A BEGINNING, AN END AND ANOTHER BEGINNING
(Marion Mahony Griffin, Architect)
by
John K. Notz, Jr.

Delivered to
THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB
April 23, 2001

Mrs. Griffin, may I introduce you, please, to the members of The Chicago Literary Club and their guests? Members of The Chicago Literary Club and their guests, may I present you to Mrs. Walter Burley Griffin, the former Marion Mahony, of Hubbard Woods, Chicago, Oak Park, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Lucknow and, at the end of her life, Chicago?

Mrs. Griffin, when you were last speaking here in Chicago, you were at The Cliff Dwellers club. This was in 1940, when your nephew, Larry Perkins - the Lawrence Perkins of Perkins & Will, whose father, Dwight Perkins, was your first cousin - had arranged for you to give a talk to The Illinois Society of Architects. Larry had arranged for an exhibition at The Cliff Dwellers of some of your architectural drawings of Australian projects and some of your paintings of Australian horticulture. The membership of The Illinois Society of Architects turned out, in force, to hear you talk about your life with your husband in Australia and India, but you wanted, only, to talk about Anthroposophy. The eyes of your audience, soon, glazed over. You may recall that, until you responded to the questions from your audience about your life as an architect and your personal work product, you did not have their attention.

Until I was told this story by Larry Perkins, I knew nothing of Anthroposophy. For years, however, there has been, however, a small office, in Chicago, of The Anthroposophical Society in America in The Fine Arts Building. I stopped by, one evening last month, and I picked up a brochure, which included (I QUOTE):
"Anthroposophy has contributed insights into all the arts: speech and drama, painting, sculpture, music, and the new art of Eurythmy. . . ."
Mrs. Griffin, while you were at your Castlecrag home, near Sydney, you were known to have so danced. For you, however, these words from the brochure on Anthroposophy that I found resonate better (I QUOTE):
"In architecture, beyond blending beauty and function, buildings should be ecologically sound and reflect the character of the region or culture. They should provide an environment enhancing the physical, psychological and spiritual well-being of the people who work in them."
Today, while these words strike me as entirely in tune with our society's emphasis on ecology, I wish that you were here, to explain to us:
(1) Were there any such interests in the office of Frank Lloyd Wright, during the more than 10 years that you were there (1895-1908)?

(2) Were there any such interests in Canberra, during the seven or so years (1913-1920) that you and your husband struggled with and lost to the ever changing and envious Australian elected government bureaucrats assigned to implement your husband's award-winning plans for Canberra?

(3) Were there any such interests among those who sought, with you, for some ten years (1925-1935), to develop the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag, where many of your husband's late house designs exist, today?

(4) Were there any such interests in Lucknow, India in the 1930's, where your husband's designs for The University of Lucknow were to have been implemented and where he, tragically, died in 1937 - too young?

(5) Were there any such interests in the Chicago to which you returned after closing your husband's architectural practices in India and Australia or in the late 1940's and early 1950's, when, before your own death in 1961, you offered your last professional services to our City - and your offer was ignored?
Tonight, Mrs. Griffin, I will be talking to our audience, first, about your beginnings - your "formative years" - in the Hubbard Woods of your childhood (the 1870's) and in the Chicago of the years of your schooling (the 1880's and early 1890's). Then, I will talk about what happened well after the end of your life - the circumstances of the creation of the 1997 memorial for you at Chicago's Graceland Cemetery. As a closing, I will describe the growing interest in ready availability of some form of publication of your typescript memoir - The Magic of America. I have taken to calling to calling your typescript and its many accompanying documents, simply, Magic and this publication interest of mine, "Another Beginning".

A BEGINNING

My fellow members of The Chicago Literary Club, and our guests:

Mrs. Griffin, whom I have come to call "Marion", was born in early 1871 within The City of Chicago, where her parents and her elder brother lived in the path of The Great Chicago Fire of October, 1871. Notwithstanding the fact that Marion's father was a Chicago public school principal, Marion, her parents and her older brother were driven by that fire to live outside of the city. They settled on Chicago's North Shore - in "Lakeside", the northerly portion of Winnetka that has come to be known as Hubbard Woods. My own "formative years" - 1935-1945 - were on Hubbard Woods' Oakley Avenue; my wife's "formative years" -1942-1955 - were spent on Winnetka's Sheridan Road, about one half mile to the south of where Marion's home had been. Winnetka of the 1870's did not resemble Winnetka of 50 years ago; however, Winnetka has, since the 1940's, changed little.

