Daniel Burnham: The City Of Chicago

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Daniel Burnham was born in Henderson, New York. He later moved with his parents to the city of Chicago. After being rejected to Harvard and Yale and an unsuccessful try with politics, he became a drafter for William LeBaron Jenney. He then went on to join the office of Carter, Drake and Wright in Chicago, where he met his future business partner John Welborn Root. These two architectural visionaries would go on to form the firm of Burnham and Root in Chicago (Hines 11-15) where they would conceive and design some of the first skyscrapers in the United States. The firm designed and built some of the major buildings in Chicago using the Chicago School style. Buildings included in this style are the Montauk, the Auditorium in Chicago, and the …show more content…
The massive fire destroyed a good majority of the city this allowed for architects to come to the city and experiment with how they designed their buildings. Chicago was a recognized center of innovation, home of innovative ideas like the Pullman sleeping car, the McCormick reaper, and Mail order retail (Lowe). These innovations changed how people traveled or shopped now the city would now be the place for change in high-rise architecture. Chicago’s location provided another challenge in the way of these new buildings as the city was built on a swamp (Condit 43-65). To overcome this they created a floating foundation, which allowed the immense weight to be supported on the unstable ground (Creese 85-86). The first buildings of the Chicago School were traditional load bearing walls of brick and stone. It was with the metal skeletal frame of columns and beams that allowed them to prefect the …show more content…
The transition to this type of construction can be seen when comparing the Rookery’s construction to the Flatiron’s. The Flatiron’s entire structure is steel. This allowed for optimum fireproofing of the building at the time of construction. The unique shape of the building also aided the steel structure allowed for an open floor plan, allowing every office in the building to receive direct sunlight during the day, this as it fit in the triangular site (Burnham 530). The iron structure allowed the beams and columns to be mass-produced on a massive scale decreasing the time of construction and cut down on total cost of the building. The steel structure allowed the building to be taller than other building built before the Flatiron (Shepherd 150). Taking advantage of not requiring a massive support wall like in masonry construction as the building grew taller. Contrasting the steel construction of the Flatiron, the Rookery was a combination of iron and masonry support
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