Abstract
Book Reviews 159 more problematic section of her study is her discussion of the role played by women religious in settlement-related work, largely because the chapter devoted primarily to their efforts is not well integrated into the rest of the study. This weakness notwithstanding, More thanNeighbors deepens our understanding of the setdement impulse and the ways in which it manifested itself outside of the traditional definition of a setdement. Skok also nicely illustrates the ways in which settlement-house and charitable activities empowered women and increased their agency both within and outside of the traditional parish structure. Although her focus is on Chicago, Skok's study suggests avenues of inquiry for other cities with large Catholic populations. Patricia Mooney-Melvin Loyola University Chicago Carl Smith. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 183. Bibliographical essay. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Cloth, $22.00. To many observers of nineteenth-century American urban life, Chicago was an incomprehensible setting of rich, poor, pollution, and grandeur amid the fastest urban growth inAmerican history. The scene was difficult to define partly because it had virtually no past. Indeed, it is interesting that early in this fascinating book Carl Smith reminds us that it is no coincidence that with its Board of Trade Chicagoans invented the idea of buying and selling the future itself. Chicago could do nothing but look ahead, because unlike the great cities inEurope of the time?or even those on America's Eastern Seaboard?it had no spatial-social history to hold itback The book's story begins with Daniel Burnham, the architect-director of America's unsurpassed world's fair, the Chicago Colombian Exhibition of 1893. Influenced by Haussman's nineteenth-century rebuilding of Paris, Bumham's 1909 Plan ofChicago still stands as the most influential urban planning document in American history?addressing a multitude of problems including pollution, massive overcrowding, labor conflicts, inadequate infrastructure, and population growth. Chicago, as Burnham and his planning collaborators believed, was choking on its own success; the plan was to be the way out and the way forward. Urban planning was not new to Chicago when Burnham took up the idea, but it had arrived by way of ad hoc initiatives such as reversing 160 Michigan Historical Review the Chicago River, creating a park here and there, building the great Union Stock Yard, and so forth. Indeed, these projects were less about civic life than about making money?something Chicagoans were extremely good at. Quality of life was not an identifiable engine of change. Even the leveling of a good part of the city by the Great Fire of 1873, as it turns out, was a lost opportunity to rethink of the city as something other than a place tomake money. The Plan ofChicago was the invention of Burnham and his Chicago Commercial Club, a powerful and elite group of white, Protestant, and Republican businessmen of a progressive spirit?who forced the political establishment to take a new, and we might say "modern," approach. These men argued that with proper planning Chicago was destined to become both the world's largest city and the Paris of America. In the end the plan resulted in vast changes?many of them centering on the concept of grand connecting thoroughfares and boulevards (e.g., Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive), a new architectural format, a vast shoreline parkway that reclaimed the lakefront for public access, the centralizing of a confusing system of railway termini, a system of concentric outer parks and roadways, new homes for culture and the arts, and restructuring the Chicago River and the Lake Michigan harbor. The plan included a multitude of lesser infrastructure changes, from water systems to an emphasis on neighborhood schools. To succeed the Burnham group had to fight (and win) a spatial contest with the United States Army Corps of Engineers over how to use the lakefront: parks and beaches won out over the federal plan for docks and commerce. The plan was not entirely original, but itwas comprehensive and had the support of the rich and powerful. So much of itwas implemented that it is difficult to...
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.