Walter Burley Griffin

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After his studies, Griffin moved to Chicago and was employed as a draftsman for two years in the offices of progressive architects Dwight H. Perkins, Robert C. Spencer, Jr., and H. Webster Tomlinson in "Steinway Hall". Griffin's employers worked in the distinctive Prairie School style. This style is marked by horizontal lines, flat roofs with broad overhanging eaves, solid construction, craftsmanship, and strict discipline in the use of ornament. Louis Sullivan was influential among Prairie School architects and Griffin was an admirer of his work, and of his philosophy of architecture which stressed that design should be free of historical precedent. Other architects of that school include George Grant Elmslie, George Washington Maher, William Gray Purcell, William Drummond and most importantly, Frank Lloyd Wright.

In July 1901, Griffin passed the new Illinois architects' licensing examination and this permitted him to enter private practice as an architect. He began working in Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Oak Park, Illinois, studios. Although he was never made a partner, Griffin oversaw the construction on many of Wright's noted houses including the Willits House in 1902 and the Larkin Administration Building built in 1904. From 1905 he also began to supply landscape plans for Wright's buildings. Wright allowed Griffin and his other staff to undertake small commissions of their own. The William Emery house, built in Elmhurst, Illinois, in 1903 was such a commission. While working for Wright, Griffin fell in love with Mr. Wright's sister, Maginel Wright. He proposed marriage to her, but his affections for her were not returned, and she refused.

In 1906, he resigned his position at Wright's studio and established his own practice at Steinway Hall. Griffin and Wright had fallen out over events following Mr. Wright's trip to Japan in 1905. While Wright was away for five months, Griffin ran the practice. When Wright returned, he told Griffin that he had overstepped his responsibilities, completing several of Wright's jobs, and sometimes substituting his own building designs. Further, Wright had borrowed money from Griffin to pay for his travels abroad, and then he tried to pay off his debts to Griffin with prints he had acquired in Japan. It became clear to Griffin then that Wright would not make Griffin a partner in his business.

Griffin's first independent commission was a landscape design for the State Normal School at Charleston, Illinois, now known as the Eastern Illinois University. In the fall of 1906, he received his first residential job from Harry Peters. The Peters' House was the first house designed with an L-shaped or open floor plan. The L-shape was an economical design and easily constructed. From 1907 to 1914, several houses designed by Griffin were built on the far southwest side of Chicago in the city's Beverly and Morgan Park, Chicago neighborhoods. In 1981, the city of Chicago granted landmark status to 13 of these Prairie-style bungalows in Beverly along the 1700 block of West 104th Place, 12 blocks of Longwood Drive between West 98th and 110th Streets, and three blocks of Seeley Avenue. With seven of these houses being located on West 104th Place—comprising the largest concentration of original prairie style homes built in Chicago—the street as it runs between Hale Avenue on the west to Prospect Avenue on the east was designated the Griffin Place Historic District, which comprises a part of the larger Ridge Historic District.

In 1911, Griffin developed 'Solid Rock' house for William F. Tempel in Winnetka, Illinois. It was the first house built by Griffin in his mature style and of reinforced concrete.

On June 29, 1911, Griffin married Marion Lucy Mahony, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in architecture. She was employed first in Wright's office, and then by Hermann V. von Holst, who had taken over Wright's work in America when Wright left for Europe in 1909. Marion Mahony recommended to von Holst that he hire Griffin to develop a landscape plan for the area surrounding the three houses on Millikin Place for which Wright had been hired in Decatur, Illinois. Mahony and Griffin worked closely on the Decatur project immediately before their marriage.

After their marriage, Mahony went to work in Griffin's practice. A housing development with several homes designed by Griffin and Mahony, 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.

From 1899 to 1914, Griffin created more than 130 designs in his Chicago office for buildings, urban plans and landscapes; half of these were built in the mid-western states of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The relationship between Griffin and Frank Lloyd Wright cooled in the years following Griffin's departure from Wright's firm in 1906. With Walter and Marion's wedding, Wright started to feel they were "against him". After the Griffins' win in the Australian federal capital design competition, and resultant front-page coverage in The New York Times, Wright and Griffin never spoke to each other again. In later years, whenever Griffin was brought up in conversation Wright would downplay his achievements and refer to him as a draftsman.

