No Little Plans: Burnham in 3-D
What if? what if Daniel Burnham could come back and finish what he started a century ago with his great 1909 Plan of Chicago? What if some of his lost designs could be built posthumously? For the last two years, those are exactly the sorts of things a group of Lake Forest College students have been asking, reimagining the architect's unfinished work in an online, three-dimensional, virtual -reality format.
The plans and structures Burnham and his colleagues did complete are world-famous. His Rookery, Marshall Field's and Monadnock buildings are iconic. As is the 1909 city plan he authored with his assistant, Edward H. Bennett. But what many people don't know is that much of Burnham's original vision - which stretched from Kenosha, Wis., to Michigan City, Ind., and included a Civic Center and a great system of lagoons in downtown Chicago - never came to fruition. Until now.
The Virtual Burnham Initiative, as it has been dubbed, will be unveiled and launched online later this month as part of the Burnham Plan Centennial festivities being planned throughout the Chicago area. Using Google Earth and 360-degree views of 3-D models, starting June 15 visitors will be able to log onto vbi.lakeforest.edu and place unbuilt structures and a proposed lagoon system onto a map from the 1909 Plan of Chicago, creating a new Burnham-inspired Windy City.
"Burnham was a forward thinker," says Davis Schneiderman, associate professor of English at LFC and project leader for the Virtual Burnham Initiative. "He was a progressive with a capital P."
And even though the format is unlike anything our much-lauded city planner could have imagined, Schneiderman believes that if Burnham were alive today, he would very likely applaud what the Lake Forest College team has done.
Schneiderman, who has been steering the project since its inception two years ago (along with a team of professors, students and collaborators), was able to secure a Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to make such an initiative possible. Students (including some from Highland Park High School) are working with computer programs, old and new photographs, and the Plan of Chicago itself to create this online experience. The Virtual Burnham Initiative also presents never-before-seen papers from the collection of Edward Bennett - a co-author of the Burnham Plan whose family recently donated items to Lake Forest College - as well as materials generated by partners at institutions such as Waukegan High School.
Karen Larson, a Lake Forest College sophomore who has been photographing and videotaping some of Burnham's most famous buildings as part of the project, says she had never seen, nor envisioned, anything like them. The Colorado native knew mountains, not skyscrapers; green, not steel, glass, stone, and neoclassical architecture. But as she walked past the Rookery and Fisher buildings, camera in hand, Larson began zeroing in on details busy passersby might not take the time to see. She noticed that the Fisher Building featured glass, a foreshadowing of the modern skyscraper. At the same time, she took photos of the intricate carvings of eagles, mythical beasts, aquatic creatures and seashells, which were reminiscent of Gothic cathedrals.
"I began to feel as if I knew more about the man who created the great plan for Chicago," she says, "and about the city itself."
Born in New York and raised in Chicago, Burnham dabbled in different careers as a young man. But in 1867 while working as a draftsman for an architecture firm, he wrote to his mother, "I feel perfectly certain that I have found my vocation."
Burnham resolved to become the greatest architect in the city, perhaps even the country. He also made the commitment to work for the good of others even in the face of what he called the sometimes morally corrupt business world.
Burnham, who lived with his wife, two daughters and three sons in a home on Evanston's lake front, was asked to oversee, with his partner, John Welborn Root, the building of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago's then-decrepit Jackson Park. This world's fair celebrated the 400-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing in America. Burnham has been credited with overcoming huge financial and logistical roadblocks, including a world economic downslide, to open the fair on time. Complete with European-style boulevards, formal gardens, and classically designed buildings, this fair brought neoclassical architecture to the nation's forefront.
In the early 1900s, Burnham began writing the 1909 Plan of Chicago, designed to improve this fast-growing city, which in some places had become riddled with industrial pollution and squalor. The Plan of Chicago encompassed six key elements: improving the lake front; establishing a concentric roadway system around the city; modernizing the railway and transportation system; creating an outer park system; arranging streets and avenues atop the Chicago grid; and creating an intellectual center of cultural and civic buildings. Upper and Lower Wacker drives are two results of the plan.
Lake Forest College student Kamil Madejski is working on "virtualizing" the Civic Center that was never built. As Madejski pored over books and photographs, he says he began to understand Burnham's desire to bring a community together in one place. "Maybe it's just my bias because I'm working on some of the buildings of the Civic Center, but I think it should have been built," he says. "These structures would have had a profound impact on the city's image and its people. They would have been icons easily recognizable around the world. Perhaps their construction would have caused the city to flourish and develop at a much faster pace. Too bad we don't have the capability to see what their presence would have done for the city."
