D.H. Burnham

Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ever produced."

A successful Chicago architect, he was selected as Director of Works for the 1892–93 World's Columbian Exposition, colloquially referred to as "The White City". He had prominent roles in the creation of master plans for the development of a number of cities, including the Plan of Chicago, and plans for Manila, Baguio and downtown Washington, D.C. He also designed several famous buildings, including a number of notable skyscrapers in Chicago, the Flatiron Building of triangular shape in New York City, Washington Union Station in Washington D.C., London's Selfridges department store, and San Francisco's Merchants Exchange.

Although best known for his skyscrapers, city planning, and for the White City, almost one third of Burnham's total output – – consisted of buildings for shopping.

Early life

Burnham was born in Henderson, New York, the son of Elizabeth Keith (Weeks) and Edwin Arnold Burnham.Norton-Burhnam House
National Register of Historic Places Registration, National Park Service, January 8, 2016 He was raised in the teachings of the Swedenborgian, also called "The New Church" which ingrained in him the strong belief that man should strive to be of service to others. At the age of eight, Burnham moved to Chicago and his father established there a wholesale drug business which became a success.Larson (2003), p.19

Burnham was not a good student, but he was good at drawing. He moved to the eastern part of the country at the age of 18 to be taught by private tutors in order to pass the admissions examinations for Harvard and Yale, failing both apparently because of a bad case of test anxiety. In 1867, when he was 21 he returned to Chicago and took an apprenticeship as a draftsman under William LeBaron Jenney of the architectural firm Loring & Jenney. Architecture seemed to be the calling he was looking for, and he told his parents that he wanted to become "the greatest architect in the city or country".

Nevertheless, the young Burnham still had a streak of wanderlust in him, and in 1869 he left his apprenticeship to go to Nevada with friends to try mining gold, at which he failed. He then ran for the Nevada state legislature and failed to be elected. Broke, he returned again to Chicago and took a position with the architect L. G. Laurean. When the Great Chicago Fire hit the city in October 1871, it seemed as if there would be endless work for architects, but Burnham chose to strike out again, becoming first a salesman of plate glass windows, then a druggist. He failed at the first and quit the second. He later remarked on "a family tendency to get tired of doing the same thing for very long".

Career

At age 26, Burnham moved on to the Chicago offices of Carter, Drake and Wight where he met future business partner John Wellborn Root, who was 21 and four years younger than Burnham. The two became friends and then opened an architectural office together in 1873. Unlike his previous ventures, Burnham stuck to this one. Burnham and Root went on to become a very successful firm. Their first major commission came from John B. Sherman, the superintendent of the massive Union Stock Yards in Chicago, which provided the livelihood – directly or indirectly – for one-fifth of the city's population. Sherman hired the firm to build for him a mansion on Prairie Avenue at Twenty-first Street among the mansions of Chicago's other merchant barons. Root made the initial design. Burnham refined it and supervised the construction. It was on the construction site that he met Sherman's daughter, Margaret, whom Burnham married in 1876 after a short courtship. Sherman commissioned other projects from Burnham and Root, including the Stone Gate, an entry portal to the stockyards which became a Chicago landmark.

In 1881, the firm was commissioned to build the Montauk Building, the tallest building in Chicago at the time. To solve the problem of the city's water-saturated sandy soil and bedrock below the surface, Root came up with a plan to dig down to a "hardpan" layer of clay on which was laid a thick pad of concrete overlaid with steel rails placed at right-angles to form a lattice "grill", which was then filled with Portland cement. This "floating foundation" was, in effect, artificially-created bedrock on which the building could be constructed. The completed building was so tall compared to existing buildings that it defied easy description, and the name "skyscraper" was coined to describe it. Thomas Talmadge, an architect and architectural critic said of the building, "What Chartres was to the Gothic cathedral, the Montauk Block was to the high commercial building."

Burnham and Root went on to build more of the first American skyscrapers, such as the Masonic Temple Building in Chicago. Measuring 21 stories and 302 feet, the temple held claims as the tallest building of its time, but was torn down in 1939.

The talents of the two partners were complementary. Both men were artists and gifted architects, but Root had a knack for conceiving elegant designs and was able to see almost at once the totality of the necessary structure. Burnham, on the other hand, excelled at bringing in clients and supervising the building of Root's designs. They each appreciated the value of the other to the firm. Burnham also took steps to ensure their employees were happy: he installed a gym in the office, gave fencing lessons and let employees play handball at lunch time. Root, a pianist and organist, gave piano recitals in the office on a rented piano. Paul Starrett, who joined the office in 1888 said "The office was full of a rush of work, but the spirit of the place was delightfully free and easy and human in comparison to other offices I had worked in."

Although the firm was extremely successful, there were several notable setbacks. One of their designs, the Grannis Block in which their office was located, burned down in 1885 necessitating a move to the top floor of The Rookery, another of their designs. Then, in 1888, a Kansas City, Missouri, hotel they had designed collapsed during construction, killing one man and injuring several others. At the coroner's inquest, the building's design came in for criticism. The negative publicity shook and depressed Burnham. Then in a further setback, Burnham and Root also failed to win the commission for design of the giant Auditorium Building, which went instead to their rivals, Adler & Sullivan.