Later career

The Griffins' office in Chicago closed in 1917; however, they had successful practices in Melbourne and Sydney, which were a strong motivation for their continuing to live in Australia. The Griffins had received commissions for work outside Canberra since Walter first arrived in the country in 1913, designing town plans, subdivisions, and one of his highly regarded buildings, Newman College, the Catholic residential college of the University of Melbourne while employed in Canberra. While supervising activities in Canberra, Griffin spent much time in Melbourne and, in 1918, became a founder, with Royden Powell, of the Henry George Club, an organisation devoted to providing a home for the Single Tax movement. The Griffins' first major commission after leaving Canberra was the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne; it opened on November 7, 1924. In 1964 architectural writer Robin Boyd described the Capitol as "the best cinema that was ever built or is ever likely to be built".

In 1916 and 1917, Griffin developed a patented modular concrete construction system known as "Knitlock" for use in the construction of Canberra. No Knitlock buildings were ever built in Canberra, although several were built in Australia. The first were built on Griffin's property in Frankston in 1922, where he constructed two holiday houses called "Gumnuts". The best examples of Knitlock include the S.R. Salter House in Toorak and the Paling House. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a similar system and used Griffin's design to support the arguments for his design.

In 1919, the Griffins founded the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA), and in 1921 purchased 259 ha of land in North Sydney. The GSDA's goal was the development of an idyllic community with a consistent architectural feel and bushland setting. Walter Burley Griffin as managing director of the GSDA designed all the buildings built in the area until 1935. Castlecrag was the first suburb to be developed by the GSDA. The Redding House and several others in Castelcrag were also built in Knitlock. Almost all the houses Griffin designed in Castlecrag were small and had flat roofs, and he included an internal courtyard in many of them. Griffin used what was at that time the novel concept of including native bushland in these designs. He came to be referred to as "The Wizard of Castlecrag".

Other work the Griffins did during this time included the Melbourne subdivisions of Glenard (where the Griffins built their own Knitlock house "Pholiota") and Mount Eagle at Eaglemont, and the Ranelagh Estate in Mount Eliza Victoria 1924. The Ranelagh Estate was listed on the Victorian State Heritage Register (H01605) in 2005 as a significant example of a country estate. Prior to 1920 the Griffins also designed the New South Wales towns of Leeton and Griffith. Griffin and architect J Burcham Clamp designed a large tomb built at Waverley Cemetery, Sydney, between 1914 and 1916 for James Stuart, which still stands as a good example of Griffin's sense of 'human-scale monumentality'.

The Griffins participated in the celebrated Chicago Tribune Tower Competition in 1922. Having won one international competition, as architects who were both well acquainted with Chicago and recognized as practical visionaries, they offered a solution that was positive, forward-looking and elegant. Indeed, their entry appears to have been about a decade ahead of its time, with emphatic verticality along the lines of the Art Deco or Art Moderne. It anticipated, and would have been a near neighbor of, Chicago's 333 North Michigan by Holabird & Roche (1928); with stylistic echos in John and Donald Parkinson's Bullocks Wilshire, in Los Angeles (1929), as well as Adah Robinson and Bruce Goff's Boston Avenue Methodist Church, Tulsa (1929).

In the 1920s, the Griffins prepared plans for the Milleara Estate (also known as City View) at Avondale Heights and the Ranelagh Estate at Mount Eliza, both in Victoria (Australia) in conjunction with surveyors Tuxen and Miller.

During the financial hardship of the Great Depression, in the 1930s Griffin designed incinerators, collaborating with the Reverberatory Incinerator and Engineering Company (RIECo), in conjunction with his friend and business partner, Eric Nicholls. He was responsible for twelve incinerator designs between 1930 and 1938, of which seven still survive. They are located at:

The Willoughby incinerator is a good example of this work. It has been listed by the National Trust of Australia and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects as a building of significance. In 1999 it was listed in the New South Wales State Heritage Register. It has since been restored and converted to commercial use by Willoughby Council.

The Walter Burley Griffin Incinerator, Ipswich, Queensland is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register and has been converted into a theatre. Another incinerator was built in the suburb of Pyrmont, not far from the centre of Sydney. This incinerator was considered for heritage listing but was demolished in 1992 because it was in irredeemably bad condition.

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