Dreaming the future

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

By Carl Smith
The University of Chicago Press, 2006
184 pages, 62 halftones, 6 maps
Cloth $22.00

The centennial for the Plan of Chicago of 1909 is nearing and it will bring a spate of analyses and commemorations of this seminal document in the history of urban planning. As an early starter out of the gate, Carl Smith's The Plan of Chicago provides the first book-length treatment of what is commonly called "Burnham's Plan." In this handsome volume, Smith expertly examines much ground in a relatively few pages, as he covers the creation, implementation, and legacy of the Plan.

Industrialization and urbanization wrought amazing changes in Chicago during the nineteenth century, a period when a hamlet at the southwest corner of Lake Michigan transformed into the "second city.' Though Chicago's boosters extolled the virtues of their city, there is no gainsaying that rapid and haphazard growth also had a significant downside. By emphasizing growth over improvements, the city found itself riddled with sanitation problems, snarling traffic jams, substandard housing, and an absence of open spaces.

For a coterie of elite progressives, the goal became to make order out of chaos. Fearing their city would be unable to stay competitive, some movers and shakers got together to make the Plan of Chicago. This was a top-down movement, led primarily by wealthy, white, Protestant, Republican men such as the indefatigable architect, Daniel Burnham, and the influential members of the Commercial Club. Significantly, Burnham and his colleagues had little confidence in city government and consequently left city hall little room to contribute to their efforts.

The vision that the planners wrought was awe inspiring. As Smith explains, they wanted Chicagoans to dream "that Chicago might in fact be made a place more beautiful and fine than anyone previously thought possible" (94). Building on the experiences of Europe's greatest city planners, as well as Burnham's experiences as the central figure in the City Beautiful Movement and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, they believed that elites could redefine urban space. Indeed, the Plan embraced the assumption that beauty, efficiency, and functionality were not "irreconcilable goals" but "mutually reinforcing objectives" (95). Moreover, they argued that environment helped determine behavior, and thus, improving the city environs would diminish social strife and increase commerce.

The Plan's six main recommendations were ambitious. Their regional scope and dramatic flair gave credence to the famous words attributed to Burnham (though Smith acknowledges, "never definitively"): "Make no little plans" (98). Since Lake Michigan is the city's greatest feature, the Plan sought to accentuate it through beautification programs. The Plan also called for an extension of the city's park system. To improve intellectual and civic life, the Plan called for new buildings for the Field Museum and the Crerar Library, as well as a huge civic center. Three other provisions dealt with transportation, including: extending a highway system from Wisconsin to Indiana, arranging local roadways to facilitate movement, and removing train terminals to the edge of the downtown.

The book's most enlightening section covers the extensive efforts to promote the Plan. The planners reached across the political spectrum from machine politicians like Mike "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin to Hull House reformer Jane Addams. They produced a visually appealing "deluxe limited special edition" of the Plan that included seductive watercolor images from Jules Guerin and Fernand Janin. According to Smith, these images allow viewers to enter an "alternate world" where they could "lose themselves in wonder at the Chicago the planners dare [them]

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to imagine" (85, 90-91). After releasing the Plan on July 4, 1909, the planners embarked on an exhaustive education campaign that included an exhibit at the Art Institute, lantern-slide shows wherever an interested audience congregated, a promotional film, and even a publication in the public school curriculum. But above all, the Plan relied on publicity director Walter Moody to constantly manage the print media.

Smith's handling of the Plan's implementation is the most unsatisfying part of the book. The author is to be lauded for not overstating the relevance of the Plan in regard to the ensuing changes that occurred in Chicago. After all, some projects might well have happened regardless of the Commercial Club's efforts, and much of the actual implementation developed in ways that did not dovetail with the original Plan. Though this discussion is instructive, Smith's subtle position that the Plan was more significant for its general inspiration rather than its connection to actual implementation leaves the reader searching for something more tangible.

As we near the Plan's centennial, this early foray into city planning still casts a long shadow. Of course, critics take the Plan to task for emphasizing physical rather than social change and overlooking the importance of neighborhoods and affordable housing. But the Plan captures our imagination because it recognizes the importance of bold thinking. As Smith puts it, the Plan's appeal is that "cities can determine rather than merely accept their fate" (157). The Commercial Club's most recent effort at city planning, Chicago Metropolis 2020, still embraces this ideal, as it attempts to engineer a comprehensive regional plan for Chicagoland that considers physical environs as well as issues of education, housing, and health care.

Smith's The Plan of Chicago is a fine contribution to the history of Chicago, though I hesitate to recommend it to anyone but a bibliophile because—much to my surprise—his website on this topic is actually superior to the book. Smith's book is a revision of the lengthy essay on the Plan that he wrote for the electronic edition of the Encyclopedia of Chicago. The book and the website share all the same chapters and much of the same text. The main difference, however, is that the website has the ability to stir people's blood. The book includes halftones, but the website has the dreamy pastel images from Guerin and Janin. Moreover, the website's interactive map provides a much clearer depiction of the Plan's implementation. Indeed, Smith, who has written outstanding websites on the Great Chicago Fire and the Haymarket Affair, leaves his greatest legacy not on the pages of his book but on our computers' screens.

Alan Bloom teaches at Valparaiso University and is currently writing a book on the history of homelessness in mid-nineteenth-century Chicago.

Book reviews continued on Page 28

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