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Home , Comprehensive planning, Daniel Burnham, Urban planner

PUP 501 History and Theory Assignment 2 Innovator Profile

Daniel Burnham

Joshua Schmidt October 7, 2011

1 was an influential who lived from 1846 to 1912 (Hines, XXI). He was born to an upper middle class family, allowing him to have tutors to assist him in academic efforts, and one such tutor interested him in , a Burnham enjoyed (Hines, 9, 12).

Burnham’s successful career in architecture would lead to his success in . Three major influences on Burnham’s planning efforts were the Swedenborgian religion, his political stance as a progressive Republican, and his stint with politics. The Swedenborgian religion Burnham was raised in promotes “usefulness to society” (Swedenborg Library). Urban planning is essentially about improving society, making the profession a perfect fit for Burnham. The progressive reform movement occurred at the time Burnham performed his planning work, and was essentially about repairing the damage industrialization did to American society (Teaching with Documents). Progressive Republican ideals influenced his work in many ways, such as his attempts to remove “health hazards” (Learn About).

Burnham attempted to run for a seat in the Nevada state senate in 1870, and was almost victorious

(Hines, 12). His relative political success proved he could work effectively with people, a skill Burnham would use to his advantage time and again during his planning efforts (Hines, 13).

Burnham’s first planning effort was the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, also known as the

World’s Fair. This was followed by his work on plans for Washington DC, , , and

Chicago in the United States, as well as and in the . As Director of Works at the

World’s Fair, Burnham helped develop the plan and oversaw the construction process (Hines, 77, 94). The fair is considered to have been the beginning of the Beautiful Movement, which Burnham is credited with founding (Hines, 74). The fair proved very popular, with over 20 million people in attendance (Hines,

117). The McMillan Plan in 1902 for Washington DC was essentially a plan, and a rehash of the original L’Enfant plan (Hines, 139-140). The plan focused on improving the , and although the plan was implemented slowly, it was ultimately successful, and popularized with the American public (Hines, 153, 156). The relatively successful Cleveland Group Plan in

1903 was basically an project in which a new civic center in the city’s area was built on an area formally housing impoverished residents (Hines, 163, 172). The San Francisco plan in

1905 was initially unused due to the earthquake and fire in 1906 that encouraged quick rebuilding of the

2 city (Hines, 190, 192). The plan was Burnham’s most comprehensive at the time, concerning the entire city, and focused on improving accessibility, increasing , and creating new public buildings (Hines,

183, 185, 188). In 1905, Burnham’s plan for Manila was for the city’s redevelopment, whereas his plan for

Baguio was about creating a new city to be used as the Philippine government’s summer capital (Hines,

201). Both plans proved very successful because they were able to sidestep “democratic processes” and

“local opposition” to proceed quickly (Hines, 213). Burnham’s final plan was the plan for in 1909, which is considered to have been the first regional plan (Hines, 331). The 20 miles of parkland along the waterfront, the creation of additional parks throughout the city, straightening the river, and street improvements are the parts of the plan which were the most successfully implemented (Hines, 331, 341-

343).

Through his efforts on all of these plans, Burnham suggested several methods and theories to allow successful planning, many of which are still in use in contemporary times. According to Burnham, planners should merge practical needs with aesthetics, and utilize an area’s natural amenities. They should convey a sense of power, create a cluster of civic buildings, and make various street improvements. Planners should recognize the importance of parks. They need to seek out those with power and influence them to support the plan, and plan comprehensively. According to Burnham, planners should proceed with urban renewal projects, plan sustainably, utilize form-based code, but

Burnham himself may have been a Euclidean advocate.

Burnham believed there was a positive correlation between economic well-being and the aesthetic beauty of a city, and so his tendency to merge practical needs with aesthetics is evident throughout his plans (Hines, 315). A major part of the Chicago plan was the beautification of the city in order to increase people’s morale, as well as encourage wealthy residents of the city to remain and to attract tourism to enhance the city’s economy (Hines, 332-333). Burnham sited a new railroad station to the north of the Cleveland Civic Center because it was a good location for serving the area and would acknowledge the importance of railroads to American society (Hines, 167). He utilized canals on two occasions, once at the World’s Fair, and in his plan for Manila, since canals can have aesthetic value like the canals of Venice (Hines, 207). Burnham also supported the use of canals so all the buildings at the fair

3 could be accessed by water, and because they provide easy and inexpensive transportation (Hines, 77,

206). He believed strongly in utilizing an area’s natural amenities. The decision to make the exposition buildings accessible on water was because the exposition was located on Jackson , an undeveloped marsh (Hines, 77). Since Manila was adjacent to an ocean bay, and because it had a river running through it, Burnham recommended they be utilized for their cooling effects to mitigate the heat of the city (Hines,

205). He included a 20-mile long park system in the Chicago plan because it would utilize the city’s adjacency to as much as possible (Hines, 331). Contemporary urban planning makes use of both of these methods.