In the 1870's, Hubbard Woods was called "Lakeside". There had been a pier at the foot of what is, now, the Snake Road portion of Sheridan Road; it was known as "Taylorsport"; it had preceded the 1854 arrival of the railroad; presumably, the pier had been used for the removal of timber and crops and for local travel during the long periods of deep mud ruts in what passed for the wagon roads of that day. Then, as now, Old Green Bay Road ran North/South, near the East side of the tracks. But Sheridan Road did not exist. According to Dwight Perkins, whose family had moved from Chicago to live over the Winnetka railroad station (I QUOTE):

"The place was a delightful country village with only a few houses here and there."

According to Dwight Perkins, Marion's family moved into a large house on the North side of Hiawatha Street - which is, now, Hubbard Lane, a mere half block to the East of the Hubbard Woods Station on the NorthWestern's Milwaukee, or North, Line - the street consisting only of the short block between the then station and Old Green Bay Road. Exactly on which lot in Lakeside was the Mahony house has not yet been determined by me. I doubt that it was a house as elaborate as this Victorian "painted lady", which is, now, on the South side of Hiawatha/Hubbard Place. It is more likely to have been a simple balloon-framed clapboard. I believe that I will find that was the center lot of the five lots had been platted on the North side of Hiawatha/Hubbard Place - most likely, the site of today's Dunbaugh Park (the site of the former Dunbaugh family home.

Then, Lakeside/Hubbard Woods was a more substantial community than was Winnetka - presumably because of the Taylorsport pier. (I credit The Winnetka Historical Society's Web Site for the old photographs that I have turned into slides.) In Winnetka, there had been, from 1855, a general store at Green Bay Road and Elm Street. Then, the Lakeside Station was on the East side of the railroad tracks, and a dirt road ran from the station to Old Green Bay Road, South, to Tower Road and, North, roughly parallel to Old Green Bay for a bit, before rejoining Old Green Bay Road - thereby giving access to the Station from both the North and the South. In other words, the street pattern in Hubbard Woods on the East side of the Station was, then, quite different from what it is today. There was, then, a North/South street on the East side of a station on the East side of the tracks; neither this street not the then Station, now, exists.

However, then and now, Hiawatha Road/Hubbard Lane has remained the most direct way from the Station to the shore of Lake Michigan, using Fisher Lane and a path at its East end that one can, still, use. In Magic of America, Marion wrote, lyrically, of her childhood home and its surroundings. While, she refers to herself in Magic as having been, even in her youth, a Xantippe (Socrates' wife, whose peevish scolding and quarrelsome temper have become proverbial [per Webster's Dictionary], she appears to me to have been more of a pure Tom-Boy.

In Magic, Marion wrote much of the disadvantages of confining young children to school. However, a one-room public school had been built in Winnetka in 1859, at Elm and Maple Streets, on the site of the present Village Green. This is the kind of teacher that she would have had - Kate Dwyer, a native of Winnetka, who died in 1933, after having taught at the public school for 48 years. This is the Winnetka Academy, which, if I read Dwight Perkins correctly, she and he attended. The Academy was at Green Bay Road and Ash Street, where Winnetka's Public Safety Building, now, is - some two miles south of Lakeside.

From late 1871 until 1880, the Mahony Family - ultimately five children, in all - lived in their Lakeside home. At the time of Marion's birth, her father had been a grade school Principal (first, at Chicago's Wells School and, later, at Chicago's Washington School). From Lakeside, Mr. Mahony would have commuted five days a week, nine months of the year on the NorthWestern railroad. In those days, if there were, then, the rule that teachers and principals must live within the City limits, the housing shortage caused by The Great Chicago Fire would have suspended its enforcement.

According to Marion's lyrical description in Magic of her family's Lakeside home, she, her four siblings and her older - by some five years - cousin, Dwight Perkins, were free to explore widely - to the Lake - some one half mile to the East - using the path of which you have seen photographs - and into The Skokie Marsh - some one and one-half miles to the west. The Perkins family lived above the Lakeside railroad station, no more than a hundred feet or so from the Mahony family's house. Dwight Perkins was treated as a member of the Mahony family throughout his childhood. Perkins figured much in Marion's life.

In 1881, The Great Mahony Residence Fire took place; the Mahonys' Lakeside home was a total loss; the family returned to Chicago. In the 1880's, the schools of Chicago were far better than those in its "suburbs". In the 1880's, families with children, such as the Mahonys, preferred to live within Chicago. There was no New Trier High School until 1901; there was no Hubbard Woods School until 1910.

The Mahony family moved to 45 Curtis Street - a street now called Aberdeen - 1100 West, near the Congress Expressway, near where Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital is, today.

Shortly after the Mahony Residence Fire, Marion's father changed his employment from the Chicago school system to becoming Editor of The Prairie Farmer; this employment appears to have been brief, as, within a year, he became merely an "Editor", at a different working address, before returning to being Principal of Chicago's Washington School. He is known to have had severe problems with alcohol; he died in 1883 of an overdose of laudanum - an opium/alcohol drink and a popular medication of the time. Marion's mother was, by 1882, herself a teacher. By 1886, she became Principal of Chicago's Longfellow Public School.

