Historical Figures Codexery

Daniel Burnham

The architect who shaped skylines and cities.

Daniel Burnham

via Wikipedia: Daniel Burnham · Public domain

For the 1892–93 World's Columbian Exposition, often called "The White City", Burnham was chosen to be the Director of Works.[1]

Quick Facts

Birth name
Daniel Hudson Burnham
Born
4 September 1846
Birthplace
Henderson, New York, US
Died
1 June 1912
Place of death
Heidelberg, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire
Practice
Burnham and Root; D. H. Burnham & Company
Significant buildings
  • Reliance Building
  • Flatiron Building
  • Washington Union Station
  • Ellicott Square Building
Significant projects
Plan of Chicago; World's Columbian Exposition

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

Burnham was born in Henderson, New York, and moved to Chicago at age eight when his father established a successful wholesale drug business.[2] He was not a good student but was good at drawing, and after failing Harvard and Yale entrance exams he returned to Chicago in 1867 for a draftsman apprenticeship under William LeBaron Jenney.[3] Burnham left that apprenticeship in 1869 to try gold mining in Nevada, failed, then ran for the Nevada state legislature and lost.[3] At age 26 he met John Wellborn Root in a Chicago architecture office, and they opened their own firm together in 1873.[3]

Their first major commission was a mansion for John B. Sherman, superintendent of the Union Stock Yards, and Burnham married Sherman's daughter Margaret in 1876.[4] Root died of pneumonia in 1891, and the firm was renamed D.H. Burnham & Company.[5] Burnham designed the Flatiron Building in New York City in 1901, a 22-story structure with an internal steel skeleton.[6] Burnham and co-author Edward H. Bennett prepared the Plan of Chicago, published in 1909, the first comprehensive plan for controlled growth of an American city.[7]

The Montauk Building, constructed by Burnham's firm in 1881, was Chicago's tallest structure at that time and prompted the creation of the term "skyscraper".[8] Philippines Governor-General William Howard Taft gave Burnham a commission in 1904 to create a new design for Manila and to develop plans for a summer capital in Baguio.[9]

What the cited sources add

The 1992 "AIA Guide to Boston" lists the Filene's Department Store in Boston as the last major building designed by Burnham.[10][11] For the Baguio project, the Philippine Supreme Court authorized the seizure of 14,000 acres of land from the local Igorot population.[9] Although Burnham's San Francisco redesign was presented to the Board of Supervisors in September 1905, the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires caused those plans to be disregarded.[12] From 1910 until his death in 1912, Burnham was a member of the United States Commission of Fine Arts.[13][14]

A diabetes diagnosis in 1909 caused circulatory problems for Burnham, resulting in a persistent foot infection that lasted for the rest of his life.[15]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Laurin, "Grace and Seriousness in the Flatiron Building and Ourselves", Aesthetic Realism Looks at NYC, 2008, p. 1–4 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Norton-Burhnam House, National Register of Historic Places Registration, National Park Service, January 8, 2016; "Website", New Church, June 20, 2014; Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City, p. 56; Norton-Burhnam House, National Register of Historic Places Registration, National Park Service, January 8, 2016; Larson (2003), p.19 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Larson (2003), p.19 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Larson (2003), pp.20-21; Larson (2003), p.22 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Larson (2003), pp.104-108 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Terranova, Antonino (2003) Skyscrapers White Star Publishers.; "Flatiron Building" on Destination 360; Gillon, Edmund Vincent (photographs) and Reed, Henry Hope (text). Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York: A Photographic Guide New York: Dover, 1988. p. 26 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "The Commercial Club of Chicago: Purpose & History" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Larson (2003) pp.24-25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019), p. 123-136. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; ; ; ; Larson (2003), p.377; "AIA Guide to Boston", Globe Pequot, 1992, p. 19 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Open Library record, ISBN 0871061880 ("The Boston Society of Architects' AIA guide to Boston"). CC0 (metadata); book content not read. openlibrary.org
  12. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Adams, C.F., "Burnham's Plan for the Adornment of the Exposition City", San Francisco Call, August 12, 1911, p. 19 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  13. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Movie: "Make No Little Plans" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  14. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  15. Wikipedia, "Daniel Burnham" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Larson (2003), pp.378 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Daniel Burnham (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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