The Burnham Blog by Patrick T. Reardon

In the summer of 1901, Edward P. Brennan, private citizen, went on vacation to Paw Paw, Mich., with an armload of Chicago maps.

He came back with a set of proposals ...

For more than an hour, experts from around the world had been rhapsodizing about Daniel Burnham and the 99-year-old Burnham Plan, the ground-breaking document that shaped today’s ...

For Shani Edmond, it started out as just another video.

Although she’s only 17, Edmond, a senior at the Woodlawn campus of the University of Chicago Charter ...

Today, we don’t think of Daniel Burnham as a radical, as an agent provocateur. Yet, that’s what he was.

Take a look at how barren the lakefront off ...

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That was then, Carl Smith says. This is now.

Throughout this year, Smith, the author of “The Plan of Chicago: Daniel ...

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Hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans and visitors learned more about Daniel Burnham and the Plan of Chicago this year during the centennial ...

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Carl Smith has had a ringside seat for this year’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Plan of Chicago.

In ...

Someday, fairly soon, a 10-year-old girl will look out over a vast panorama of prairie grasses and travel back hundreds of years to a time when the landscape was unplowed and ...

In the 1909 Plan of Chicago, Daniel Burnham wrote:

“While the keynote of the nineteenth century was expansion, we of the twentieth century find that our ...

“A city is competitive if people think of it as a nice place to live.”

Chicago Sun-Times business reporter David Roeder isn’t as grandiloquent ...

“It feels like Chicago,” Spencer Teiken says.

The 16-year-old from Oswego is rattling along in a city subway car for the first time, and he’s ...

If you’re at all a fan of Chicago history, I’m sure you know the frustration.

You read about Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette arriving in ...

No one showed up. But it wasn't the end of the world. These things happen. So Erin Aleman, Mina Duarte and I sat around talking for a half hour or so.

It was on ...

After walking east on Randolph Street, Mary O’Malley’s third-graders take an elevator down past several levels of the Grant Park garage --- to another Randolph Street, ...

Joe Graber of Oak Park is delighted to see the solid, well-appointed, well-maintained three-flat at 8201 S. Elizabeth St.

It’s where his father grew up. ...

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In 1909, civic leaders developed the Plan of Chicago to cope with the city’s immense but problem-filled success. More recently, Orland ...

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In the Encyclopedia of Chicago, Orland Park is described as “a classic example of the American automobile-based suburb.” So “walkable” ...

With northeastern Illinois in the midst of what could be its most meaningful regional planning effort ever, it’s a good time to remember Daniel Burnham.
  ...

The architecture of the 1909 Plan of Chicago is easy enough to see --- just look around.

Here’s Wacker Drive skirting along the northern and western edge ...

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There is the official Chicago Riverwalk --- extending now along the south bank of the Chicago River’s main channel from Lake Michigan ...

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For anyone who knows the history of Chicago, it’s jarring to hear Michelle Woods say, “We want to embrace the river.”
...

“No, no, no, no. You can’t die! We worked so hard. Damn it!”

It is the end of Act 1 of “The White City: Burnham’s Dream,” a ...

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“Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions.” --- Joel 2:28

As I wrote ...

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This is a year for plans --- this 100th anniversary of the publication of the Plan of Chicago.

And among the many documents ...

For eight years, the One Book, One Chicago program has been a major cultural institution in the city. Now, at least this time around, it’s also a planning exercise.
...

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When I was growing up in Chicago in the West Side neighborhood of Austin, it was clear to me what a city was and what a forest was.
...

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“People think, ‘Nature’s over there.’ Well, we know Nature’s in our backyard. And how are we treating ...

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It’s a map that, in its scale, breadth and vision, looks like it could have come out of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. ...

First of four

A “weed patch” in a Grayslake backyard. The meandering banks of the Kankakee River. Trees along the fence of my Chicago alley. ...

Daniel Burnham was depressed.

The man known as “Uncle Dan” to his fellow architects and urban planners was someone who, through force of personality ...

The title of the exhibit at the Chicago Tourism Center Gallery at 72 E. Randolph St. is “Big. Bold. Visionary. Chicago Considers the Next Century.” ...

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It’s tantalizing to envision the Plan of Chicago that Daniel Burnham and Jane Addams might have written together a century ago.
...

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Anthony Flint’s new book “Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the ...

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In the church of urban planning, Daniel Burnham is a saint. Robert Moses, on the other hand, has long been viewed as the Antichrist.
...

Judith McBrien’s documentary on Daniel Burnham --- which premieres tonight (Wednesday) at 7:30 p.m. at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park --- looks at much more ...

Ah, stereotypes.

In the popular mind and in the media, plans are often described as dull documents that do little but gather dust on office shelves. And, to be ...

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One of this year’s 20 Green Legacy Projects comes right out of the Plan of Chicago.

Daniel Burnham and his co-author ...