During the 1880's, the Mahony family spent their Summer vacation months in one or another of several speculative - slow to sell - houses under construction in the area just to the east of The Skokie Marsh, where Asbury Street, then and now, comes to an end. I doubt that I will be able to identify the Mahony family to any of the sites of those houses; they were, I think, Summer cottages built for middle class Chicagoans. Since the 1880's, the neighborhood has gentrified, and I have been able to find in it but one old white clapboard survivor of that period.

Marion made a close friend in those days - one Echo Simmons - said by Marion in Magic to have been a "country girl", from Minneapolis, who stayed with the "Davis Family". I take Echo to have been other than a maid or an "au pair" girl; I expect that her family wished to give her exposure to Chicago in a safe home. Based on Marion's description in Magic of Echo, Echo was a true "free spirit". I believe that this Davis family had a daughter, Clara, who married one of Marion's younger brothers (Gerald), I expect, in time, to find out more about Echo.

By late 1886, Marion was attending high school - West Division High School, which was one of the three new high schools built as successors to Chicago's demolished Central High School. During her high school years, through their mothers' friendship, Marion met Anna Wilmarth, daughter of the widowed Mary Jane (Mrs. Henry) Wilmarth. While some biographical essays on Marion suggest that it was Anna Wilmarth - the daughter - who financed Marion's education at MIT in 1890-1894, Anna was some two years younger than Marion; such generosity from a teenager seems impossible. However, such generosity from Anna's mother is consistent with what Magic says of Mrs. Wilmarth's visits to Marion at MIT. Blair Perkins Grumman has told me that this financing by Mrs. Wilmarth has been a part of Perkins family lore, just as the financing of education by a widowed Mrs. Hitchcock had brought Dwight Perkins two years of his education at MIT during the mid-1880's. According to that Perkins family lore, in order that they could gain acceptance to MIT, Mrs. Wilmarth tutored, first, Dwight Perkins and, then, Marion Mahony in the French required by that Beaux-Arts institution for matriculation.

Mrs. Wilmarth was one of the women about whom Chicago Women and their Clubs was written. She was an active member of The Fortnightly and of The Twentieth Century Club. I believe that it was her even more active membership in The Chicago Woman's Club that brought her into contact with Jane Addams, with Dwight Perkins' mother - Marion Heald Perkins - and with Marion's mother - Clara Heald Mahony. In short, I believe that, because of their interests in common in what became The Progressive Movement, Mrs. Perkins, notwithstanding her reduced circumstances, was a friend of Mrs. Hitchcock and of Mrs. Wilmarth; and I believe that Mrs. Perkins drew Mrs. Mahony into that circle.

The Wilmarth name had struck a familiar note in me. From my work on the Centennial book of the Lake Geneva (WI) County Club, I was aware that a Mrs. Henry Wilmarth had been one of its first members - one of a handful of women in this, then, otherwise, quite male golf club. In the 1970's, Mary Burns Gage of Williams Bay, WI, had participated in the writing of a book on the "Cottages" that surround Geneva Lake, titled: "Newport of the West". That book contains three pages of text old photographs of a Queen Anne Style house typical of the 1890's - the Wilmarth residence, known as "Glen Arden" - stating that it was constructed in 1892-1893). I speculate that Marion had been a Summer guest there. What a find it would be, were one to find a guest book in its attic!

Then, in connection with research for the paper on some Geneva Lake architecture that I was to have given during the evening that followed The Great Cliff Dwellers' Fire, I came across, in The Book of Lake Geneva (1922), by Paul B. Jenkins, a reputable academic writer on Geneva Lake (I QUOTE):
"A home, eminent in the early days of the Lake Geneva colony for the brilliant qualities of its mistress, was that of Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth, on the South Shore, . . . Designed and built by her daughter, Mrs. Harold Ickes, its years of assiduous devotion to the preservation of its unusual natural surroundings have made it one of the beauty spots of the Eastern half of the Lake. . . ." (at p. 183)
While Anna Wilmarth Ickes had a remarkable career of her own - of such substance that she has her own entry in Oxford University Press' "American National Biography" (1999) - she had no formal education in any of the fine arts - let alone in "architecture". I doubt that she could have designed this structure.

At this point, having been told by Blair Grumman that Dwight Perkins' Mrs. Hitchcock had funded a new building for The University of Chicago (what became Hitchcock Hall), I speculated that, at Mrs. Wilmarth's request, Marion had designed it during her time at MIT - 1892-1893 being the school year of the third of her four years.

