Meet Daniel H. Burnham

Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846 – 1912) was an American architect and urban planner. He directed the works for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1892 and designed several famous buildings in Chicago, New York City and Washington D.C. He is well-known and criticized for his neoclassical architectural style inspired by classic Greek and Roman constructions. His greatest contribution is, however, in urban planning which produced with Edward H. Bennett the ambitious 1909 Plan of Chicago, the results of previous urban planning projects in Cleveland, San Francisco, Washington, DC and Manila and Baguio in the Philippines. Burnham learned many lessons in the previous works, including the importance of promoting the vision through inspired and charismatic leadership and the persistent and collaborative works of key players in the private and public sector. The 1905 Plan for Manila included the layout of the city with the railroad system with the Paco Train Station, the shore road known today as Roxas Boulevard, the Philippines General Hospital, the Philippines Normal School, the Army and Navy Club and the Manila Hotel. The later reconstruction of the parks on the central area of Manila, including the Luneta's Broadwalk were all inspired by Burnham's original plan to make the city a beautiful and functional city. Like for the Chicago plan, where Burnham envisioned the city's publicly accessible lakefront, the Manila plan identified the Manila Bay and the parks surrounding Intramuros as sensitive areas and landscapes to be protected.

Daniel H. Burnham was clearly a visionary leader. His attributed quote "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized" speaks of his human spirit and charismatic leadership. In spite his youth's failure to be admitted at Yale and Harvard University or in attempting a career in public life, Daniel H. Burnham found his talents in collaborations with colleagues for the emerging Chicago School of Architects and American skyscrapers. His connections and ability to steer consensus on his architectural projects and urban plans make of him an influential leader and the preeminent architect in America at the turn of the twentieth century. In spite the many critiques he received from the later Chicago school of architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright recognized Burnham for his "masterful use of the methods and men of his time" and as an "enthusiastic promoter" with a "powerful personality." His parents' Swedenborgian Church of New Jerusalem shaped Daniel's values of service to humanity.

Read the 1993 reprint of Daniel Hudson Burnham and Edward Herbert Bennett's Plan of Chicago (Princeton Architectural Press, 1993). To know more about Burnham read his biography by Thomas S. Hines' Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner (University of Chicago Press, 1979).