Image title: Griffin, Walter Burley, gravestone at Nishatganj File size: 1,151,330 bytes
Description
In Loving Memory
Walter Burley Griffin
Born Chi[c]ago Illinois USA
24-11-1876
Died Lucknow
11-2-1937
Comment
The 1998 edition of the BACSA (www.bacsa.org.uk) magazine included an article on Griffin, from which this extract is taken:
AN AMERICAN IN LUCKNOW
Walter Birley Griffin was born in Chicago in 1876. He was a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright, the brilliant architect whose stream-lined 'Modern Movement' buildings epitomise the 30s style. In 1912 Griffin won a competition to design the proposed new city of Canberra. .. But disputes arose and he was sacked in 1920, with his scheme only half realised. A disappointed man, he and
Marion embraced an 'alternative' life style... They were both followers of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and committed 'anthroposophists',
with a vague humanistic creed.
Turning their backs on an Australian Society that had rejected them, the
couple went to Lucknow in 1935, and during two short years there Griffin
designed two large houses and the Pioneer Press offices, using many of the ideas he had learnt from his teacher, Lloyd Wright. Griffin died, from peritonitis, on 11 February 1937.
He was buried at Nishatganj Cemetery, Lucknow. Several years ago a BACSA
member and fellow architect, Dr. Monty Foyle, tried to find his tomb but
was unsuccessful. Recently a Canberra writer Graeme Westlake, researching
in India, thought he too had drawn a blank. Then one evening he called on
the Reverend S. Masih, responsible for the cemetery, who got out the old
records and found that Griffin was buried in Plot 11, No.163.
It was obvious why the grave had remained undiscovered. It was merely a
mass of tangled grass, with a number on it, with no stone or market. Mr.
Westlake speculates that possibly Griffin's widow left India so quickly
after her husband's death that there was no time to erect a plaque, or
that perhaps the couple's beliefs precluded them from planning a permanent memorial. But with the help of the Australian-American Association a stone has now been designed by the Institute of Architects and the assistance of the Lucknow Christian Burial Board is being sought for its erection at Nishatganj.
Its simple outline recalls that of Mughal architecture, rather than the style in which Griffin built. But it is an appropriate tribute to the 'lost' architect, whose work influenced so much of modern Lucknow.
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Nishatganj (or Trans-Gogra)
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