I started the onerous research at The Chicago Historical Society in the Chicago Directories and Chicago Blue Books that could lead me to learn how Mrs. Wilmarth and Mrs. Mahony met each other - looking for memberships in common in the progressive women's organizations - thereby creating the circumstances of their daughters' close friendship. The terribly small print therein and poor quality microfilms caused me to divert myself. I chose to look in the indices of material on Chicago architects, to see how the material contributed by Larry and Dwight Perkins had been archived. I found excellent indices for both. In that for Dwight Perkins' materials, to my astonishment, I found a reference to "H. W. Wilmarth residence at Lake Geneva". The reference led me to the high quality professional photograph (torn from a photograph album) in the structure's "as built" status that you have, just, seen. It bears the substance of this legend in a shaky handwriting (I QUOTE):

"H. W. Wilmarth residence at Lake Geneva, WI, designed by Dwight Perkins". I have learned from the 1990 biography of Ickes that her and Anna were married here at "Glen Arden".

Wil Hasbrouck the well-known Chicago architectural historian, has told me that, in 1892-1893 (Marion's third year at MIT), Perkins' office was in a Marshall Field structure at Washington and Wabash; it was not, yet, in Steinway Hall. The question seems to shift to: "Did Marion come home on vacations, to work for Dwight Perkins?" And, "If so, did she work on this Wilmarth residence?"

In 1911, Anna Wilmarth became Mrs. Harold Ickes - the first wife of the Secretary of the Interior for all of Franklin Roosevelt's years as President and some of those of Harry Truman. Ickes' home with Anna - financed by Anna - was on Old Green Bay Road in Hubbard Woods, within a few hundred feet of where that of the Mahony family had been; that home (and its predecessor - for Anna and her first husband - was designed by Dwight Perkins. Ickes law school education was financed by Mrs. Wilmarth, and he was the Perkins family lawyer until he left for Washington with Anna in 1933.

Those of you with long memories of the North Shore will recall that it was Ickes who caused the conversion of The Skokie Marsh into The Skokie Lagoons. The Harold Ickes of the Clinton Administration is a son of Ickes by his much younger second wife, Jane Dahlman, whom he married after Anna's death in New Mexico as a result of an automobile accident.

Whatever, Marion graduated from MIT in the Spring of 1894 - only the second woman so to do. I speculate that this portrait was her graduation photograph. Immediately upon her graduation, she returned to Chicago and joined Dwight Perkins' office; then, that office was in Steinway Hall - a commission that he had obtained from Daniel Burnham as a form of termination compensation. Marion obtained her license to practice architecture in Illinois by taking the new examination - becoming the first woman to be licensed, anywhere. However, the Depression of the 1890's (1893-1897) brought too little business to Perkins' office and he terminated Marion's employment. She took to free-lancing for other architects in and about the Perkins office in Steinway Hall - the group that has come to be known as The Prairie School. She started to work for Frank Lloyd Wright while he had a Chicago office but joined his Oak Park "Studio" as soon as it was operational in 1895. Soon, she became his chief draftsman and architectural renderer.

Chicago's Golden Years were 1890-1915, starting with its preparations for its World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Since 1993, a great many "Centennial Books" have been published; they provide information on the events occurring and structures created 100 years ago, teaching us more than we had known about the men who designed those structures, to the men who constructed them and to the men who commissioned and owned them. Marion Mahony Griffin is unique in having been a woman in that company.

In 1900, Walter Burley Griffin, after having been an outstanding student in architecture at The University of Illinois and scoring at the top of those taking their licensing examination his year, joined Wright's Oak Park Studio. (I have taken to referring to Griffin as "Burley Griffin", as the Australians do.) Burley Griffin, soon, became the Manager of Wright's Studio, and he held that role while Wright made his first trip to Japan. On Wright's return, facing Wright's desire to pay him all of his compensation due in Japanese prints and complaints about his performance, Burley Griffin resigned and started his own architecture and planning office in Steinway Hall. Marion continued with Wright until Wright's trip to Europe to meet Mrs. Cheney. Having seen how Wright treated Burley Griffin, she declined to take charge of Wright's practice. She became the Chief Designer for the man to whom Wright, ultimately, assigned his practice - Hermann von Holst. In time, she offered her professional services to Burley Griffin, and, together, they were successful. For instance, in the area surrounding New Trier High School, their designs include the Trier Center subdivision on its West, several individual homes to its South, towards Kenilworth, and a subdivision for the Fuller Lane area on its East that was abandoned in favor of their move to Canberra. Trier Center was to have contained the Griffins' marital home, as they married in 1911. All this design was caused by the commencement in 1901 of the operations of New Trier High School and, soon thereafter, of the operation of The North Shore Line, which placed a station at Indian Hill. There are many other Griffin-designed homes in Chicago's North, West and South suburbs.

Together, the Griffins prepared the presentation made by Burley Griffin for the planning of Australia's projected new capitol city - Canberra. That presentation was successful. In 1913, after much difficulty in obtaining the design assignment, the Griffins moved to Australia.

