Daniel Hudson Burnham

Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912) was an American architect and city planner whose maxim, "think big," dominated his successful career. The firm of Burnham & Root was important in developing the skyscraper.

Daniel H. Burnham was born in Henderson, N.Y. In 1868 he worked for the architect William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago and then for Carter, Drake & Wight, where he met John Welborn Root. In 1873 the firm of Burnham & Root was established, and Burnham's career until 1891, the year of Root's death, was inseparable from that of his talented, innovative partner.

The firm, which employed as many as 60 draftsmen, moved into the just-completed Montauk Block (1882-1883) in Chicago, which they had designed. Although load-bearing masonry walls were outdated by 1889, Burnham & Root designed the 16-story Monadnock Building in Chicago (completed in 1891) of brick construction. The walls enclosed a portal-braced iron frame consisting of girders riveted to the columns for wind bracing and structural stability; this was the first example of portal bracing. Burnham & Root's further development of this structural innovation was the completely steel structure of the Rand McNally Building (1889-1890) in Chicago. Their four-story Reliance Building (1890; increased to 13 stories in 1895), also in Chicago, with terracotta facing material, gave expression to the steel-and-glass skyscrapers of the 1890s.

Burnham and Root were to have been the coordinators of the World's Columbian Exposition to be held in 1893 in Chicago, but on the day of the first planning conference Root contracted pneumonia, and died. Charles Follen McKim of the noted architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White filled the void left by Root and influenced Burnham in his "think big" attitude. Numerous architectural firms from Chicago, New York, Boston, and Kansas City designed specific buildings, and Frederick Law Olmsted was the landscape architect. The classical style provided the unifying element in the architecture of the exposition.

In 1891 Burnham established the firm of D. H. Burnham, which was replaced in 1896 by D. H. Burnham & Co. In 1894 he became president of the American Institute of Architects.

After the Chicago exposition of 1893 Burnham devoted his efforts to the "City Beautiful" movement of civic planning. "Make no little plans," he said, "for they have no magic to stir men's blood … Make big plans, aim high…. " His city planning aimed at creating beauty in a geometry of streets, with large parks and recreational areas and boulevards leading from a civic center to other nodal points of the city. In 1903 Burnham replanned Manila in the Philippines in this manner, ridding the city of its chaos and yet retaining its picturesque image. Baguio, 160 miles away, was planned as a summer retreat in the hills, with a dominant geometry adapted to the contours. Three days before the great earthquake of April 15, 1906, Burnham submitted his plan for San Francisco. Never implemented, it attempted to circumnavigate the hills and tie the whole street pattern together by an outer ring road. Chicago was replanned, and Burnham's ideas for a coordinated system of surface and subsurface freight distribution, linked to the waterfront activities, were partially realized. Washington, D.C., was "beatified" and railroads were removed from the Mall; Burnham built Union Station there.

Burnham's firm designed over 100 major projects: civic centers, office blocks, department stores, libraries, and numerous stations for the Penn Central Railroad. The station in Pittsburgh has been described as "Burnham baroque," and one critic sees the beginnings of Art Nouveau in its flowing lines.

Further Reading

One biography of Burnham is Charles Moore, Daniel H. Burnham, Architect, Planner of Cities (2 vols., 1921). Structural innovations by Burnham and Root are discussed in Carl W. Condit's publications, including American Building Art: The Nineteenth Century (1960) and The Chicago School of Architecture (1964).

Additional Sources

Hines, Thomas S., Burnham of Chicago, architect and planner, New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. □

