SATURDAY BREAKFAST #27: SILVERDALE ROAD, EAGLEMONT VILLAGE

Visited 15 December, 2012

There are several types of To Do lists: there’s the list of things to do today or this week or before Christmas; there’s the list, broader in scope, of things intended to be done “one day”; and there’s the list of vague aspirations, not yet written down but in the back of the mind somewhere.   None of these should be confused with the Bucket List, a rather more serious listing of things you want to do before you die.  Whereas the day-to-day To Do lists have a mental overlay that allows the list-maker simply to transfer non-accomplished items to the next update of the list, the Bucket List doesn’t graciously permit second chances.

There comes a time (if you’re given the time) when contemplation of a Bucket List becomes a serious reality; and lucky the person who by then has fulfilled all ambitions and desires, and for whom a Bucket List is meaningless.

I would have to be one of the World’s great keepers of To Do lists, and yet nowhere have I listed “visit Eaglemont”.  But, for as long as I can remember, the suburb of Eaglemont has intrigued me.  I’ve been through Eaglemont station on the way to other places, but never alighted.  I have visited all the next-door places, but not Eaglemont.  And why has Eaglemont excited my imagination?  Because Walter Burley Griffin designed property subdivisions there.

Burley Griffin was a great American architect.  But he was much more – a town planner, a designer of interiors and furnishings, a humanist, and an environmentalist.  Australia was fortunate to have had him in our land for 21 years, from 1914 to 1935; and fortunate, too, to benefit from the considerable talents of Griffin’s wife and working colleague, Marion Mahony.

Griffin came to Australia having won the international competition for the design of Canberra, and it was his task to supervise the laying out of the National Capital.  

Griffin’s professional career had three phases, aligned to geography rather than to professional style.  While not ignorant of trends, Griffin remained a captive of the American Prairie School from whence he came.

American sources on the life and work of Burley Griffin refer almost exclusively to his work in the United States, and the subsequent periods in Australia and India receive little attention by comparison.  This is not just a bit of American insularity, but a tribute to Griffin’s importance in his home country.  Nevertheless, the scant reference to Griffin’s work in Australia, and later in India (where Griffin designed the library of the University of Lucknow and about 100 other buildings) is pretty near-sighted.

 A few words on Marion Mahony.  In 1909, when Frank Lloyd Wright scandalised Chicago society by abandoning his wife and children and absconding to Europe with the wife of one of his clients, he (having simply closed his studio) left the supervision of incomplete commissions to fellow architect Herman Von Holst.  Von Holst forthwith appointed Marion Mahony to finish the designs.  Mahony had previously worked with Wright on and off for some fourteen years, and had sometimes been his sole employee.  She was the second female architect to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was the first ever licenced female architect.  During Mahony’s time with Von Holst she persuaded him to engage Griffin to develop a landscape plan for a housing project in the city of Decatur, 290 kms south-west of Chicago and 275 kms west of Indianapolis.  The professional relationship developed into a personal one, and Mahony and Griffin were married in 1911.

After marriage, Mahony practiced from the Griffin office, and remained thereafter as the Griffin practice’s chief draftsman.  One source says that Mahony “used her pen to breathe life” into all Griffin designs; and I can vouch for that.  In 1998 I attended the “Beyond Architecture – Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin” exhibition at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.  This exhibition was not only a survey of Griffin’s life and work, but also a re-appraisal of Mahony’s contribution.  It was not by mistake that Mahony’s name appeared first in the title of the exhibition.  Her architectural plans were finely detailed and their illustration was exquisite and magical, altogether memorable.  Notably, Mahony’s work was initialled MLM before her marriage, and MMG after.  Despite her outstanding qualifications and talent she was happy to be seen as Griffin’s helpmeet; in its reappraisal the Powerhouse exhibition demonstrated that the truth is not so simple.

Mahony, although five years older than Griffin, outlived him by 24 years.  She returned to Chicago in 1937, after Griffin’s death, and lived there in relative obscurity until her own death at age 90.

Silverdale Road is short but characterful.  Its central section runs parallel to the railway and Eaglemont station, and at both ends there’s a sweep away like the stage boxes in a theatre.  There’s quite a concentration of shops, both sides of the road, and traffic congestion has been mitigated by the conversion to one-way.  The collection of businesses is diverse and interesting, including an impressive looking butcher and greengrocer, and a small supermarket.  There’s a happily non-conforming estate agent: no multiple property ads in the window, instead memorabilia of Eaglemont properties past.  And there is Nostalgia Wireless - formerly of Union Road, Canterbury Road, Collingwood etc.  It is as cluttered and shambolic as ever, and as enticing as ever.  Console radios of the ‘30s and ‘40s, mantle radios as young as the ‘50s, valves (vacuum tubes) of all makes and sizes, and not a transistor or printed circuit to be seen.

We breakfasted at Eaglemont Dish. The porridge was not served with milk but with peach juice, and pieces of home-stewed peach.  The Bircher was served with yoghurt and multiple toppings, principally blueberries.  Delicious, but both dishes were a little too sweet.

And what of Griffin and Eaglemont?  The first Griffin subdivision was known as the Mount Eagle Estate.  It was not strictly a greenfield project: first white settlement in the area dated from the 1840s, and a substantial farm residence was built in the late 1850s.  There had been an attempt at subdivision during the land boom of the 1880s, but most allotments failed to sell.  In 1888 the Mount Eagle homestead was made available to a society of artists, a number of whom (Tom Roberts, Charles Condor, Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin) then lived on the site and became known as the Heidelberg School.

Although suburbia encroached over subsequent years, the Mount Eagle home and farmland remained largely intact………….until 1915, when Griffin was approached by the then owner to design a subdivision of 145 residential lots, to be known as the Mount Eagle Estate.  Griffin’s design incorporated curving streets that followed the contours; and private parklands, not on the street frontages, but each accessible from a group of surrounding properties with unfenced back yards.  Preservation of native flora was integral to the Griffin conception.  In 1916 Griffin also planned the adjacent Glenard Estate.  Griffin designed a number of the Eaglemont houses, and the Griffins lived on the Estate for some years.

In Griffin’s Eaglemont we have an early example of “garden suburb” town planning, and one never bettered.  When you consider that in addition to their Eaglemont work the Griffins designed Canberra (1911), the towns of Leeton and Griffith (both in 1914), the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag (1924), and Ranelagh Estate at Mount Eliza (also in 1924) – as well as the huge body of architecture - it is impossible to identify any other single contributor/s with such a huge impact on the Australian built environment.  The Griffins were truly remarkable people; and on the basis of enduring legacy they are much higher in the Australian pantheon than most of our politicians and other public figures.

And Griffin buildings are beautiful too!

Gary Andrews