They traveled by steamship to Sydney. They went on to Melbourne, where Marion managed their office while Burley Griffin worked with the Governmental authorities in Canberra. The political winds that followed the receipt of Burley Griffin's award of the design of Canberra had been and continued to be adverse to his cause. World War I (which, for Australia, started in 1914) halted the construction of Canberra, "for the duration". While, immediately following "The Great War", Australian political winds blew briefly in Burley Griffin's favor, they became irretrievably adverse to him in 1920. Burley Griffin retreated to his and Marion's Melbourne office.

In March of this year, my wife and I were in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, "on the trail of the Griffins". We learned that, while Canberra has its "Lake Burley Griffin", and the general axes of Burley Griffin's plan for Canberra have been observed, few of the details of his plans have been followed, let alone executed - not even the shaping of Lake Burley Griffin. I understand that the only structure designed by Burley Griffin extant in Canberra is the gravestone of the most famous ANZAC General of The Great War.

In Melbourne, many Burley Griffin-designed homes exist. Of his larger structures there, my favorites are:
(1) Newman College of The University of Melbourne. I am told, authoritatively, that Marion contributed nothing to its design. In its Library, however, are the more than life-sized sculpted heads of both and
(2) The Capitol Theatre.
Marion is recognized to have, at least, contributed, substantially, to the design of the extraordinary interior lighting - lighting that is, now, in the course of restoration.

While in Melbourne, in a subdivision that Burley Griffin had planned and developed, they, themselves, built a one-room home; it is, to me, an astonishingly clever interior arrangement that afforded privacy that, until one sees it, one cannot believe it could be achievable.

In the 1920's, the Griffins became attracted to Sydney, and they purchased substantial bay-front acreage on Sydney's "Middle Harbour". With a view to planning and developing three residential subdivisions. One of those plans was executed and went ahead, with some 16 unique houses constructed during the Griffins' time there.

Burley Griffin is recognized, there. Marion's considerable energies went into community organization, lot sales' efforts and local theater. Had it not rained a great deal during the day that Janis and I were at Castlecrag - in March, just past - I would have given the original version of this talk there.

The Great Depression brought development of Castlecrag to a halt. Notwithstanding, Burley Griffin did well, for a while, in the design of municipal incinerators, including one in Sydney that has been demolished, creating an uproar worthy, here, of the demolition of a Wright structure - one in Melbourne that is used as a local theater - and one on the grounds of the Royal Canberra Golf Club - the equivalent of our Congressional Country Club. This Club is in the midst of celebrating its 75th Anniversary; its General Manager is, luckily, a preservationist, and he has committed club funds to its restoration for some alternative use. Many years ago, all of these incinerators were rendered obsolete by technological advances.

In the early 1930's, the Griffins had their differences. Marion returned to the Chicago area for almost two years. Whether Marion was in contact with Anna Wilmarth is not, yet, known to me; I think it quite likely and that the marital discord between Anna and her husband led to Marion's decision to ask Burley Griffin that they reconcile. They did, before Burley Griffin obtained his commission to design a University for Lucknow, in India, and Marion returned to Castlecrag. On receipt of his Lucknow commission, Burley Griffin left Australia for India. After placing their Australian architectural practices in the control of their partner, Eric Nicholls, Marion followed. Only months later, Burley Griffin, suffering aftereffects of a construction-related injury, died of peritonitis.

Marion closed up their Indian affairs and returned to Australia. There, she closed up their Australian affairs and returned to Chicago, arriving in 1938, during The Great Depression and on the eve of World War II, to stay with her Hayes relatives - including her favorite niece, Claramyra - on Estes Avenue - 7100 North - just East of Ridge Avenue, on Chicago's Far North Side. She could not obtain employment as an architect. It was in this time frame that Larry Perkins arranged for what was to have been her talk on Burley Griffin's and her Australian and Indian works, to the Illinois Society of Architects, at The Cliff Dwellers.

Marion turned to completing and assembling The Magic of America. By the late 1940's, she had a typescript original and at least one - perhaps three carbon copies. She sought the advice of William Purcell, who had removed his Prairie Style architectural practice from Chicago to Minneapolis, as to how to obtain its publication. Purcell wrote her that no publisher would be interested. With assistance from Eric Nicholls, Marion arranged for the delivery of a substantial number of her and Burley Griffin's drawings to Northwestern University and to The Avery Library of Columbia University. She divided the memorabilia related to Magic into two and, with assistance from Wayne Andrews, an architectural historian connected with The New-York Historical Society, delivered the typescript original to it, together with one group of memorabilia. Marion saw to delivery of a carbon copy of the typescript, and another group of memorabilia to The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries of The Art Institute of Chicago.