Burnham, Daniel Hudson (1846–1912). American architect. A first-class administrator and entrepreneur, he was also gifted in that he could bring out the best in those with whom he collaborated. Born in Henderson, NY, he entered the office of Loring & Jenney (1867–8) where he acquired some architectural experience, and in 1873 formed a partnership with John Wellborn Root. As Burnham & Root, the firm was significant in the creation of the Chicago School: their first skyscraper was the (demolished) Montauk Building, Chicago, IL(1881–2), and other tall buildings followed in which load-bearing walls were mixed with framed structures. Then came the sixteen-storey Monadnock Building, Chicago (1889–91), with load-bearing walls, tiers of canted bay-windows, and huge crowning coved cornice, and then the (demolished) Masonic Temple, Chicago (1890–2), with twenty-two storeys and a steel skeleton. After Root's early death Burnham set up with Atwood in 1891, and built up one of the largest practices in the USA. With Atwood the firm produced the Reliance Building, Chicago (1891–4), which further developed architecture using a metal skeleton: a fourteen-storey tower with glass and terracotta cladding, it looked forward to C20 developments in which structural frames would be clearly expressed. Burnham was appointed the co-ordinator of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1890–3), and began to promote a Beaux-Arts Classicism as the favoured style for the buildings, which had a profound effect on American architecture and planning for many years to come. In Burnham's firm's own work (e.g. the Fuller (‘Flat-Iron’) Building, NYC (1902–3), and Wanamaker's Store, Philadelphia, PA (1909)), elements of Renaissance architecture were grafted on. Burnham's fame, connected with his impressive Beaux-Arts Classicism, caused him to be employed as consultant to Self-ridges Store for the new building (1907) in Oxford Street, London (by Atkinson and Swales): it was as innovative and as grand as Burnet's contemporary extension to the British Museum. The Beaux-Arts principles of powerful axes, symmetry, and confident use of Classical motifs were adopted by Burnham for his proposals for the City Beautiful in which he attempted to bring uniformity and an academic approach to urban America: his plan for Washington, DC, attempted to restore the eroded parts of L' Enfant's design. The firm's Union Station, Washington, DC (1903–7), was its first fully developed Beaux-Arts design, with a façade of five huge bays and a triple-arched entrance leading to a barrel-vaulted space worthy of Roman thermae. Burnham's plan for Chicago (1906–9), informed by his success with the Exposition, was influential at the time. His publications include The World's Columbian Exposition: The Final Report of the Director of Works (1898), and (with Edward H. Bennett) (1874–1994)) Plan of Chicago (1909). When he died Burnham's name was widely respected, and his plans for Chicago and Washington, DC, determined the development of both until the 1950s. However, as International Modernism gained the upper hand after the 1939–45 war, his reputation fell, but in C21 his work seems greatly preferable to the urban deserts created by those who decried his work.

Bibliography

Condit (1952, 1961, 1964, 1968, 1973);
Hines (1974);
D. Hoffmann (1973);
C. Moore (1968);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Roessel (1996);
Jane Turner (1996);
Zukowsky (ed.) (1987, 1993)

Daniel Hudson Burnham , 1846–1912, American architect and city planner b. Henderson, N.Y. He was trained in architects' offices in Chicago. In that city he established (1873) a partnership with John W. Root and soon gained many of the most important architectural commissions of the day. Their Chicago works include the Monadnock Building; the 20-story Masonic Temple Building (1892), the first important skeleton skyscraper; the Reliance Building; and the "Rookery" offices. Among their other works were the Flatiron Building and the Wanamaker store in New York City, Union Station in Washington, D.C., and buildings in Cleveland, Buffalo, and San Francisco.

Burnham and Root also designed the general plan for Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition (1893) and through it exerted an enormous influence upon contemporaneous civic design. In 1901, Burnham served with C. F. McKim , F. L. Olmsted, Jr., and Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Senate Park Commission in planning for the future beautification of Washington, D.C. With E. H. Bennett he created a civic improvement plan of great importance for Chicago (1907), much of which has since been put into execution. He also prepared plans for Baltimore, Duluth, and San Francisco, and was commissioned by the U.S. government to design plans for Manila and other cities in the Philippines.

Bibliography: See studies by T. Hines (1974, 1979) and K. Schaffer (2003).

Burnham, Daniel Hudson (1846–1912) US architect and city planner. With his partner John W. Root, Burnett pioneered the development of early steel-frame and modern commercial architecture. Designs include the Reliance Building (1890) and the Masonic Temple Building (1891), both in Chicago.