The 1909 Plan of Chicago
In 1909, Daniel Burnham, Edward Bennett, and the Commercial Club of Chicago released thePlan of Chicago, an urban planning initiative dedicated to beautifying the city and redesigning it to better accommodate growth. Chicago's business clubs and leaders had discussed potential solutions to pressing urban issues, including sanitation problems, labor unrest, poverty, and lack of green space, since the late nineteenth century. They believed that a carefully-crafted urban plan could help solve Chicago's endemic social issues and prepare it for an even greater future.
The 1909Plan of Chicago, also known as theBurnhamPlan,reflected their hopes for the city. It called for the expansion and protection of the lakefront to ensure perpetual public access to the shore, for railway and street improvements, and for the construction of new highways, avenues, parks, a civic center, and an area dedicated to museums and cultural institutions.
Ultimately, the city of Chicago adopted some of the plan's recommendations. City planners expanded the lakefront and built public parks, including Grant Park,along the shoreline, established new parks and forest preserves in other parts of the city, enhanced urban transportation options, and built a new museum campus to house the Field Museum. ThePlan of Chicagohad a significant and lasting impact on urban planning in Chicago and other U.S. cities.
Born in Henderson, New York in 1846, Daniel Burnham moved to Chicago with his parents and siblings in 1855. In the decades after the destructive 1871 great fire, Burnham and business partner John W. Root's architecture firm became one of the most influential shapers of Chicago's built environment. Burnham Park, created in 1927 to the south of the Field Museum, is named in his honor.
Credits and Sources:
Smith, Carl. "The Plan of Chicago."Encyclopedia of Chicago Online.Accessed June 2016.http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/10537.html
TheArt Institute of Chicago. "Without Bounds or Limits: An Online Exhibition of thePlan of Chicago." Accessed June 2016.http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/planofchicago/introduction.html
The Burnham Plan Centennial. "The Plan of Chicago." Accessed June 2016.http://burnhamplan100.lib.uchicago.edu/history_future/plan_of_chicago/
