Daniel Hudson Burnham

Architect

• Born: September 4, 1846
• Birthplace: Henderson, New York
• Died: June 1, 1912
• Place of death: Heidelberg, Germany

American architect

Energetic and practical, Burnham was a master of the utilitarian, technical, and financial aspects of architecture. He made important contributions to the development of the American skyscraper form, the organization of the modern architectural office, and the encouragement of comprehensive urban and regional planning.

Area of achievement Architecture

Early Life

Daniel Hudson Burnham was the son of Edwin Burnham, later a wholesale merchant of drugs, and Elizabeth Weeks Burnham, the daughter of a Swedenborgian minister. Born in New York, he moved to Chicago with his family when he was nine years old. He was an indifferent student, receiving his education in the city schools and excelling only in freehand drawing. Burnham was then sent to Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to study with a private tutor. There, his interest in architecture and his talent for drawing became increasingly apparent.

After failing the entrance examinations of both Harvard and Yale, Burnham returned to Chicago in 1868. For short periods, he tried one thing after another—clerking in a Chicago retail store, mining for gold in Nevada, and running unsuccessfully for a seat in the Illinois senate. Burnham’s dissatisfactions with these undertakings led his father to seek advice from William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), one of Chicago’s leading architects. Shortly thereafter, Burnham became an apprentice in Jenney’s architectural office. He gained further experience by working with John Val Osdel and Gustav Laureau.

In 1872, at the age of twenty-six, Burnham joined the firm of Carter, Drake and Wight. Working as a draftsman under Peter Bonnett Wight, he acquired a deeper appreciation of architectural scholarship and broadened the scope of his training. Among his fellow draftsmen was a young Georgian, John Wellborn Root (1850-1891). Their friendship led to a new partnership in an architectural office of their own in 1873. Root was inventive, romantic, and versatile; Burnham was businesslike and practical, bringing to the partnership a keen understanding of the points that make an office building a profitable enterprise. One of the firm’s first draftsmen was William Holabird (1854-1923), who later established his own reputation as an architect. After a slow start, the partnership’s practice grew rapidly; between 1873 and 1891, the firm designed 165 private homes and seventy-five buildings of various types.

Life’s Work

In 1874, Burnham and Root completed a large and fashionable house for their first important client, John B. Sherman, a wealthy Chicago stockyard executive. Two years later, Burnham married Sherman’s daughter, Margaret. Three sons and two daughters were born to Daniel and Margaret Burnham during the first decade of their marriage. Two of the sons—Hubert and Daniel, Jr.—eventually became architects and joined their father’s firm.

Burnham and Root concentrated on house design during the partnership’s first few years. Their first big commission was the Montauk Building (1882, since demolished), followed by the Calumet Building (1884). Both in Chicago, they were constructed of masonry with cast-iron columns. The term “skyscraper” is said to have been applied first to the Montauk Building, which, at ten stories in height, was the first distinctly tall building in Chicago. Its commercial success made it the forerunner of tall, fireproof buildings throughout the country.

Other masonry buildings in Chicago followed, the most notable being the Rookery (1886) and the Monadnock Building (1891). Austere and subtly proportioned, the latter structure was sixteen stories high, with brick bearing walls. It demonstrated Burnham’s belief that architecture should express the uses intended for a building. In 1890 came the Rand-McNally Building (since demolished), the first all-steel, skeleton-framed building. The firm did several other metal, skeleton-framed buildings that were designed before and constructed after Root’s death. Among these were the Masonic Temple (1892, since demolished), with a steel frame, and the Great Northern Hotel (1892, since demolished), with a wrought-iron and steel skeleton. Twenty stories in height, the Masonic Temple was, at the time, the tallest building in the world.

The Reliance Building is considered by many to represent the partnership’s finest design. Planning for the structure had begun before Root’s death and was finished by the head of the firm’s design department, Charles B. Atwood (1849-1895). The design of the Chicago skyscraper is said to have reached its logical conclusion in the Reliance Building, with its steel skeleton, its glass and terra-cotta walls (revealing the structure underneath), and its skillfully balanced proportions and details.

With Root and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Burnham worked out the master plan for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Jackson Park, then a sandy waste, was selected as the location; improvements were designed to fit the area ultimately for use as a city park. Five outside and five local firms of architects were selected to design the principal buildings. Root died during the first meeting of the architects in January, 1891. Burnham, as chief of construction and then chief consulting architect, assumed the responsibility of maintaining the teamwork necessary to accomplish an opening date for the exposition in 1893.

The eastern architects had already determined that the buildings surrounding the exposition’s Court of Honor should be classical in design. Although no building of classical design had been erected previously in Chicago, their plan was adopted. It is commonly argued that things would have been different had Root lived. Supposedly, his authority and predilection for the romantic would have given the exposition an altogether different appearance. It should be noted, however, that the classical design of the Court of Honor had been decided upon before Root’s death, with both his and Burnham’s assent. Moreover, the minds of both men were already attuned to the classical notes struck in the East, especially those of the firm of McKim, Mead and White. In addition, Burnham found attractive the sense of orderliness and the largeness of conception in a series of related public buildings.

To Burnham, the World’s Columbian Exposition not only represented an opportunity to express American prowess in invention, manufactures, and production, but also gave Americans a vehicle for demonstrating the capacity of the country in such areas as architecture, painting, and sculpture. Burnham found great satisfaction in the associations created and cultivated during the two years of the exposition’s construction period. His management and leadership style allowed for an opportunity for individual creative activity, and his generous nature led him to give full credit to those who worked under him.

