QUESTION: What is Griffin's debt to Sullivan?

PAUL SPRAGUE: Griffin's debt to Sullivan is the idea that an architect should not repeat the forms of historic architecture; Greek forms, Gothic forms, what have you; which was in fact the way to go in the late 19th century and in this county and elsewhere. At least until the Depression. Most of the buildings were designed as if they were historic buildings. He had thought this doesn't make sense to take the forms of historic building that were developing for these indigenous cultures so long ago, and somehow he felt spiritually reflected these cultures, and transfer that to this new machine age which was so different than anything that existed historically. He felt that it was wrong to do that. Instead we had now to find new forms for our new age. He and maybe six or seven architects in Europe, in the 1890's roughly, were able to come up with new forms. The ideas predated Sullivan. But it was very difficult for someone with a blank sheet of paper to do something new. Sullivan said the way to do it is to go out and commune with nature. Can you imagine a guy with a blank sheet of paper communing with nature and developing a new style? This is spiritual. This is not material. But Sullivan felt that is how you did it. Sullivan believed that he had single-handily developed this new style. And how could you argue with him? It is the spirit of this land. Can you argue with that? You can't prove it one way or another. Griffin went to this lecture when the League of America, which was all the architectural clubs of America, came to Chicago. Sullivan gave this message. It had nothing to do with design. Sullivan said. "Don't go to the books; go to nature. Get it out of your head. Get it somewhere. Do your own thing." He said, "If there are one hundred architects there should be one hundred different styles. Don't go back to the past." That's what is important about all of this. Even Frank Lloyd Wright, he imbibed this in Sullivan's office, and he took this and generated his own modern style. And Griffin wasn't even with Wright the first couple of years. He was with these guys who were also trying to do something new in Steinway Hall. So by 1902, Griffin was able to do some buildings that had a spirit of their own, although they also relate to Wright's work. So that's the message from Sullivan and that's what plants Griffin firmly in the "new age", in this "new era". And that's what makes the work of anybody, however awful, who at this time is trying to do something that have some significance. The difference is, of course, that Sullivan's work had this aesthetic quality and so did Wright's and so did Griffin's. So in those ways they were really ahead of everybody else. I see the three of them, Sullivan, and his student Wright, and Griffin who imbibed from him, the idea of this new style as part of "the" unit in the United States that really does this. Now unfortunately this idea was beat to death. People didn't want new buildings and so it all died shortly after that. It had been growing in Europe and then it came over here. So we started doing modern German and Austrian architecture here, which now is called "modern" architecture. Wright's and Sullivan's and Griffin's were "modern" at the turn of the century. But we know what happened to Griffin, he wasn't even around. Wright continued into the 1920's to do this expressive architecture with all this kind of ornament. And he realized ... well, one guy thought he had died. And somebody called him the greatest architect of the 19th century. And he didn't like this because he was a big egotist. So he changes. And when he starts getting jobs after the Depression is going on for awhile. In 1936, he is a modern architect. And he doesn't look all that different. Meanwhile Griffin was still doing something like that because he didn't like that simplified aesthetic architecture that was emanating from Europe. Had he lived longer, who knows what would have happened. Wright lived long enough that we know he didn't get any better after the Second World War.

QUESTION: What is Griffin's debt to Wright?

PAUL SPRAGUE: First of all, he worked with Wright and, of course, he talked with Wright all the time. And he must have learned a great deal about Wright's method of design. I don't mean stealing his style, but he would have learned his approach to doing things, which he probably would have learned less had he remained at Steinway Hall because he was working in the drafting room with people. Because this got him to dealing with clients and got him to site management and so forth. Wright, I think, let him do a lot of the specifications and things like that. He observed the genius designing, and this was useful. This doesn't mean that you take what he did and just repeat it because if that is what he had done, just to repeat Wright, then we wouldn't be talking about him; he'd be a George Elmslie or somebody else. Say a Drummond, anyway. No, he ran with that. Griffin came in with some ideas of his own and that's also what set's him apart. Besides that he was a registered architect and all that stuff when he went to work for Wright. He went to work for Wright in 1901. In 1902 he designs these stables out in Elmhurst which have all these kind of mannerisms in them. So he already had a manner. Then in 1903, he designed a house for the Emerys which then continues this. And there are things in those buildings which are just not Wrightian. He liked these gable roofs, these thick kind of windows, this kind of space which was different than Wright which was vertically layered to some degree. So you go in the Emery House and it's a huge living room, almost two stories high. And you go around the corner and you go downstairs and you are at the dining room. And where is the dining room? At grade! So you walk out the door and you are outside. Then you go up the stairs and onto a little balcony you look out on the space. It's a different kind of space, but the idea is of this integrated space. Which is not Wright's by the way. It came to Wright from what we call the American picturesque, these irregular houses with turrets and so forth that you see in the 1880's East Coast and Chicago. The first person Wright worked for was Silsbie who was a master at this. But Wright took these ideas and made it his own. He put them in his own style. Griffin surely got these ideas not from Wright, but he may have made them better, but he got them from the same places Wright got them, which was commonplace in the 1880's and 90's.

