The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (review)

Abstract

In 2005, an electronic counterpart of Encyclopedia of featured two interpretive digital essays, on water and other by Carl Smith on 1909 of Chicago (see James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, eds., Encyclopedia of [2004]; Janice L. Reiff, Ann Durkin Keating, and James R. Grossman, Electronic Encyclopedia of [2005]; and Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago). latter essay has now been published separately as volume under review here. illustrations available online in encyclopedia version are far superior; two texts are nearly identical. Smith, professor at Northwestern University, has long experience in both scholarly and web publishing; he curated two exhibitions online about fire of 1871 and 1886 Haymarket tragedy, and he also authored and American Literary Imagination 1880-1920 (1984) and Urban Disorder and Shape of Belief: Great Fire, Haymarket Bomb, and Model Town of Pullman (1995). Smith's treatment of plan of contributes further to his accessible historical work. plan's lead author, architect Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912), collaborated with Commercial Club of to produce in 1909 of most fascinating and significant documents in history of urban planning (p. xv). Smith places this document in context while noting that [as] useful as it may to understand Plan of as part of long heritage of planning, it is perhaps more revealing to try and see it in terms of its particular time and place, as contribution to continuing discussion of what turn-of-the-century urban America was and might be (p. 13). Smith then distills some key contributions of plan: importance of thinking about infrastructure in regional terms; belief that a beautiful would function more effectively than an unappealing one for all classes of people; and the formation of new kind of alliance . . . between businessmen and commercial architect [to make] comprehensive changes in structure of major city (pp. 15, 71). Smith is careful to point out