Perhaps one of Burnham's greatest legacies is the notion of green space for everyone, an idea that pleased Jane Addams, a great advocate for the poor.
"Burnham loved to talk," says Schneiderman, telling the story of Addams and her visit with Burnham. On Dec. 4, 1907, Addams lunched with Burnham, and he showed her the plan, says Schneiderman. "She congratulated Burnham on making the lake open to all people and available as a resource for those served by Hull House."
Burnham's plan was indeed widespread and democratic in its scope, deeming "the improvement of the lakefront from Winnetka to the Indiana line an economic necessity."
"This was a regional plan," Schneiderman explains. "It's no accident that Lake Forest looks the way it does," a reference to the city's carefully considered plan and the many parks and large swaths of open space within it.
Lake Forest is just one of the North Shore suburbs to celebrate Burnham's legacy this month. But Larson, who just completed a publicity video for the Virtual Burnham Initiative, has been especially moved by the "What if?" experience.
"When I went to Chicago to study Burnham's work, I realized that man-made mountains and structured parks could never compensate for real mountains back home. Yet there is an energy in Chicago that seems to say, 'We're here, we're progressing, and we may make mistakes, but we prosper, and we achieve. Try to intimidate us.' That's something I could be a part of."
The World According to Burnham and Bennett: the Launch of the Virtual Burnham Initiative will be held from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, at the DePaul University Loop Campus. For other local Burnham Centennial happenings, see "No Small Fete" on pages 76-77 or visit burnhamplan100.uchicago.edu.
One Little Exception
By Thomas Connors
Geoffrey Bushor admits he had no idea what he was getting into, and who hasn't said that when they've decided to restore an older home? But in this case, it wasn't just the time and expense that took Bushor by surprise, it was the hidden provenance of the property itself.
"It was the brick horse barn behind the house that got me interested," recalls Bushor of his "double house" on Dempster Street in Evanston. "But to get the barn, I had to buy the house. And it wasn't until I started doing some research in the city records that I learned the house had been designed by (Daniel) Burnham."
Burnham, whose own estate once occupied the entire block south of Dempster from Forest Avenue to Lake Michigan, designed the house as income property for his neighbor, William L. Brown, in 1892. (Over time, the architect also designed a number of other residences in the neighborhood, as well as what is now the Chiaravalle Montessori School.) By the time Bushor acquired the Colonial Revival structure in 1999, it was in sad shape.
Unattractive asphalt shingles had been slapped over the exterior years before, and the front porch was giving way. "When we began," says Bushor, "I figured it was a matter of redoing the outside, with a little work inside. But every day, there was something new to be taken care of." The project took nearly two and a half years to complete.
Working with local architect Stephen R. Knutson, Bushor set about reviving the property as felicitously as possible. "The house is very plain, very simple," notes Bushor, "but it's tasteful, and I wanted to respect that."
He refaced the exterior in clapboard and cedar shake, as Burnham intended, installed copper gutters and downspouts, re-created the front porch, tuckpointed the brick foundation and replaced the concrete steps that led to the rear entrances with small, period-appropriate porches.
The elegant eyebrow windows that graced the east and west facades of the house had long ago been replaced with standard double-hung windows, and while Bushor hoped to correct that, he found he had to settle for an artful approximation with millwork and larger-format windows that met current fire codes. Living across the alley, in a red Victorian facing Forest Avenue, Bushor was able to stop by regularly to see how the work was going.
Inside, Bushor had the plaster walls stripped down to the lath and replastered, refinished the original bronze hardware and took floorboards from closets to patch elsewhere. HVAC, plumbing and electrical systems were replaced, bathrooms were updated, and the unfinished attic was converted into living space. Standing in a master bedroom, Bushor points to cubbies inserted within the dormers. "When I got the place they were painted shut, and you could hear squirrels inside."
Double houses comprising two units that mirrored each other side by side, were fairly common in Evanston from the late 1880s until the turn of the century. While a far cry from the grand homes that stand just blocks away, the Dempster Street residences - each with three bedrooms and one bath - offered late-19th-century tenants a respectable lifestyle, evidenced by the secondary servants' staircase. And the spaces remain inviting today, with fireplaces in the living rooms, pantries and kitchens that some city dwellers would envy.
Burnham, famous for saying, "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood," was certainly no slave to his pronouncement. As the little house on Dempster Street attests, good things can come in small packages.
