In the print edition of the Reader this page is occupied by a Chris Ware comic. At his request, we do not make his work available online. CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 | SECTION ONE 19

The Invisible ArchitecBy Sarah Downey t T OCK MUSEUM OF AR Y AND LEIGH BL MAR Mahony’s drawings for Griffin’s G.B. Cooley house in Louisiana and Frank Pallma house in Kenilworth; her Eucalyptus Urnigera Tasmania / Scarlet Bark, Sunset, done in ink on silk circa 1919 We know her ravishing renderings helped Frank and other architects make their mark. But Marion Mahony’s other contributions to the movement are still being revealed more than 40 years after her death.

evin Howells was shovel- impact she had on the architec- Mahony, couldn’t find a job until ing snow in front of his ture—we know she did the art.” she won the competition to K new house in Rogers Park Mahony grew up in Winnetka, design ’s Building for when some neighbors rumbling where her family took refuge after the World’s Columbian by in a silver SUV stopped to ask the Great Chicago Fire. “Always a Exposition. She was paid a frac- whether he knew about the cele- tomboy,” she wrote in an unpub- tion of what her male colleagues brated architect who had lived lished autobiography, “The Magic made, saw little of her vision there. He had to admit he didn’t. of America,” she took daily walks come to fruition, and collapsed Actually, Howells’s house, on to the lakeshore through the brush under the pressure. “The newspa- the 1900 block of West Estes, and flora. In her teens Mahony pers wrote that she had a nervous was once home to two architects: spent long hours “absorbing the breakdown. She didn’t complete Walter Burley Gri∞n and his scientific fundaments of our time.” any projects after that,” says wife, Marion Mahony. But while A family friend arranged to send Jennifer Masengarb, an educa- Gri∞n is readily acknowledged her to MIT, where in 1894 she tion specialist at the Chicago as a luminary of the Prairie style, became the second woman to Architecture Foundation. Mahony’s role in the movement graduate from the architecture Mahony had a smoother entry has been vigorously debated for program. Her thesis, “The House into the business. The week after decades. Some scholars say she and Studio of a Painter,” articu- graduation she began working as was denied proper credit for her lates design elements that would a “cub draftsman” for her cousin, part in designing some of the become hallmarks of the Prairie fellow MIT grad Dwight Perkins, most important pieces of the style—“rooms freely communicat- helping with interior details for

T period—the , Unity ing with each other,” lit by large Steinway Hall, an 11-story edifice US Temple—while others, including groups of windows, with a work- Perkins was designing on Van

TION TR her former boss Frank Lloyd space attached to the same axis as Buren. Perkins moved his own VA Wright, characterize her only as the house and courtyard. “My practice into the building when a “capable assistant.” thought has been to arrange a it was done and was soon joined Yet at least one thing is certain, convenient and elegant home for by an old MIT pal, Robert

D WRIGHT PRESER as an exhibition that opens an artist who, if not great, is at any Spencer. Spencer brought in his OY Friday at the Block Museum of rate very fashionable,” she wrote. close friend Wright, who’d parted Art shows: “She did the drawings At the time female architects ways with a few people think of when they think were few and obscure, and their years earlier. Walter Burley Gri∞n joined the group in 1899. CTION OF FRANK LL of ,” says designs were primarily collabora-

LLE curator Debora Wood. “We can tive efforts. Sophia Hayden, who When business slowed and CO Marion Mahony in the 1890s speculate till time’s end what graduated four years ahead of continued on page 20 20 CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Mahony

continued from page 19 Perkins could no longer afford Mahony’s $6 a week salary, Wright hired her to work with him at his new Oak Park studio. She had a talent for freehand

drawing and for setting buildings S in harmony with nature—another hallmark of the Prairie style. On at least one occasion, recalled architect Barry Byrne, who got his Y OF ILLINOIS PRES start under Wright, her work was

