By Julie Power
The new head of the Museums of History NSW, Annette Pitman, is putting her 1934 Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin-designed house where her mouth is.
She will open the tiny and newly restored home in Sydney’s Castlecrag to the public as part of the MHNSW’s Sydney Open program that celebrates heritage and architecture while, just quietly, encouraging other owners of historically significant properties to follow suit.
Museums of History chief executive Annette Pitman at her Castlecrag home, which will be open to the public.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“I am walking the talk,” Pitman said about inviting the public into her home.
An American-born visual artist who was the former head of Create NSW until her appointment last October as MHNSW chief executive, Pitman grew up in what she calls the epicentre of house museums, Connecticut.
When she arrived in Sydney eight years ago, Sydney Open was her “gateway into museums and local history”.
“It is great for a stickybeak like me,” she said.
Her appointment realised a long-held dream. “Oh my gosh, I have always wanted this job. I’ve always really loved history.”
Frank and Anice Duncan entertain in the garden of the house circa 1940.Credit: WDHS collection
To celebrate International Women’s Day on Saturday, March 8, four guided walking tours will recognise the contribution of three female architects, Marion Mahony Griffin, Eva Buhrich and Ruth Lucas, working nearly 100 years ago.
“These women didn’t get the accolades for their creativity, and their talent was often overlooked over the years,” Pitman said.
As well as Pitman’s Duncan House, the tour includes three private homes, Cheong House, a 1922 home by Griffin with an extension by Hugh and Eva Buhrich.
It will also visit the Lucas-designed Glass House, and the Haven, an amphitheatre created by Mahony Griffin for plays and social events.
MHNSW will also revive its November annual weekend event – not held last year – with dozens of properties welcoming the public. In the past, the event has included public buildings and offices, subterranean tunnels, monuments, air raid shelters, historic homes, courts, cemeteries, clock towers, domes, churches and other places of worship.
Pitman’s Castlecrag home was the last and the smallest, at only 49 metres square, of those built by the Griffins.
Pitman said the opportunity to share her house was important: “As a custodian of a house that people find interesting, it’s only right and reasonable to share it. When we looked at buying the house, part of our decision was about sharing it. It gives us incredible joy.”
She said the house also opened the public’s eyes to another way of living. “I think as a society we think that white and grey, and brand new and shiny, is the best thing. So we bowl over houses left right and centre that are perfectly good.”
Far from being scared of opening her home to the public, she had been struck by how respectful and curious visitors were about its history and details. She loved the glitter of the oyster shells in the mortar between Knitlock brick, a Griffin construction system that works a bit like Lego.
Walter Burley Griffin Society committee member Adrienne Kabos lived in a nearby Griffin home called Moon House for 40 years and is one of the tour leaders on March 8. She said Griffin homes, such as Pitman’s “treasure”, opened people’s eyes to a way of life in harmony with nature.
“The beautiful French doors open to the bushland reserve and the Sydney red gums. It’s very enlightening for people to see how living back in the 1920s and ’30s was so modest, and see how the Griffins wanted the buildings to be subordinate to the bushland.”
Kabos said when the Griffins arrived in Sydney in 1913 they were awed by beautiful Sydney Harbour and its bushland. They were also horrified to see the scars of grid roads and red roofs that destroyed the beautiful landscape.
Pitman’s Duncan House featured on the ABC TV series Restoration Australia with Anthony Burke.
Pitman, a visual artist, turned a Mahony Griffin print into wallpaper in the new wing. She handpainted new windows, based on the originals held by the National Museum of Australia because she did not want to get paint on the exposed sandstone walls.
Pitman said she and her husband Michael were architecture nerds from their earliest days together. Their first date was a visit to Pennsylvania’s “Fallingwater” by Frank Lloyd Wright, who Walter trained with in the United States.
Tickets for the Castlecrag house are available online here and the full Sydney Open program will be available soon.
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