Like European , Burnham wanted to bring a sense of “power, grandeur, mystery, and monumentality” to America (Hines, 137). This is evident in the McMillan Plan’s improvements of the

National Mall in Washington DC. The plan placed the at the intersection of the axes of the White House and the Capitol Building, added the reflection pool between the Washington

Monument and the new adjacent to the river, and created the Arlington Memorial

Bridge to the cemetery (Hines, 152-153). Furthermore, Burnham’s tendency to create a cluster of public governmental and cultural buildings in a city’s center with diagonal leading to it was meant to allow the people to gage a sense of power, as well as for easy accessibility to those buildings (Hines, 203). The plans for the World’s Fair, Cleveland, San Francisco, Manila, and Chicago all called for a civic cluster, and interestingly, they were never located on the current node of activity (Hines, 77, 163, 183, 203, 331). In

Manila’s case, the placement of the cluster south of the historic Intramuros was meant to respect the city’s culture, however he did recommend the drainage of the Intramuros’ moat and it’s replacement with a circular park because it was a health hazard, and the creation of a few new gateways in the wall to east traffic congestion (Hines, 203, 205-206). Often, Burnham’s plans called for street improvements. He proved himself to be against the universal application of a grid pattern for streets, as in San Francisco,

Manila, and Baguio, the naturally hilly topography of those cities necessitated a different street pattern

(Hines, 183, 204, 209). In Burnham’s San Francisco plan, he lamented it was not possible to undo the grid, and so he recommended the construction of new diagonal streets for greater accessibility, and for all other new roads to follow the city’s natural topography (Hines, 183-184). His Manila and Baguio plans

4 were quite similar (Hines, 204, 209). Burnham preferred diagonal streets because “planning of a town should be carried out [so] that a person may pass from any given point to the other point along a reasonably direct line” (Hines, 203-204). Because the Chicago plan concerned not only the city, but the as well, he planned for diagonal streets to connect the city with it’s suburbs, and circular roads to connect the suburbs with each other (Hines, 332). Burnham often called for the widening of roads in his plans, as evidenced by the Chicago plan, as well as his suggestion for the San Francisco plan to create the

Panhandle, a very large to connect Golden Gate Park to the civic cluster, as well as the bay further east (Hines, 183, 331). Contemporary planning typically does not encourage the construction of wide roads or the utilization of civic clusters for their grandeur, instead, the modern way is to plan at the human scale, making for a more compact and arguably more accessible city.

Burnham thought public parks were very important, both for recreation to provide people with linkages to nature (Hines, 333). All of his plans called for the creation of additional parkland. At the

World’s Columbian Exposition, the plan preserved a natural island at the center of a lagoon (Hines, 77).

Part of the improvement to the National Mall in the McMillan plan included planting grass and lining it with elm trees (Hines, 153). Cleveland’s Civic Center was based around a similar green mall (Hines, 163).

Burnham recommended several hilly areas in San Francisco, Telegraph Hill, Twin Peaks, and the Presidio all become parks (Hines, 185). A major focus of the Chicago plan was increasing the existing park system

(Hines, 315, 331). Today, the planning profession still recognizes the value of public parks, however, unlike the kinds of parks in Burnham’s plans, contemporary planning prefers a larger quantity of smaller parks, both to ease their accessibility and out of safety concerns.

An important planning technique Burnham utilized is to seek out those with power and influence them to support the plan. The beautification of the National Mall was made possible because Burnham accepted a job to design a new railroad terminal in order to convince the president of the railroad company not to build on the National Mall, which at that time had rail on it (Hines, 148-

149). During his work on the Chicago plan, Burnham worked with the Commercial Club, a volunteer civic organization made of mostly wealthier residents interested in improving the city (Hines, 314). In

Cleveland, he met with citizens and public officials, but disagreed with the city’s request that he hold an

5 open public meeting because Burnham did not think they could have a positive effect on the plan (Hines,

161). Burnham strongly believed in comprehensive planning, in that planners should resist calls for fast action, and must consider all factors at work in their planning area and do a sufficient amount of research, or else the plan would fail (Hines, 161-162). To that end in Chicago, Burnham researched the city’s history, requested maps and plans of various other cities, studied information on the “transportation, health, and educational needs” of the city, and even studied statistics on water freight, railroad, and streetcar lines (Hines, 323-324). Contemporary planning certainly does suggest working with the stakeholders who have the power to influence the city, and performing enough research to ensure an optimal plan, however, not only does modern planning often embrace public open meetings for the positive effect they can have on a plan, they are often mandatory to hold.

