (in association with the Cooper-Hewitt Museum), New York 1984; ISBN0-8076-1084-4
Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School, W.W. Norton, New York 2006; ISBN0-393-73191-X
Brooks, H. Allen (editor), Prairie School Architecture: Studies from "The Western Architect", University of Toronto Press, Toronto & Buffalo 1975; ISBN0-8020-2138-7
Brooks, H. Allen, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries, University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1972; ISBN0-8020-5251-7
Hasbrouk, Wilbert R. 2012. "Influences on Frank Lloyd Wright, Blanche Ostertag and Marion Mahony." Journal of Illinois History 15, no. 2: 70–88. America: History & Life
Korporaal, Glenda and Marion Mahony Griffin (2015) Making Magic: The Marion Mahony Griffin StoryISBN0-9924769-0-9
Kruty, Paul, "Griffin, Marion Lucy Mahony", American National Biography Online, February 2000.
Van Zanten, David (editor) Marion Mahony Reconsidered, University of Chicago Press, 2011; ISBN978-0-226-85081-8
Waldheim, Charles, Katerina Rüedi, Katerina Ruedi Ray; Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives, University of Chicago Press, 2005; ISBN0-226-87038-3, ISBN978-0-226-87038-0
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; ISBN0-8101-2357-6
Kruty, Paul., and Paul E. Sprague. Marion Mahony and Millikin Place: Creating a Prairie School Masterpiece With the Help of Frank Lloyd Wright, Herman Von Holst, and Walter Burley Griffin. St. Louis, Mo.: Walter Burley Griffin Society of America, 2007.
Watson, Anne (1998). Beyond Architecture: Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin. Sydney, Australia: Powerhouse Publishing. ISBN1-86317-068-5.
Kruty, Paul., and Paul E. Sprague. Marion Mahony and Millikin Place: Creating a Prairie School Masterpiece With the Help of Frank Lloyd Wright, Herman Von Holst, and Walter Burley Griffin. St. Louis, Mo.: Walter Burley Griffin Society of America, 2007.
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