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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.

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TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, 3-4 JUNE 2023
EVANSTON & CRYSTAL LAKE, ILLINOIS

The next Griffin meeting is scheduled for the weekend of 3-4 June 2023 in Evanston, Illinois with optional visits to nearby Rogers Park and more distant Crystal Lake. The regular Saturday meeting will contain a morning session of lectures and an afternoon of house tours. Lecturers include historic masonry preservation engineer Brett Laureys, preservationist/historian Susan Benjamin, Chicago’s cultural historian Tim Samuelson, and architectural historian Paul Kruty. On the tour will be houses by Griffin, Wright, Dwight Perkins, Lawrence Perkins, and Myron Hunt. Two optional visits are being added: a Sunday morning trip to the ancestral home of the American Terra Cotta Company in Crystal Lake, Illinois; and a Friday afternoon visit to the Armstrong School in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood for a viewing of Marion Mahony Griffin’s 1930 Fairy mural (see below for details of both events).

Doors at the auditorium of the Block Museum will open at 8:00AM, with the program beginning at 9:00. As usual, we will have a coffee break after the second speaker and plan to end by noon, when boxed lunches will be available for those who order on the enclosed registration form. Afternoon tours will take place between 1:00 and 4:30. The Block Museum of Art is on the campus of Northwestern University at 40 Arts Circle Drive. There is parking nearby at the South Campus Parking Garage, 1847 Campus Drive.

NOTE! TWO MEETING ADD-ONS:
MURAL AND TERRA COTTA

We have arranged for registered Griffin Society members to see Marion Mahony Griffin’s mural in the Armstrong Elementary School, now the George B. Armstrong International Studies Elementary School, at 2110 Greenleaf Ave., Chicago. The school will be open Friday afternoon, June 2nd, from 3:30 to 5:00, the only time available to us. The school wishes us to supply a list of visitors. Because this event will take place before the Saturday morning conference registration at the Block Museum, you will need to check the box on the enclosed registration form so that we can produce such a list, and then identify yourself at the door. This sixteen-foot mural, titled “Fairies Feeding the Herons,” was painted by MMG in 1930 during her second return visit to the States after the Griffins’ 1914 move to Australia. At the time she was staying nearby at her sister’s home at Damen and Estes in Rogers Park.

Sunday’s excursion will be to the American Terra Cotta Museum at 3703 South Route 31, Crystal Lake, Illinois, 60012. The collection is housed in the World Headquarters Building of TC Industries, Inc., at the corner of Route 31 and Half Mile Road. The American Terra Cotta Company was one of the leading producers of decorative terra cotta during the first half of the 20th Century, producing many of Louis Sullivan’s most famous designs, and also issued Teco pottery, the so-called “Art Pottery of the Prairie School.”

The Annual Meeting Registration form can be found here (Annual Meeting Registration Form). Please return the form with your payment to the Society.

MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS

Once again, please renew your Griffin Society membership for 2023. Again, we have not raised our basic dues of $25 over the life of the organization and yet have been able to host the meetings and newsletters as well as sponsor publications and preservation projects. But we do need our members to renew to continue making these things possible. Thanks so very much. The membership renewal form can be found here (Membership Form). Please return the form with your payment to the Society.

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

GRIFFIN SOCIETY POSTERS

The Griffin Society is pleased to make its set of conference posters available for purchase. For the past six years the Society has commissioned commemorative posters for its annual meetings from the Brooklyn Studio of Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos. Hand printed with fine inks on handmade papers in limited editions, they are artworks in themselves and make excellent additions to the collections of architecture aficionados, Griffin followers, or anyone looking for an affordable and unique gift. The Society is offering these elegant prints for the modest price of $35 apiece including postage and handling (within the United States).

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Peter Kruty is a master printer and, together with his partner Sayre Gaydos, is the proprietor of Peter Kruty Editions, a fine art and commercial letterpress studio located in a charming two-story former horse stable in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Peter trained under Richard-Gabriel Rummonds at The University of Alabama and has graduate degrees in both letterpress and printmaking. The studio, now in its twenty-fourth year, collaborates with numerous contemporary artists and designers, including Lesley Dill, Louise Lawler, Eliza Kentridge, and Walton Ford. Its productions are widely collected both privately and by museums and libraries. Peter has taught book arts extensively in the United States and currently instructs letterpress at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. Peter and Sayre also teach a letterpress workshop at the renowned Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione in Cornuda, Italy.

As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Peter studied architectural history under Paul Sprague, developing an early interest in the Prairie School and Walter Burley Griffin. He attends the meetings of the Griffin Society as his schedule permits and has been pleased to offer his services in producing the conference posters for the last six meetings. Peter and Sayre have created the posters at little more than cost and have donated all proceeds to the Griffin Society.

Peter Kruty
365 40th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11232
peterkrutyeditions@peterkrutyeditions.com

See the Publications page for pricing and ordering information.

 

 
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