QUESTION: How does Griffin fit into the history of American Architecture?

PAUL SPRAGUE: He fits in primarily in relationship to this concept of producing a new architecture without ties to the historic buildings of the past. It is what really gives him significance. Imagine if this thing didn't happen? That this change to modern architecture didn't happen. Then he and Wright and Sullivan would have been very good designers in their own ways of buildings in the historic styles. But they wouldn't be very important for that. It would be entirely differen had that not happened. So this immediately, as I would like to say over and over again, elevates anyone who did something in a new style on to a certain plateau because that is what succeeded. It failed in the United States, but eventually it succeeded by way of Europe coming in here. That is what distinguishes, Sullivan, Wright and Griffin. That they were able to come up with manners that are there own, which are so elegant, or so effervescent or macabre, however you want to see some of things. So they would have been very good architects if this hadn't happened but they wouldn't be especially important as they are because of what happened. They happened to be there at the right time and they were willing to fight against all the odd and so forth. And once Griffin went to Australia. he left, I mean when he went to Australia, there were one million people. I mean, there wasn't much going on. It only has sixteen million now; the population of Illinois and Wisconsin. So to put it kind of in perspective of the kind of opportunity, he went there he said because he really didn't know. He went there because he thought they didn't have any building traditions. They didn't have any architectural style and had no ties to anything. It was a new country. It was a democratic country. People could think for themselves. So he went there expecting,everybody to say. "Hey this is great! We are going to build modern buildings." He went there and he found out that it was little England. Biggest bureaucracy in the world, from the English bureaucracy. You couldn't turn around there without some building rule telling you you couldn't have the ceiling so high or it had to be this or that. And they all wanted cottages! In fact, you go there today, it is hard to find a two-story house in Australia. And they had to have red tile roofs. And he soon found out that he was not going to change things there. But anyway that 's what he thought. And so once he went there he didn't have much opportunity. He becomes known primarily for winning this competition for the design of the Australian capital. And it is not an Australian design . It was designed in the United States during the period of his mature style and as an American design; a very kind of American idealism. Griffin was an idealist and once he got on a thing that people should have flat roof houses and live close to nature and this and that, that was what he sold. And curiously he didn't design Canberra that way, although it has many organic features. Canberra's streets are oriented to the hills surrounding it. But it is a very formal kind of design, kind of a radiating design. But then he had many ideas on how people should live, which is like Wright in a way. Wright would go back to a house, knock on the door, and come in and start rearranging the furniture. Griffin had ideas about how the shopping should be, and you should have interior parks and things like that, but he also provided for a rather dense city. Denser than what the Australians wanted. They wanted their cottages and that is actually what they got. So Canberra didn't start looking like a unified city. It looked like a continuous suburb. So, in some ways, he failed. But many of the elements of his plan are in place there even today. So anyway, that is what he becomes famous for and it was a grand prize even though he didn't have much competition because nobody would enter.

QUESTION: Was Griffin a failure?

PAUL SPRAGUE: No, he didn't fail because even if he had died in 1913 he would still be just the same. That's how I look at him. The unfortunate part, in retrospect, is that he wasted so much time in Canberra. And after six years, there was really nothing done. I mean, a couple grades put in or something by the time they got rid of him. And then in order to demonstrate his ideas of how people should live, he accidentally bought all this land north of Sydney and then he started to lay out this suburb. And all the house have flat roofs and views of the harbor. And they were these strange forms, not too big, and stuff would grow all over them. So instead of having a client really, he became the entrepreneur to sell this. And then again he didn't find many people who didn't want red tiled roofs and all this. So in a way his idealism failed him. It was impossible to carry out. He was always, he was always, the next day I'm going to do something better. He never gave up. He was at the right time in Chicago and he had the misfortune, in a way, to win the Canberra Competition. Of course, it enriched Australia.

QUESTION: Evaluate Griffin's work as a landscape architect and as a planner?

