The Commercial Club’s plan for the whole Chicago region, drawn by the architect of the 1893 World’s Fair: a public lakefront, a ring of parks, consolidated railway stations, diagonal avenues cut through the grid, and a domed civic centre at the head of a widened Congress Street: the manifesto of the City Beautiful.
Burnham had directed the design of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, whose white classical Court of Honor persuaded a generation that American cities could be made orderly and grand. After plans for Washington (1902), Cleveland and San Francisco, the Commercial Club of Chicago commissioned him in 1906 to plan their own city. The result, published in 1909 with watercolours by Jules Guérin, treats Chicago as the capital of the Middle West and plans its lakefront, parks, railways, streets and civic centre as one system.
Its chapters move outward and then inward: the lakefront, to be a continuous public park with harbours and lagoons; an outer ring of forest preserves and parkways; the railways and their passenger and freight terminals; the streets, with diagonals across the grid and widened arteries; and “the heart of Chicago”, where a civic centre crowned by a great dome would stand at the crossing of Congress and Halsted Streets, facing east along Congress to Grant Park and the lake. Much of the lakefront, the widening of Michigan Avenue and its bridge, and Wacker Drive were built; the civic centre was not.
The book, part by part
I The Lake Front
The shore kept for the public: a park and lagoons along its whole length, and Grant Park as the city’s forecourt with its museums.
II Transportation; Streets within the City
Stations, freight, rapid transit and the street system, with diagonals and widened arteries.
III The Heart of Chicago
The civic centre and Congress Street as the city’s axis.