Burnham Plan of Chicago
1909 publication
The Burnham Plan is a popular name for the 1909 Plan of Chicago coauthored by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett and published in 1909. It recommended an integrated series of projects including new and widened streets, parks, new railroad and harbor facilities, and civic buildings. Though only portions of the plan were realized, the document reshaped Chicago's central area and was an important influence on the new field of city planning.
The project was begun in 1906 by the Merchants Club, which merged with the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group of prominent businessmen who recognized the necessity of improvements to the fast-growing city. They retained Daniel H. Burnham, an architect who had managed the construction of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the fair, he had presented ideas for improving Chicago's lakefront, and had worked on city plans for Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and San Francisco, and Manila and Baguio in the Philippines. Burnham retained Edward Bennett as coauthor, and a small staff to help prepare the plan. Charles Moore edited the finished manuscript, and renderer Jules Guérin created several bird's-eye views for the full-color document, which was printed in lavish book form and presented to the city in July 1909.
Aspects of the plan
The Burnham Plan focused on six major elements:
Improvement of the lakefront
Foremost among the plan's goals was reclaiming the lakefront for the public. "The Lakefront by right belongs to the people," wrote Burnham.
“Burnham Plan of Chicago” enters the record as 1909 publication. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Burnham, Plan and Chicago can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3391127. VIAF identifies the subject as 3333145857107522922195. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1906 and 1893.
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