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The excitement and momentum that has developed around the 20 “green legacy” projects isn’t likely to come to a screeching ...

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Daniel Burnham wouldn’t have called himself an environmentalist. The word wasn’t in common usage in 1909.

But ...

Sure, in writing the Plan of Chicago, Daniel Burnham helped shaped the growth of the city. But, over the past century, he’s also served as a potent civic symbol. ...

In the old days --- a year or so ago --- home-buyers were looking for “the most house for the money.” They only had so many dollars to work with. And, when ...

A key measure of this nation’s health is its Gross National Product. But what about its Gross National Happiness?

Don’t laugh. Gross National Happiness ...

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The criticism of Daniel Burnham has long been that his approach to planning was top-down. He and his colleagues --- educated, informed and ...

First of two

On a stormy Thursday evening, John Bettridge sits in a meeting hall in the Tinley Park village government complex --- and plans the future ...

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For Gregory Dreicer, Chicago Model City is too small.

That’s saying something since it’s a huge, 320-square-foot, ...

For me, there’s something disconcerting about Chicago Model City. Something unsettling.

No question, a lot of people think it’s crazy cool, people ...

Art tends to be a painstaking process.  When it looks free and easy, you can be pretty sure it wasn't that way for the artist.

Or artists --- in the ...

“The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson was a surprise bestseller of 2003. It made the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago into a fascinating ...

Rick Harnish has a dream.

He envisions a national commitment to a new transportation philosophy that will be as sweeping and as society-changing as the ...

George Ranney’s roots in regional planning go back to the 1970s when he headed the task force that created the RTA. Now, he’s hoping that another new regional ...

Looking to the future can be an exercise in dread.  Or filled with the thrill of excitement. It can tap into a sense of tranquility, or determination, or ...

Robin Kohn was surprised to see that the Plan of Chicago was also a plan for Michigan City and the rest of Northwest Indiana.

“I think very few people ...

The most impressive image in the Plan of Chicago isn’t of Chicago.

Sure, the city is there, just a little below the center, but the watercolor by Jules Guerin ...

For me, the most striking thing about the Lookingglass Theatre’s re-creation of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 lantern-slide lecture called “A Plain Talk on ...

Daniel Burnham V says it’s very, very odd being Daniel Burnham during the 100th anniversary celebration of the publication of the Plan of Chicago.

“I’m ...

Andjurette is a bright-eyed, quick-to-smile third-grader at the Daniel Webster School at 4055 W. Arthington St., serving the West Side neighborhoods of North Lawndale and West ...

“It looks like an alien spaceship,” said Carmel Damazo, a Naperville accountant, as she stood on the ramp of the Ben van Berkel-designed pavilion in Millennium ...

Daniel Burnham is back selling the Plan of Chicago --- on stage at the Lookingglass Theatre. 

As part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of ...

Third of three parts

Randy Blankenhorn knows that expectations of him and his agency are high. That’s what you get when you follow in Daniel Burnham’s ...

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Politics in Illinois is a take-no-prisoners blood sport so how can a bunch of nerdy planners make much of a difference?

...

First of three parts
 
Randy Blankenhorn is a policy wonk, but he and his agency have the clout --- on paper, at least --- to change the face of the ...

A confession:

Probably 15 years ago, I bought a hardcover copy of the 1993 reprint of the Plan of Chicago for $70. It was a beautifully done reproduction by Princeton ...

A century ago, civic leaders were fairly formal types, and it was rare that they permitted themselves to be photographed in anything but a staged setting.

That’s ...

It’s a tantalizing image --- Daniel Burnham writing on a long pad of paper with a page of completed manuscript sitting atop a pile of books and papers on ...

One high-schooler noted that walking to work helps the environment, but many suburbs don’t even have sidewalks. And, in winter, not all sidewalks are shoveled.

She ...

Plans go awry. It’s the human condition. That’s why the word “utopian” has such a negative connotation.

Any attempt to create a Utopia, ...

Millennium Park’s “Cloud Gate” is better known as The Bean. So what nickname will we give to Ben van Berkel’s new pavilion in the park?

The gleaming ...

No one at the Burnham Plan Centennial is happy that the opening of the Zaha Hadid pavilion will be delayed. But there’s a silver lining for art lovers.

Visitors ...

High school students who want to learn more about the metropolitan region and plan for its future have until Friday, June 26, to apply for the Future Leaders in Planning program.

The ...

Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture recounted Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia. The opera “Salome” by Richard Strauss got its story from the Bible. One of ...

If you drive in the Chicago metropolitan region, you’re probably more familiar than you’d like to be with the intricate highway system that covers the landscape. ...

Last summer, when I was still a Chicago Tribune reporter, I interviewed Friends of the Parks president Erma Tranter about creating parks in the last four miles of lakefront ...

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The Plan of Chicago — known as the Burnham Plan for its main author Daniel Burnham — was published a century ago.

So what?  Why should anyone care?

Here’s ...

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