The year 2021 will mark the centenary of Castlecrag and the 150th anniversary of Marion Mahony Griffin’s birth.
To mark that big year:
• the Museum of Sydney will have an exhibition about the Griffins and Castlecrag.
The Walter Burley Griffin Society will organise
- Griffin Houses Open Day
- Exhibition of Max Dupain photographs
- Marion Mahony Griffin Lecture
- School art project
- Sculpture to honour Marion Mahony Griffin
In addition, we are seeking the creation of a small park as detailed in Willoughby City Council’s Local Centre Strategy adopted in December 2019 (see Indicative Masterplan below right), which would be a most fitting celebration of the centenary of the Griffins’ Castlecrag. At present the location is a carpark for 8 cars and is an unattractive expanse of bitumen outside the historic 1925 Griffin Centre at the corner of Edinburgh Road and The Postern, Castlecrag.
Until the 1960s it was a large road island park and road reserve as designed by Walter Burley Griffin (see plan at right). A park would enhance the village atmosphere of Castlecrag and celebrate the Griffins’ passion for the natural landscape. The Society is working to advance support and funding for the park and hopes that the sculpture it commissions, to honour Marion Mahony Griffin, can be located there, and that the park can be named the Marion Mahony Griffin Park.
29 April 2020
Marion Mahony Griffin outside the Grant house, Castlecrag where she and Walter lived from 1925 to 1935. Photographed by Dr Jorma Pohjanpalo, c 1930. Eric Milton Nicholls Collection, National Library of Australia. nla.pic-vn5758135.
Detail from Griffin’s Castlecrag plan for the first auction on 26 November 1921 showing the park that existed until 1960s at corner of The Postern and Edinburgh Road.
Indicative masterplan published in Willoughby City Council’s Final Local Centre Strategy 2019 with proposed community park shown at the corner of The Postern, Castlecrag.