PAUL SPRAGUE: I think he was the greater person as an architect, second as a planner, and last as a landscape architect. This doesn't mean that if he wasn't as good as a landscape architect as another landscape architect. It demeans him. Because we have to keep in mind that he was all three! And how many of those people were there in the world? Not very many, if any. He originally wanted to be a landscape architect, and, in fact, he borrowed the term from Olmstead since at that time they were landscape gardeners. And he always tried to relate his buildings to nature in a way that Wright never did. Wright talked a lot about it, but you don't find it in his work until really Taliesin in 1911. Which he might have learned from Griffin then, right? Because Griffin was doing all Wright's landscapes. When a client wanted a landscape, Griffin did it. He did one for Darwin Martin, for example. Or Ward Willits. So he was good at this. But he wasn't exceptional in my opinion. I've studied all his landscapes very thoroughly. Planning-wise he did some very interesting things. Now again when you look at his work closely you can see he is getting a lot of his ideas from the English planners, so again he is not an independent thinker. But just the fact that he could do all three? Wright could do all three and didn't even try. And after Griffin, his son Lloyd was the gardener for him. Wright is pathetic when it comes to planning.

QUESTION: What's Marion's contribution to architecture?

PAUL SPRAGUE: I have studied her work extensively and I've studied her buildings. She had a number of commissions before 1910. And my reading is from things she said and of the things she actually did - Marshall Fields advertisements around 1906 - that she really considered herself an artist, a two dimensional artist. And somehow she got into architecture. Well, probably because of her cousin Dwight Perkins, I don't know. I think she was really at home with two dimensional as far as being inventive, as far as developing ideas. She says that she almost didn't finish MIT - something about her thesis or something. When she came back, even after she had training, she still preferred to work for other people. You know, first Dwight Perkins and people at Steinway, and then for Wright. And the only times we have found her listed in city directories some place, she calls herself "artist." So I think she recognized that she really didn't have the ability to come up with these ideas of buildings and space and so forth. She recognized that. Now she was very good though at two dimensional arts and so she was good at ornamental details like stained glass. She was also good at drafting. She ran the drafting room once she went with Griffin. The thing she is known for are these wonderful perspectives that she made for Wright and then for Griffin which she may not even have invented for Griffin, you see, for Griffin are these four-part things. Griffin was using these before she came to help him. She perfected it; she made it work. He could draw but this wasn't his forte. So I really think that is basically where she shone. Then with Herman Von Host in 1910, she finished Wright's work and also created new designs for clients who wanted work in Wright's style. And those are the really interesting building. She made designs at first like Wright but they have kind of different irregularities which are her. They change levels - so she can get a higher living room, and then it goes up and a lower ceiling. Wright never did anything like that nor did Griffin for that matter. But she seemed content and she says she was. She recognized a genius in Griffin and she wanted to support him. I don't think she is being demeaned by saying that. It is what she wanted to do and I really think that as they got together, and Harry Robinson left - because there couldn't be two chief draftsman in the office - she really help up that end of the office.

QUESTION: What was the nature of Walter and Marion's professional relationship?

PAUL SPRAGUE: They were a pair. They were together but in this particular kind of way. He would make the designs and she would draw them and maybe work them out as a draftsman would do; bring them out. And he'd approve or suggest something else. She'd get out the preliminary drawings, which are what you show to the client. And then you get out the working drawings or contract drawings until the building is built. And she could do all that. She could make these perspectives and she was very skilled at that. The other thing is she also was an architect. She also was an architect. I'm talking about being able to develop independent work. She was a very good architect. most architects don't do independent work anyway. They design toilets and things, or whatever. They sell insurance or whatever. She did working drawings, she did preliminary drawings, she did everything an architect would do. And she was licensed. And they were a pair in that sense. As long as we keep it in that sense, you don't start thinking that she designed his buildings. There is one writer who says that she has. She may have contributed ideas, we don't know. The basic ideas were Walter's and she contributed beyond that.

QUESTION: Why had Griffin remained in Wright's shadow?

PAUL SPRAGUE: The reason why Griffin is not known generally is because he has not been studied and published generally. And those people who had said much about him have not really accentuated his work. The only place where you'll find much about Griffin is (H. Allen) Brooks' book. There hasn't been time for people to really appreciate what Griffin did nor understand how impressive his work is and how he relates to Wright. He stands next to him. When you got an Eiffel tower, everybody is in hits shadow. People put Sullivan in his shadow. And yet without Sullivan there wouldn't have been a Wright, not the way we know him certainly. And Griffin has to be pulled out from under that shadow.