Unfortunately, in one circumstance, Burnham worked on a plan that was essentially an urban renewal effort, and never offered a solution to the problem of slum housing in any of his plans. This quandary was a major downside of the , which focused on public buildings and aesthetics and not social issues, such as , although Burnham did imply in the Chicago plan that the plan should be sufficient to solve that problem if it were fully implemented, or else the city would need to be financially proactive in constructing housing (Hines, 204, 333). The Cleveland plan sited the Civic Center on what was a run-down and impoverished area, and was not concerned with the dislocation of the former residents (Hines, 163). Through his plans, Burnham implied he was a advocate. During his work on the Chicago plan, he stated, “the keynote of the 19th century was expansion… the dominant idea [of the 20th century] is conservation” (Hines, 328-329). To this end, the Chicago plan attempted to meet the needs of the present as well as the needs of the future, very similar to the definition of sustainability (Hines, 327). The City Beautiful Movement itself was somewhat in favor of sustainability. Previously, planning efforts simply responded to immediate needs, but the movement encouraged planners to consider aesthetics and long-term thinking, which is how contemporary planners generally approach the job (Klein, 63-64). Furthermore, Burnham may have been an advocate of form-based code, which is concerned with aesthetics and the relationships between city infrastructure. The Cleveland plan stated that the city should dictate “size, height, style, and general

6 appearance” of public buildings to assure “usefulness, safety, and beauty” (Hines, 169). Burnham decreed at the World’s Fair that all the buildings should utilize uniform neo-classical architecture, a design idea he would later apply to the public buildings lining the National Mall in Washington DC (Hines, 139, 156). In contrast, it is possible Burnham would have been an advocate of Euclidean zoning, which attempts to segregate incompatible land uses. His calls for civic clusters never implied a mix of uses, only cultural and governmental buildings to be located in them. It is possible, however, that Burnham planned in reaction to the incompatibility of dirty industries that could locate near sensitive uses because zoning had not yet been invented. During his work on the San Francisco plan, he did recommend all factories located to the south part of the city due to the winds that blew south, and he suggested locations for public buildings only (Hines, 188). Modern planning practices are against urban renewal efforts, instead they attempt to accommodate affordable housing in any plan. Sustainability is considered a very important quality to upkeep in a plan, and form-based code is being ratified by several cities, replacing older Euclidean zoning.

In conclusion, Daniel Burnham greatly influenced the planning profession. He founded the City

Beautiful Movement, which is still today upheld in that aesthetics are considered very important in new plans. He made the first comprehensive and regional plans, which continue to be created by planners.

He was against the universal application of gridded streets, planned to achieve accessibility, and appreciated the value of public parks. He believed in due diligence in research, and sought out those with power to accomplish his plans. These theories and techniques are all considered very important to the planning profession. Although he did support some methods not considered desirable today, such as urban renewal, and wide streets, and was against open public meetings, over one hundred years after

Burnham created his plans, the profession has learned more effective techniques of planning, which may not have been possible had not someone tried and failed previously.

7 Works Cited

Hines, Thomas S. (2009). Burnham of Chicago: and Planner. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Klein, Richard. An Overview of the City Beautiful Movement as Reflected in Daniel Burnham’s Vision. Retrieved October 2, 2011, from the Cleveland State University website: http://academic.csuohio.edu/tah/regional_arts/artsheritage/p61anoverview.pdf Learn About the Progressive Era. (7 Oct 2011). Retrieved October 6, 2011, from Digital History on the University of Houston website: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/progressivism/index.cfm Swedenborg Library. (2009). Retrieved October 2, 2011, from The Burnham Plan Centennial website: http://burnhamplan100.lib.uchicago.edu/partner/detail/Swedenborg+Library/ Teaching with Documents: Political Cartoons Illustrating Progressivism and the Election of 1912. Retrieved October 6, 2011, from the National Archives website: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/election-cartoons/

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