declared superior to the master’s. /UNIVERSIT The two worked together for 14

years, but it was a volatile relation- TI MALDRE MA ship. She later claimed he’d taken Scholars attribute the design for the Adolph Mueller house in Decatur to Mahony, though Wright took credit for it at the time. credit for her work on the Dana- Thomas House in Oak Park and them under his name.” fascination with the native plant and help develop others and their came to talk architecture all for many of her drawings in the Gri∞n, who by this time had life. In the essay that accompa- ideas,” writes Queensland archi- wanted to know about Frank , which his own practice at Steinway nies the Mahony exhibition cata- tect James Birrell in his 1964 Lloyd Wright, whose recently launched his international reputa- Hall, handled the landscape log, professor Christopher biography of Gri∞n. completed had tion when it was published in design on the Mueller project as Vernon of the University of During the Depression they made him a press darling. Germany in 1910. Her time at the a favor to Mahony. In “The Western Australia writes “It led turned to industrial design, main- Mahony accepted planning drafting table resulted in just one Magic of America,” she writes, “I her to invent a highly personal ly in , creating municipal projects for towns in Texas and solo commission, for the Church was first swept off my feet by my genre of botanical illustration incinerators that, in the words of New Hampshire, but her client of All Souls in Evanston, run by a delight in his achievements in that she titled ‘Forest Portraits.’” Peisch, gave “powerful form and died before those could be exe- family friend. The September 1912 my profession, then through a Yet later on she would reveal in remarkable beauty to a structure cuted. She was asked to address issue of the prestigious Western common bond of interests in “The Magic of America” and to whose purpose was neither invit- Society of Architects Architect featured its exterior nature and intellectual pursuits, architectural historians that she ing nor aesthetically challenging.” shortly after her return, but she stonework, tall gable roof, and and then with the man himself. had hardly retired. As Mark Major commissions in India fol- only wanted to talk about skylights, but by 1960 All Souls It was by no means a case of love Peisch, who interviewed Mahony lowed, and as Gri∞n created anthroposophy, a religious sys- had been razed for a parking lot. at first sight, but it was a mad- extensively, wrote in the exhibition buildings, a university tem that she and her husband As Wright prepared to go to ness when it struck.” Macmillan Encyclopedia of library, and maharajah palaces, he had adopted while abroad. Europe with his mistress in 1909, Architects in 1982, “Although her reached a new apex in his career. Mahony found solace in writ- he asked Mahony to continue he two married in 1911 and specific contribution to the hus- Mahony stayed in Australia to run ing “The Magic of America,” a designing for his clients. For rea- T moved to the house on Estes. band-wife teamwork is not ade- their practice but left it in the 1,100-page autobiographical sons that have never been ascer- Less than a year later, Mahony’s quately documented, it can be hands of proteges after surmising manuscript she called “my sort of tained, she refused. Wright then renderings helped Gri∞n win considered major.” her husband needed a bit of help. biography of Walt.”Organized turned to Herman von Holst, the international competition to Bureaucratic interference and “Mrs. Gri∞n follows her man,” into four parts, detailing battles who turned to Mahony—who design , the new capital World War I would throttle their she wrote to him. Eight months the couple faced personally and agreed to help him “on a definite city of Australia. The entry was hopes of executing the Canberra later, Gri∞n fell from a scaffold professionally in India, arrangement that I should have under his name, but American plan. A formal government while working on the library. He Canberra, Sydney, and Chicago, control of the designing.” Prairie colleagues widely understood inquiry found politicians had died a week after the accident, in her prose failed to draw the School scholars credit Mahony that while the planning concepts deliberately withheld “necessary February 1937. attention she’d hoped for. with both designing and render- were Gri∞n’s, the presentation information and assistance” from Afterward a devastated ing the Robert and Adolph drawings that so ideally set the Gri∞n, who also suffered for his Mahony would turn down job : Mueller houses in Decatur during city within the native flora came Yankee status. Still, the two offers in both Australia and Drawing the Form of Nature this time. Although Wright had from her hand. stayed in Australia. They built a India, staying only long enough WHEN Through Sun 12/4: Tue 10 AM-5 done little more than secure the Mahony’s adoration for her college in and a to finish pressing commissions. PM, Wed-Fri 10 AM-8 PM, Sat-Sun commissions, writes Elizabeth husband precluded her from utopian hillside suburb where Noon-5 PM, closed Mon Birmingham, a Mahony biogra- demanding her share of the cred- they lived outside Sydney. A suc- hen Mahony returned to WHERE Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts pher and professor at North it. She continued to sketch for cession of young architects W the house on Estes at the Circle Dr., Evanston Dakota State University, “after he him in Australia, but began to helped them run their business. end of 1938, America had largely PRICE Free returned from Europe, he took reserve more of her monograms “Mrs. Gri∞n had a great ability forgotten about both of the INFO 847-491-4000, credit for them and exhibited for paintings that reflected her and a rare capacity to understand Gri∞ns. The few visitors who blockmuseum.northwestern.edu CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 | SECTION ONE 21

She asked William Purcell, whom she considered Gri∞n’s closest friend from their days in the Oak Park studio, for feed- back, explaining that she wanted to get “Walter’s Architecture and Town Planning concepts before the general public by hook or by crook.” Purcell could only offer measured encouragement: “Yes indeed—here is a treasure of great interest to architects.” But he noted she hadn’t yet “built this material so that a reader unfamiliar with the issues could see its significance.” No publisher ever came for- ward. As she neared 80, Mahony finally arranged to deposit copies at the New-York Historical Society and the . Not long afterward Mahony called Thomas M. Folds, the chair of the art department at Northwestern, and said she had some drawings to show him. Visiting her home, Folds encoun- tered an array of tall artworks on drafting linen—not just presen- tation drawings for houses in America that Mahony had ren- dered in ink, her preferred draw- ing medium, but also her “Forest Portraits,” which depict locales in Tasmania and New South Wales that Mahony painted during a 1917 respite from the disappoint- ments of the Canberra project. In all, Mahony would donate 120 pieces to Northwestern. She gave 350 more to the Art Institute before she died in 1961.

n the years since their deaths, I recognition of the Gri∞ns has gradually increased. In 1981 the city named a string of Gri∞n homes Walter Burley Gri∞n Place. John Notz, a Prairie School historian and trustee of , arranged to have Mahony’s cremated remains moved from an unmarked grave to a columbarium that now bears a plaque with her name and one of her flower renderings. Many of the pieces she bequeathed to Northwestern will be displayed at the Block Museum as part of Marion Mahony Gri∞n: Drawing the Form of Nature , the first exhibi- tion to make Mahony the main attraction. The show emphasizes Mahony the artist over Mahony the architect; it’s the first public showing of the “Forest Portraits,” and there’s also a section devoted to “Fairies Feeding the Herons,” a mural Mahony painted at the Armstrong School in 1931, when she returned to Chicago during a brief separation from Walter in Australia. While for years getting access to “The Magic of America” required visiting one of the holding venues, Art Institute o∞cials are working to publish it, at least online, in the face of budget cuts. The Block, meanwhile, has borrowed por- tions of it for the exhibition. “She was one of the first women out there practicing architecture,” says Wood. “It gives people a feel for what that was like.” v