Welcome to the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America

Photo by Mati Maldre

Welcome to the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America web site. Our mission is to preserve the legacy of architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin and the Prairie School of Architecture.

Please enjoy our site.

EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING
Saturday-Sunday, 17-18 JUNE 2017
Join us in Southern Illinois:
Edwardsville & St. Louis!

The eighteenth annual meeting of the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America will be held in downstate Illinois near St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday, 17 June, and Sunday 18 June. The featured building will be the Ralph Griffin house in Edwardsville, built for Walter’s brother’s family in 1909-10. Visited by the Griffin Society in 2002, the house is now fully restored and is one of the subjects of a new book being issued by the Society at the June meeting (see announcement to follow).

We will meet Saturday morning at the Lovejoy Library on the campus of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE). Doors will open at 8:00 for onsite registration and book sales, and the meeting will begin at 9:00. Following the morning presentations in the library’s Abbott Auditorium, we will visit the extraordinary collection of architectural ornament by Louis Sullivan housed on campus and tour Buckminster Fuller’s powerful geodesic dome, completed in 1971, and now housing the Center for Spirituality and Sustainability. The afternoon with continue with tours of several buildings in Edwardsville, including the Ralph Griffin house, and will end with a reception in the Griffin house yard. On Sunday morning, we will meet to visit Sullivan’s Wainwright building in downtown St. Louis, and have scheduled the Wainwright tomb in Bellefontaine cemetery to be open for us at 11:00.

The conference hotel is the Holiday Inn Express at 1000 Plummer Drive, Edwardsville, IL, 618-692-7255. It is five minutes by car from the Ralph Griffin house and close to the campus of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Ask for the Griffin conference rate. Reservations must be made by 17 May to get the conference discount.

[NOTE: The fall announcement that the meeting would take place on the campus of Principia College proved to be premature. After the newsletter was mailed, we were informed that our use of the campus was no longer possible.]

The REGISTRATION FORM can be found here and in the newsletter. Please fill it out, indicating your choice of sandwich and beverage for lunch, and return it to the Griffin Society’s headquarters. Please be sure to include your email address. The cost will be $35 for the Saturday/Sunday meeting and tours, $10 for the box lunch and, of course, registrants must also have paid their annual dues of $25 to the Society.

The Walter Burley Griffin Society of America
is proud to announce...

NEW BOOK:
Rock Crest/Rock Glen
Mason City, Iowa
The American Masterwork of
Marion M. and Walter B. Griffin

By Paul Kruty, Robert E. McCoy, Paul E. Sprague, and James Weirick

The Griffin Society is pleased to announce the publication of its latest book on the work of the Griffins: the first monograph devoted to the internationally significant site that is Rock Crest/Rock Glen. This eighteen-acre site, meant to hold nineteen houses, marks the culmination of their American practice. Lauded by Peter Harrison, the prescient Australian architect, planner and historian credited with reviving interest in the Canberra plan in the 1950s, as “the nearest approach to a complete demonstration of Griffin’s talent for the design of a total domestic environment,” Rock Crest/Rock Glen has not been the subject of intense investigation since 1968, when Robert McCoy first examined the various personalities that came together to produce this masterpiece in The Prairie School Review. Drawing on unpublished photographs, documents and drawings from the Griffins’ office only recently made available at the Australian National Library in Canberra, and supplemented with a host of original sources from a variety of American archives, the four authors examine this amazing development from contrasting points of view. Here for the first time are in-depth analyses of the historical background and clients by Robert E. McCoy; of Griffin’s development leading to this remarkable design by Paul Kruty; of each of the buildings and projects by Paul E. Sprague; and the place of Rock Crest/Rock Glen in the Griffins’ complete careers by James Weirick. The book includes the texts of the two contemporary analyses of the project (one by Griffin himself) and a lengthy bibliography.

Rock Crest/Rock Glen, Mason City, Iowa: The American Masterwork of Marion M. and Walter B. Griffin sells for $35, plus p & h, with a 20% discount price for Griffin Society members. 166 pages, with 175 black-and-white and 39 color illustrations. Walter Burley Griffin Society of America, 2014. ISBN: 0-9793588-2-5.

Published by the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America. 1152 Center Drive,
St. Louis, MO 63117. info@wbgriffinsociety.org www.wbgriffinsociety.org

INDIAN MONOGRAPH AVAILABLE

The Griffin Society is pleased to make available a limited number of new copies of the ground-breaking book, Two American Architects in India: Walter B. Griffin and Marion M. Griffin, 1935-1937, published in conjunction with the international conference, “The Griffins in Context: American, Australia, India,” held at the University of Illinois in October 1997. Written by Paul Kruty and Paul E. Sprague, the book is a comprehensive examination of the brief but productive period during which the Griffins worked in northern India. Long unavailable and difficult to find, the book is for sale through the Griffin Society for $25, which includes shipping and handling. (A few used copies are currently available on Amazon for up to $98.82 plus shipping.) Copies may be ordered by writing to the Walter Burley Griffin Society of America, 1152 Center Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63117.