Otherwise, it appears that Marion, largely, withdrew into her closest family - her Hayes cousins of Chicago's Estes Avenue, assisting in the raising of the children of her favorite niece, Claramyra Hayes. In time, she lapsed into senility or Alzheimer's disease. She died a pauper's death in Cook County Hospital.

AN END

About ten years ago, I became a Trustee of Chicago's Graceland Cemetery. "Graceland" is the most famous of Chicago's historic cemeteries; it has been used for interments since the 1860's by the many of Chicago's old families and by the greater part of Chicago's architects of note. I had been familiar with that Cemetery, because one set of my great grandparents is interred there, and my paternal grandparents followed those great grandparents into a large family plot there.

During a conversation with a good friend who had been at a meeting of the Trustees of the Cemetery, I learned about the monument and landscape renovation projects that the Cemetery had undertaken. I said to my friend, "If there is an opening, I would like to become involved." Some months later, I was elected a Trustee.

I had, already, been aware of the regular, well-attended Fall tours of the Cemetery provided by The Chicago Architectural Foundation - tours motivated, in part, by the many prominent Chicagoans interred there - in part because of the artistic value of a great many of its monuments - but, especially, because of the large number of the most famous Chicago architects interred there - most of them having artistically significant monuments designed by themselves or by their closest professional friends, such as Jenney, Root, Burnham, Sullivan, Schmidt, Shaw and Mies. The Perkins - Dwight and Larry - father and son - are in the old Heald family plot, but with only simple headstones. I will come back to Larry. Graceland Cemetery recently obtained its designation on the National Register of Historic Places.

Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan are the most prominent architects closest to careers of the Griffins who are interred in Graceland Cemetery. The life circumstances of each and the circumstances of their respective interments could not have been more different.

Burnham, whose grandiose designs for Chicago - the Chicago Plan - must have been known to Burley Griffin during the time that he and Marion were working on designs for Canberra, is on the sole small island within the remaining lake of Graceland Cemetery, marked with a deeply set rough boulder, which carries only a small bronze plaque. Only members of Burnham family, with similar simple small boulders and plaques, surround him. One could conclude that the Beaux-Arts style that brought Burnham his fame has not followed him to his gravesite.

Sullivan died an alcoholic, literally penniless, supported only by his then very few professional friends. The attractive stone monument for him, with an artistic plaque, is in a good section in Graceland Cemetery. Sullivan's interment was arranged by those friends and designed by one of them (Thomas Eddy Tallmadge).

My Graceland Cemetery role had come to me as I was about to retire from the practice of law - a practice had included some ten years of services for the "Perkins & Will" architectural firm, where I had come to know the younger Perkins - Larry - well. I came to understand how difficult a business is a career in architecture - both one hundred years ago, and since.

For Christmas, 1993, my wife gave me a copy of Leonard Eaton's seminal biography of the famed landscape architect, Jens Jensen - Landscape Artist in America. I believe in reading books that my wife gives me. I went on to read everything about Jensen upon which I could lay my hands.

I had been aware that a great grandfather of mine had been a Jensen client, but I was not aware of the extent to which that grandfather had "tipped" Jensen to his children (including my grandmother) and to a remarkable number of his Chicago friends. I wrote a paper describing Jensen's relationships with his early private clients that was published in The Wisconsin Academy Review. A substantial source for that paper was the list of Jensen projects that is in the 1992 biography of Jensen by Bob Grese of The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In addition to identifying clients, that list identifies many of the architects with whom Jensen had been associated on projects - large and small.

Burley Griffin's name does not appear on that list; nor does that of Marion Mahony. A moment's thought provides the reason: Burley Griffin was perfectly capable of doing his own landscape design; he had performed that role for Wright; and it was that skill that had contributed, greatly, to the Griffins getting his Canberra award.

One of the architects who shared projects with Jensen was Robert Closson Spencer, Jr., a contemporary and, until Frank Lloyd Wright's famous change of life, a friend of Wright. Before Wright's change of life, Spencer had more prestige than did Wright. While Spencer was their senior by a few years, he, Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony would, necessarily, have come to know each other during their respective times in Steinway Hall, if not earlier; Spencer, like Perkins and Mahony, had an MIT degree in architecture.

As soon as I learned of several Spencer designs in the Geneva Lake area. I became interested in determining how Spencer obtained his Geneva Lake clients. Since I could find virtually no biographical material on Spencer, I contacted H. Allen Brooks, the seminal writer of The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contemporaries. Brooks gave me the names of two men known by him to have worked on Spencer. One was Paul Kruty of The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, IL. In order that I could talk to Paul about what he had on the handful of Spencer projects in which I had an interest, I arranged to see him in February, 1997, in his home in Urbana. After he had given me access to what he had concerning my interests, we turned to talking, generally, of Graceland Cemetery and the recognized desire of Chicago architects to be interred there.