On January 15, 1891, while the firm was deep in meetings for the design of
the World's Columbian Exposition, Root died after a three-day course of pneumonia. As Root had been only 41 years old, his death stunned both Burnham and Chicago society. After Root's death, the firm of Burnham and Root, which had had tremendous success producing modern buildings as part of the Chicago School of architecture, was renamed D.H. Burnham & Company. After that the firm continued its successes and Burnham extended his reach into city design.

World's Columbian Exposition

Burnham and Root had accepted responsibility to oversee the design and construction of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's then-desolate Jackson Park on the south lakefront. The largest world's fair to that date (1893), it celebrated the 400-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus's famous voyage. After Root's sudden and unexpected death, a team of distinguished American architects and landscape architects, including Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Richard M. Hunt, George B. Post, and Henry Van Brunt radically changed Root's modern and colorful style to a Classical Revival style. Only the pavilion by Louis Sullivan was designed in a non-Classical style. To ensure the project's success, Burnham moved his personal residence into a wooden headquarters, called "the shanty" on the burgeoning fairgrounds to improve his ability to oversee construction. The construction of the fair faced huge financial and logistical hurdles, including a worldwide financial panic and an extremely tight timeframe, to open on time.

Considered the first example of a comprehensive planning document in the nation, the fairground featured grand boulevards, classical building facades, and lush gardens. Often called the "White City," it popularized neoclassical architecture in a monumental, yet rational Beaux-Arts style. As a result of the fair's popularity, architects across the U.S. were said to be inundated with requests by clients to incorporate similar elements into their designs.

The control of the fair's design and construction was a matter of dispute between various entities, particularly the National Commission which was headed by George R. Davis, who served as Director-General of the fair. It was also headed by the Exposition Company which consisted of the city's leading merchants, led by Lyman Gage which had raised the money needed to build the fair, and Burnham as Director of Works. In addition the large number of committees made it difficult for construction to move forward at the pace needed to meet the opening day deadline. After a major accident which destroyed one of the fair's premiere buildings, Burnham moved to take tighter control of construction, distributing a memo to all the fair's department heads which read "I have assumed personal control of the active work within the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition... Henceforward, and until further notice, you will report to and receive orders from me exclusively."

After the fair opened, Olmsted, who designed the fairgrounds, said of Burnham that "too high an estimate cannot be placed on the industry, skill and tact with which this result was secured by the master of us all." Burnham himself rejected the suggestion that Root had been largely responsible for the fair's design, writing afterwards:

What was done up to the time of his death was the faintest suggestion of a plan... The impression concerning his part has been gradually built up by a few people, close friends of his and mostly women, who naturally after the Fair proved beautiful desired to more broadly identify his memory with it.Larson (2003), p.377

Post-fair architecture

Nevertheless, Burnham's reputation was considerably enhanced by the success and beauty of the fair. Harvard and Yale both presented him honorary master's degrees ameliorating his having failed their entrance exams in his youth. The common perception while Root was alive was that he was the architectural artist and Burnham had run the business side of the firm; Root's death, while devastating to Burnham personally, allowed him to develop as an architect in a way he might not have, had Root lived on.

In 1901, Burnham designed the Flatiron Building in New York City, a trailblazing structure that utilized an internal steel skeleton to provide structural integrity; the exterior masonry walls were not load-bearing. This allowed the building to rise to 22 stories. The design was that of a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling, divided like a classical column, into base, shaft and capital.

Other Burnham post-fair designs included the Land Title Building (1897) in Philadelphia, the first major building in that city not designed by local architects, and known as "the finest example of early skyscraper design" there, John Wanamaker's Department Store (1902–1911) in Philadelphia, now Macy's, which is built around a central court, Wanamaker's Annex (1904, addition: 1907–1910), in New York City, a 19-story full-block building which contains as much floorspace as the Empire State Building, the neo-classical Gimbels Department Store (1908–1912) also in New York, now the Manhattan Mall, with a completely new facade, the stunningly Art Deco Mount Wilson Observatory in the hills above Pasadena, California, and Filene's Department Store (1912) in Boston, the last major building designed by Burnham.

The Philippines

In 1904, Burnham accepted a commission from Philippines Governor-General William Howard Taft. He had the opportunity to redesign Manila and plan a summer capital to be constructed in Baguio. Due to the Philippines status as a territory, Burnham was able to pursue his vision without having to win local approval. Altogether the project took six months to design, with only six weeks spent in the Philippines. After his plans were approved by William Cameron Forbes, Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the Philippines, Burnham was allowed to choose the principal architect, William E. Parsons. Burnham then departed to keep tabs on the project from the mainland. Burnham's plans emphasized improved sanitation, a cohesive aesthetic (Mission Revival), and visual reminders of government authority. In Manila, wide boulevards radiated out from the capital building. In Baguio, government structures loomed from the cliffs above the town. Burnham Park located in center downtown Baguio was built. The land for the Baguio project, in total, was seized from local Igorots with approval of the Philippine Supreme Court. In Manila, neighborhoods ravaged by the war for independence were left untouched while a luxury hotel, casino, and boat clubs were designed for visiting mainland dignitaries.

City planning and the ''Plan of Chicago''

Initiated in 1906 and published in 1909, Burnham and his co-author Edward H. Bennett

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