Wide Boulevards, Narrow Visions

Abstract

Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s 1909 Plan of Chicago unveiled a comprehensive vision for a street system designed to beautify the city, segregate traffic, and provide for easy circulation. In the planners’ view, these attributes would create an environment attractive to business and uplifting to workers. Over the next two decades, the Chicago Plan Commission, an advisory board chartered by the city to implement the Plan, confronted two major challenges to this vision: first, the widespread adoption of the automobile—unanticipated by the Plan, and second, the shifting goals and methods of the officials charged with carrying out the Plan. In the face of these developments, the Chicago Plan Commission radically redefined its street plans to accommodate automobiles, often in contrast to the Plan’s proposals—prompting protest from Edward Bennett and others. As a result, the Commission fired Bennett in 1929, signaling the Commission’s turn away from the Plan’s vision and toward a new view of the role of the street in the city.