At this time, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony were no more than names to me - names known to me only as members of Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park Studio, for which I have, for several years, been a member of its Collections Committee. I had done some reading about Wright's Oak Park years and about those who had worked for him. I was no more than generally familiar with the fact that a Steinway Hall Group had existed a group that had, some of the time included Burley Griffin and a sole woman - Marion Mahony.

Paul remarked, "You know, John, Marion Mahony is interred at Graceland Cemetery - without a marker?" I said (in view of the fuss that the Cemetery and The Chicago Architectural Foundation makes about the many architects interred there), "You must be kidding me!" He said, "I am not; check it out!"

On my return to Chicago, I looked in the AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture for its coverage of Graceland Cemetery. As Paul had said to me, it related that Marion had been interred there, but with neither a marker or nor a monument.

I called the Graceland Cemetery Staff. I was told that Marion's remains could be located by looking for a small concrete "spud" bearing a number in a small area for cremated remains near the Cemetery's Chapel. I looked for the spud and found it. It was in as "low rent" an area as Graceland Cemetery contains. The file on Marion's interment reflects that, following her death and cremation, a member of Marion's family (Claramyra Hayes) had purchased the foot-square space among several dozen designed for the least expensive interments. The address for Mrs. Hayes in the Cemetery's records was that on Estes Avenue. I drove by that address, found it is a lower middle-class area, and found an old white clapboard structure that was large enough to have housed a family.

I asked around Chicago, "What had been done in India for Burley Griffin?" I was told that The Australian Institute of Architects had seen to the placement of a monument in Lucknow. I asked for a picture of that monument, on the chance that it would bear a design element that we could adapt. No one in America seemed to have one. I wrote The Australian Institute of Architects, whose address I obtained from The Society of Architectural Historians. I received no answer.

I happened to go to a lecture by a Wright expert, Tony Alofsin, at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park. The next day, Tony gave another lecture at Chicago's Mid-Day Club. Tony recognized me from the prior evening; after his talk, we chatted, exchanging information on our interests in common. I told him of my interest in arranging a memorial within Graceland Cemetery and of the "dry hole" that I had struck with The Australian Institute of Architects. He gave me addresses for one Christopher Vernon; Vernon had been with Kruty at The University of Illinois but he had removed himself to teaching in Australia, joining those interested, there, in the Griffins.

I contacted Vernon. Almost by return mail, I had an adequate photograph of the monument in Lucknow for Burley Griffin. I thought that the monument depicted would not do as a model; it was too like many other monuments in Graceland Cemetery. I could see no feature on the Burley Griffin monument from which we could take a design idea.

Besides, we were dealing, in Marion's case, with cremated remains. One does not move remains of anyone around a Cemetery without the approval of an appropriate family member. Kruty had given me the addresses of a niece and of a nephew of Marion on the West Coast. I wrote letters to them, indicating that I was interested in seeing to an appropriate memorial for Marion. I received no answer.

Then, it struck me that Larry Perkins (as Dwight Perkins' son) was as much a nephew of Marion as were the Hayes siblings and that Graceland Cemetery might act on his signature. I asked the Cemetery's Staff; I was told that they would.

I asked my fellow Trustees if they would approve a disbursement for the moving of the remains of Marion to another place within the Cemetery and to fund the creation of a suitable marker. At that time, under the design and supervision of John Eifler, a local architect, and Ted Wolff, a local landscape designer, the Cemetery had received a long report covering several available restoration alternatives. (It was at the presentation of that report that my friend had become so enthused that he was using it as cocktail party conversation.) One of the projects that had been authorized was the creation of a serpentine-walled Columbarium, such as those that can be seen, today at Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia. The immediate model for Eifler had been the Columbarium that had, recently, been installed at Christ Episcopal Church, Winnetka, IL.

I was authorized to ask Eifler to have his office design a custom memorial plaque that would be unique and reserved only for use for Marion. At first, Eifler was put off, as he understood that, following her death, she had had a full-body burial. I reassured him: "Marion had been cremated; the move would concern only cremated remains." He agreed to proceed.

I called Larry Perkins and went out to see him at The Presbyterian Home in Evanston. In addition to his apartment, Larry had the use of a smaller apartment, as a studio. I had dealt with Larry over the years, apart from my legal work for Perkins & Will. I thought that I had learned how to deal with his teasing nature. I had written to Larry, in advance, telling him of my idea for a memorial arrangement for Marion in Graceland Cemetery. He seated himself behind his drawing board; I seated myself in an easy chair, facing him. We talked about other things. Then, I got to business, saying, "Larry, as you know, I am interested in seeing to a memorial arrangement at Graceland Cemetery for Marion. I you think my idea is a bad one, please say so, and your saying so will be the end of the matter. If you think my idea is a good one, the Cemetery is willing to act on your signature, and we have lined up John Eifler to do a design that will be consistent with the standards that he has asked the Cemetery to use."

