The Chicago Plan
In 1896, at a formal dinner party, Burnham proposed to a group of elite businessmen (including George Pullman, Marshall Field and Philip Armour) a scheme which would evolve over the next decade into a formal plan for the Chicago region. On the July 4, 1909 the Chicago Plan was released; four months later Chicago approved the creation of the development vehicle, the Chicago Plan Commission. Over most of the next two decades some elements, but not others, were put into place—finishing during the 1920s under the tender mercies of Mayor William “Big Bill” Thompson.
Burnham’s plan called for redemption of the lakefront from commercial, rail and industrial uses; creation of a highway along the city rim; relocation of railways and development of an internal freight and passenger transportation system; plus street rationalization, a park system in the periphery and, of course, the civic center. Over the next decade, the Navy Pier was built; the lakefront reclaimed from the Illinois Central Railroad; the Lake Front Ordinance (zoning) passed; Grant Park to Jackson Park—site of the 1893 World’s Fair (8 miles) developed for beaches and parks; and by 1930 the residential Gold Coast was in place.
The Plan did not propose to decentralize or fundamentally alter the central business district, or its role in the metropolis, and it did not view urban sprawl as an evil. Indeed the Plan implicitly endorsed the metropolitan perspective and the conviction, widespread at the turn of the century, that continued geographic expansion, if balanced by the encouragement of institutions and physical facilities that emphasized unity and social integration, would provide the metropolis with the economic base, social coherence and political stamina to maintain its vitality. (Miller and Melvin, 1987, pp. 140–41)
As one would expect, Burnham’s plan for his home city included everything we have come to expect from the City Beautiful—and one more! As the above quote indicates, the Chicago Plan was a true metropolitan plan—extending 60 miles into Chicago’s hinterland. In fact, a central tenet was to ensure adequate transportation to and from the central business district so that the CBD became, in effect, the region’s capital, its home base, and its visible and vibrant symbol: “From Kenosha Wisconsin, on the north, to Michigan City, Indiana on the south, Burnham’s plan outlined a regional network of highways, parkways and forest preserves [that connected to the Downtown Loop]” (Teaford, 1993, p. 143). The plan would later be accused by housing advocates and planners of neglecting the poor and ignoring the car. Neither is fair. Burnham believed parks to be his solution for the needs of the urban poor; Henry Ford’s Model T’s first year in production was 1908—when Burnham finished his plan. Despite the obviousness of the car, it was not until the 1920s that communities needed to accommodate it.
Burnham’s plan focused on transportation: the CBD Beaux Arts railroad station, the usual mainstay of most City Beautiful plans, was only the beginning of the Chicago Plan. Incorporating much of the Chicago Commercial Club’s previous recommendations, the plan eliminated most grade crossings in the city and proposed a central clearing and warehousing yard, and linked them to the harbors at the mouths of the Chicago and Calumet rivers. Passenger traffic was removed from the Loop area and distributed to three different rail stations. The plan addressed our longstanding need for a hybrid public/private EDO. Necessary for successful implementation, a major appendix detailed its powers, calling for both city and county development organizations. The location of future public buildings and streets/boulevards, for example, should rest with these bodies; areas for future annexation should rest with these agencies. Despite what it ignored, Burnham’s was the nation’s first comprehensive plan.
In 1909, upon approval of Burnham’s Chicago Plan, the city council authorized reform Mayor Fred Busse to appoint members to the independent Chicago Plan Commission, whose job was to promote and secure implementation of the plan.11 The commission initially lacked key powers that would enable us to assert it was a hybrid EDO. Most of the Chicago Plan-related projects were either turned over to city agencies or built by the private sector. But the commission up to World War II was Chicago’s most prominent EDO.
Using Burnham’s plan for legitimacy, a large number of projects were pushed for and approved by the commission during that period. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago:
In many respects the three-decade era [until 1942] of the Chicago Plan Commission as originally constituted, was a great success. Moody, Taylor, Wacker and Simpson developed a working relationship with a series of mayors between 1909 and 1931 … [and] were also able to convince voters to fund commission-supported initiatives. Between 1912 and 1931 eighty-six Plan-related bond issues, covering seventeen different projects, with a combined cost of $234 million.12
They were also able to convince the state legislature to increase bond limits for Chicago to accommodate its initiatives.
Transportation-related infrastructure modernization initiatives were a principal focus of the commission in these years. The widening of Twelfth Street (Roosevelt), Michigan Avenue, Ashland, Sheridan and Wacker Drive—in reality, City Beautiful boulevards—exposed how that seemingly neutral concept actually masked serious transportation modernization while obscuring the urban renewal involved. Condemnation, slum and CBD clearance made it work. The resulting Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower (1925) and Magnificent Mile (among others)—not to mention the transformation of the lakefront and waterfront areas, including those of the original Columbian Exposition—were direct consequences of these boulevards. Perhaps its most obvious success, the Beaux Arts Union Station (today’s Amtrak station), was built by the railroads themselves (forming their own composite corporation and hiring Burnham as architect) and opened in 1925. Burnham’s proposed civic center, however, was never built.
Burnham himself was not a product of the Progressive Era: he and the City Beautiful were the last hurrah of the Gilded Age incrementally, and in most cities haphazardly, implemented. At its heart Burnham’s plan was, as Mel Scott asserted, a “businessman’s plan.” It was a creature not only of Burnham but also of the “one percent-led” Chicago business organizations. Researched and written in Burnham’s (and Edward Bennett’s) private office and paid for by business contributions, Burnham’s Chicago City Beautiful was the last gasp of an “essentially aristocratic city, pleasing to the merchant princes who participated in [the Plan’s] conception, but not meeting some of the basic economic and human needs” (Scott, 1969, p. 108). True enough; but Burnham plays a role larger than his life in our history of economic development. As he is often quoted:
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remembering that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that will stagger us. Let your watchword be order, and your beacon, beauty. Think Big.
Ron W. Coan 