Marion Mahony Griffin

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Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, in Sydney in 1930
Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, in Sydney in 1930
Watercolor from the Canberra Design
Watercolor from the Canberra Design
Artist's Studio (Section). Watercolor and ink by Marion Griffin 1894
Artist's Studio (Section). Watercolor and ink by Marion Griffin 1894

Marion Lucy Mahony Griffin (born February 14, 1871 in Chicago, died August 10, 1961 in Chicago) was an American artist and one of the first licenced female architects in the world. She is considered a member of the Prairie School.

Mahony graduated from MIT in 1894 and went to work the next year in the Chicago studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, designing furniture, stained glass windows and decorative panels. She would stay in Wright's studio for almost fifteen years and was an important contributor to his reputation, particularly for the influential Wasmuth Portfolio. Architectural writer Reyner Banham called her the "greatest architectural delineator of her generation". When Wright disappeared to Europe in 1909, Mahony worked with architect Hermann Von Holst, who had taken on Wright's commissions, and oversaw the completion of a number of his unfinished commissions. Two examples of these included 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 with several homes, Rock Crest Rock Glen in Mason City, Iowa, is seen as their most dramatic American design development of the decade and remains the largest collection of Prairie Style homes surrounding a natural setting.

Mahony married Walter Burley Griffin in 1911, beginning a partnership that would last for 28 years. Griffin was a fellow architect, a fellow ex-employee of Wright, and a fellow member of the Prairie School of architecture. Her watercolor perspectives of her husband's design for the new Australian capital city of Canberra helped him secure first prize in the international competition for the plan of the city. In 1914 they moved to Australia to oversee the design of the new capital.

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.

[edit] References

  • Paul Kruty. "Griffin, Marion Lucy Mahony", American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

[edit] 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
  • 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

[edit] External links

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