There was silence. Then, Larry raised his right arm, gesturing towards the wall to his right and to my left. There, there were three of Marion's large paintings of Australian horticultural scenes. I said, "You have answered my question; I will be out, with the necessary paperwork for you to sign, as soon as I am able." Larry said, "The Art Institute has been after me, for these, but they are going to go my children."

Larry then told me about the time in 1940 that he had arranged for Marion to talk at The Cliff Dwellers. We went on to talk of other things, and, soon, I went on my way. Within a few days, I was back with him, and he signed all that I asked of him.

Then, we of Graceland Cemetery set about selecting a date and arranging a function. I learned, to my pleasant surprise, that Janice (now, "Aja") Pregliasco was scheduled during the ensuing Fall to give a lecture at The Art Institute of Chicago based on her then draft of a biography of Marion. During the Summer, she came into Chicago for a day of research. Jane Clarke of The Art Institute and I had lunch with her. I said that I wished to set up something during the weekend when her lecture was to be delivered, and we agreed on timing. However, to my regret, I found that I had, already, scheduled a trip into Germany, and I could not be present.

No matter, the Cemetery's Staff made all the necessary arrangements, and they used The Chicago Architectural Foundation, the Chicago Chapter of The American Institute of Architects and The Architectural Society of The Chicago Historical Society, to spread the word.

On my return, I had calls waiting for me:

"There were a great many more people present than we anticipated; every female architect in the Greater Chicago Area must have been there; the floral arrangements from Australia were astonishing." "We had no idea how much interest there is in this woman."

Needless to say, this was "music to my ears". I was told that Blair Perkins Grumman and her family had been there, but Larry Perkins, because of an ongoing heart condition, was not. (In fact, he died not long thereafter.) I had, belatedly, come to understand how much the Griffins' stature in Australia exceeds their stature in the United States.

Now, the small memorial plaque for Marion is a regular stop for all tours of Graceland Cemetery sponsored by The Chicago Architectural Foundation.

With the publication in America of Kruty's, Vernon's and others work product on the Griffins, and their availability in specialty book sources such as Chicago's fine Prairie Avenue Bookstore, awareness of Marion's reputation is spreading.

ANOTHER BEGINNING

(Facilitation of the publication of Marion's Magic of America

Since the deposits of Magic into the archives that I have described, The New-York Historical Society and The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries have caused microfilmed copies of their respective copies to be made, and The New-York Historical Society has given copies of its microfilmed version to The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries and to The Australian National Public Library in Canberra. Anyone authorized to have access to any of those three libraries can look at these microfilmed copies. As the originals are fragile, access to them is restricted to those scholars and others meeting the rules of the respective libraries. Presently, there is no effort at either The New-York Historical Society or at The Art Institute of Chicago, to arrange for further publication or access. The microfilmed copy made at The New-York Historical Society is vastly more legible than either of the two at The Art Institute of Chicago.

I have read the chapter in each of the two versions to which I have had access on Marion's formative years, and I have skimmed their entireties. I believe that the typewritten text of each of these two copies is virtually identical - albeit somewhat rearranged - perhaps inadvertently - perhaps by Marion's intentional reordering of pages.

The two groups of memorabilia that were allocated by Marion - one to each copy - are, however, quite different. Frequently, the memorabilia does not match the typed text of the pages surrounding where an item of memorabilia appears. I speculate that Marion, simply, made two piles of that whatever memorabilia she had in the late 1940's and sent one with the original typescript to New York and one with a carbon copy of the typescript to The Art Institute, without careful thought to allocation of what to which.

My impression of The New-York Historical Society is that its severe financial difficulties have caused it to be so defensive about use of its assets that there is only a small prospect for the level of cooperation in the joint effort that is necessary to create a truly authoritative product.

My impression of The Art Institute of Chicago is that:
(1) While at least adequate interest in Marion Mahony Griffin exists, the will to move forward and effect prompt public access to Magic does not;

(2) Any form of additional publication of Magic is a low priority for its staff; and

(3) The current "powers that be" are not willing to invest the time, let alone the money, necessary to see that even minimal electronic access to the typewritten text is effected.
My hope is that, sooner, rather than later - just as Graceland Cemetery, belatedly recognized the presence of Marion Mahony Griffin - either or both of The New-York Historical Society and The Art Institute of Chicago will provide better access than presently exists to at least the contents of the typescript of Magic - perhaps on a web site accessible to all interested. Any editing of those contents can follow - as can reconciliation of other versions with the version first to be "posted".

Dealing with the memorabilia that accompany both versions of the typescript will be far more difficult; a forthcoming attitude from all concerned can be expected to pay solid dividends to students of The Prairie School and to students of the Griffins' works in Australia and in India.

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