Week 5: The
Burnham Plan and the City Beautiful Movement
(Professor
Van Zanten and Professor Dillon)
"Make no little plans for they
have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves
will never be realized. Make big plans. Aim high in hope
and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once
recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will
be a living thing, asserting and growing with
intensity." -- Daniel Burnham.
This Week:
We will focus on a moment around 1900 when Chicago
business leaders commissioned Daniel Burnham to outline a
reformulation of the whole city in form and
infrastructure -- leading the whole nation in what came
to be called the "City Beautiful" movement.
Readings:
- In course packet:
Daniel Burnham with Edward Bennett, Plan
of the City of Chicago (Chicago: Commercial
Club of Chicago, 1909). Chapters I, "Origins
of the Plan", and VII, "Heart of
Chicago".
Dwight Moody, Wacker's Manual of the PLan of
Chicago,(Chicago: Chicago Plan Commission,
1915). Table of Contents, "Why Chicago Needs
a Plan", "Final Result of the
Plan".
City of Evanston, Plan of Evanston
(1916).
Daniel Bluestone, "Detroit's City Beautiful
and the Problem of Commerce", Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians, 47,
no. 3 (September, 1988), pp. 245-262.
These readings comprise parts of the presentation
book of the most famous of the "City
Beautiful" plans, that of Chicago of 1909,
combined with a primer prepared by the Chicago
Plan Commission that was appointed as a result of
the Plan for the inculcation of the
general public (and it was used in the Chicago
public schools until after World War II). Copies
of the plan have been placed on reserve in the
library reserve room, and you should try to take
a look at this remarkably handsome and
beautifully illustrated volume in order to get a
full sense of it. In addition is the parallel
plan of Evanston drawn up a few years later by a
team of resident architects that included
Burnham's two sons as well admirers of Frank
Lloyd Wright's more radical architecture, Thomas
Tallmadge and Dwight Perkins. Finally,
Bluestone's article is a critical essay on one of
the issues raised by the movement: its impact on
business.
- Electronic Resources:
Week 5 Notebook
Questions to consider:
- Examine both Burnham's and the Evanston plans
closely and try to see what was executed, and
what not. Work them out with the map purchased
for the course to try to see what might have
resulted if they had been completely realized.
- Is this the only way to replan a city? What
alternate principles and forms might one adopt?
What alternate steps in the creation of a plan?
- Where in the Burnham Plan and the City Beautiful
Movement is an answer to the problem of the slums
Page designed by John Edward Martin
<jem@nwu.edu>
Last Updated: 01/14/99
|