Immediate results of the exposition’s success were honorary degrees bestowed on Burnham by Harvard and Yale, election to the presidency of the American Institute of Architects, and membership in New York’s Century Club. Burnham was now the best-known architect in the United States. However, the exposition’s conclusion also left him with an architectural practice broken by the death of Root and two years of interrupted work. He took on three new partners, Ernest R. Graham, Edward C. Shankland, and Charles B. Atwood, all associates at the exposition.

As early as 1897, Burnham had begun thinking about a plan for the development of the Chicago lakefront. Later, working with Jens Jensen (1860-1951) as the landscape architect, he would see this planning result in the construction of Grant Park and other Chicago parks, beginning in 1904. It would also lead to his widely acclaimed Chicago Plan of 1909.

Burnham was called to Washington, D.C., in 1901, to become chairman of a commission to plan the enlargement and extension of the L’Enfant plan for the District of Columbia. To assist him, Burnham chose Charles McKim, a leading New York architect, and Olmsted. He insisted that studies be made of those European capitols that had furnished precedents for L’Enfant’s plan. The unity of the Mall was to be restored. Burnham obtained the consent of the Pennsylvania Railroad to remove its tracks from the Mall. The Union Station and the adjoining Post Office Building were planned to be subordinate to the Capitol. In this subordination and in the monumental nature of these buildings, Burnham secured results that marked his desire for teamwork and his sense of proportion.

Among Burnham’s more notable later buildings are the Fisher Building (1896), the Field Museum of Natural History (1900), and the Railway Exchange Building (1904)—all in Chicago. In 1902, his Flatiron Building, New York’s first skyscraper, became the tallest building in the world. Nevertheless, with the Washington project, Burnham embarked on a new phase of his career, city planning, which occupied much of his time and thought for the remainder of his life. A number of large city governments—San Francisco, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago—sought his aid in developing comprehensive city plans. He used these plans for civic development to express his own ideas of dignity, orderliness, and beauty. In 1904, at the request of William Howard Taft, the secretary of war, Burnham served as head of a commission to undertake the rebuilding and modernization of Manila in the Philippine Islands. There, the French idea of turning outgrown fortifications into boulevards was carried out successfully.

In 1910, President Taft appointed Burnham to head a newly organized National Commission of Fine Arts. One of the first important pieces of business for the commission was the location of the proposed Lincoln Memorial and the selection of an architect and sculptor. Early in 1912, Burnham’s health began to fail. To the very end a keen student, he died during a trip to Europe in Heidelberg, Germany, on June 1, 1912.

After Burnham’s death, Ernest Robert Graham (1868-1936), who had administered the company since 1900, continued the firm in partnership with Burnham’s sons, Hubert and Daniel, Jr. The firm continued later as Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White.

Significance

By the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, as Louis Sullivan’s critical writings became more widely known and as European modernist architects spread their message, the derivative neoclassicism of Burnham’s day came increasingly under attack in the architectural community. Recent historians and critics have tried to redress the fashionable practice of attacking the Burnham school—a revisionist movement long overdue.

Burnham was as important as his contemporaries believed, and as great as he knew himself to be. Above all others, Burnham made distinguished and original contributions in four areas: first, in the creation of the large, modern architectural office, a hierarchical system of specialists working together in various departments; second, in the development of the skyscraper form, in the perfection of the internal arrangement and layout of tall office-building systems; third, in his early call for comprehensive planning, which included entire urban and geographical regions; and, fourth, in his work as an architectural philanthropist and cultural entrepreneur who organized and encouraged the cultivation of both the public and the private arts in the United States.

Bibliography

Condit, Carl W. The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. A nearly definitive treatment of the Chicago School and its influence. Any recent work on Chicago architecture during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century is in debt to Condit’s study.

Hines, Thomas S. Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. The standard biography of Burnham. Solid on architectural criticism. “On Sources” is a particularly valuable section.

Hitchcock, Henry Russell. Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. 4th ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. The classic one-volume history of modern architecture that deals with Burnham and his contemporaries judiciously and intelligently, if sometimes briefly.

Hoffmann, Donald. The Architecture of John Wellborn Root. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973. The standard study of Root’s work. Good on Root’s relations with Burnham.

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. New York: Crown, 2003. Best-selling history of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Larson tells his story by concentrating on the lives and careers of two men: Burnham and Henry H. Holmes, a serial killer who built a hotel near the fair to more easily find victims. Larson is a superb writer and he provides a richly detailed account of Burnham’s life and career, focusing on the many challenges he faced in designing and building the fairgrounds.

Moore, Charles. Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. A valuable source of an almost primary nature. Moore knew Burnham well and had access to friends, relatives, and associates.

Reps, John W. The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. A helpful overview of American urban planning. Brief text but extensive illustrations.

Schaeffer, Kristen. Daniel H. Burnham: Visionary, Architect, and Planner. Edited by Scott J. Tilden, photographs by Paul Rocheleau. New York: Rizzoli, 2003. Schaeffer assesses Burnham’s role in American architecture. Profusely and beautifully illustrated with large photographs.

Schuyler, Montgomery. American Architecture and Other Writings. Edited by William Jordy and Ralph Coe. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961. Writings of the best contemporary architectural critic, who wrote extensively about Burnham and the Chicago School.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Nineteenth Century

1883-1885: World’s First Skyscraper Is Built; May 1-October 30, 1893: Chicago World’s Fair.