HISTORY OF URBAN PLANNING THE CITY BEAUTIFUL (Daniel Hudson Burnham- Architect and Urban Planner)

University of Santo Tomas

Graduate School Department Sampaloc, España Manila

HISTORY OF URBAN PLANNING

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL (Daniel Hudson Burnham- Architect and Urban Planner)

Dennis L. Estacio M.S. Architecture

March 24, 2018

University of Santo Tomas

Graduate School Department Sampaloc, España Manila

CITY BEAUTIFUL (Daniel Hudson Burnham-Architect/ Urban Planner)

INTRODUCTION In Henry Blake Fuller's 1895 novel, With the Procession, the artistic young Truesdale Marshall, just returned home from a prolonged grand tour, looked upon his native Chicago as a “hideous monster, a piteous, floundering monster too. It almost called for tears. Nowhere a more tireless activity, yet nowhere a result so pitifully grotesque, gruesome, appalling.” Marshall was not alone: many observers of late nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America—residents, visitors, and expatriates alike—believed that its cities were ugly. The shapelessness of American cities was due in large measure to the extraordinary speed with which they had developed: between 1860 and 1910, the number of American cities with more than 100,000 residents rose from 8 to 50. By 1910, several cities had passed the one million mark. Such statistics are crucial to understanding the City Beautiful impulse. Despite its preoccupation with aesthetic effect, the movement concerned far more than facade: the quest for beauty paralleled the search for the functional and humane city. Urban planning as the twentieth century would know it developed out of the City Beautiful—both as a phase of it and a reaction to it—and its coalition of planners, of paid experts and unpaid volunteers, of architects, artists, civic officials, journalists, business people, and interested ordinary citizens. (Fuller, H. 1895)

BIRTH OF THE CONCEPT The 1890s and early years of the twentieth century were a turning point in American society. The economics system struggled to define itself social unrest and violence, result of economic depressions, disgust with corruption in government, and overcrowded urban centers erupted periodically throughout the era.

Most important of all, the triumph of industry over agriculture was now assured.

The Middle and upper middle class retreated from the cities into suburbs. The upper classes traveled into the city to attend to their business, consume the leisure activities contained therein, and the return to their comfortable and beautiful suburban homes.

What they left behind in the cities is poverty-stricken to the quickly decaying urban center.

The middle and upper class reformers who sought to remedy this situation did so, for the most part, out of their own fear. They knew that for their own safety and business viability something had to be done; but how to attack the problem?

“Common to almost all the reformers…was the conviction—explicit or implicit—that the city, although obviously different from the village…should nevertheless replicate the moral order of the village. City dwellers, they believed, must somehow be brought to perceive themselves as members of cohesive communities knit together by shared moral and social values”.

 Generally stated, the City Beautiful sought to improve their city through beautification, which would have a number of effects: 1. Social ills would be swept away, as the beauty of the city would inspire civic loyalty and moral rectitude into the impoverished.

2. American cities would be brought to cultural parity with their European competitors through the use of the European Beaux-Arts idioms; and 3. More inviting city center still would not bring the upper classes back to live, but certainly to work and spend money in the urban areas.  The premise of the movement was the idea that beauty could be an effective social control device.  The idiom the City Beautiful leaders used in their ideal civic centers was the Beaux-Arts styles, named for the famous Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, which instructed artist and architects in the necessity of order, dignity, and harmony in their work.  The first expression of this monumental style in the United States was found at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The shimmering “White City” as the fair came to be known during that summer in Chicago, was a tour de force of early city planning and architectural cohesion.  The first organized expression of the City Beautiful movement as a means of beautification and social control was, as well see in the next section, the 1901 Plan for Washington D.C., designed by Daniel Burnham, former Director of Construction for the fair, and his Senate Parks Commission.

ORIGIN (City Beautiful) • • • • • •

• •

A transformation movement in North America architecture and urban planning that grew in 1980 and 1900.

Beaux-arts and neoclassical architectures.

World Columbian Exposition Industrial Revolution Burnham believed that a city needed a grand entrance and that was the railway depot.

The grand boulevard was justified as a solution to traffic problems encountered by suburban commuters and a way to provide housing for their income people in the city.

Burnham also wanted all the bridges over the rivers rebuilt to be more attractive.

The wall to wall development of mansard roofed apartments he foresaw in the city contrasted sharply with the single family homes in the existing neighborhoods. He dismissed these structures as a great solution for small towns but not a good solution to the needs of the regional capital.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES (City Beautiful) • • • •

To introduce beautification and monumental grandeur in cities.

To sweep away social ills To have a cultural resemblance with their European competitors through the use of Beaux-Arts Idioms.

To prevent upper classes back to live, but to work and spend money in the urban zone

DANEIL BURNHAM BIOGRAPHY     

Daniel Burnham was one of the Chicago architects.

He is responsible for the earliest development of the American sky crapper.

He designed the Flatiron Building in New York (1902) He was also commissioned by the U.S. Philippine commission in 1904 He was the co-author of the Chicago Plan, which laid out plans for the future of Chicago in 1909  He dies on June 1, 1912 in Heidelberg, Germany.

Daniel Hudson Burnham was indisputably the “Father of the City Beautiful.” As director of works of the World's Columbian Exposition (1893), he effectively launched the movement that 15 years later would reach its apogee in his epochal Plan of Chicago (1909). Burnham's importance as an architect and planner lay chiefly in his ability to

direct and stimulate the design efforts of others. His own credo captured the essence of his life and work: “Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood. ... Make big plans ... 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 consistency.” In his various architectural and planning pursuits, Burnham choreographed large efforts indeed.

Burnham moved with his parents to Chicago in 1854. He became an architect by apprenticing first with William Le Baron Jenney and then in the office of Peter B. Wight, where he met his future partner, John Wellborn Root. Through the 1870s and 1880s, Burnham & Root, and such contemporaries as Adler & Sullivan and Holabird & Roche, helped rebuild the city that had been destroyed in the fire of 1871. In so doing, they developed what would come to be called the Chicago School of skyscraper architecture. Following Root's premature death in 1891, Burnham turned to a succession of designers, but he never found one who complemented his own talents as completely as Root. With Root's death, Burnham lost both his design gyroscope and his aesthetic self-confidence, and he turned increasingly to the “authority” of historicism. In the 20 years between Root's death and his own, Burnham found his greatest fulfillment as the leader of the City Beautiful movement—an effort to achieve for American cities something approaching a “cultural parity” with Europe's great urban centers.

‘BEAUTIFUL’ MOVEMENT I. Municipal Art Movement a. Fusion of art, architecture and planning b. Beautification rather than functionality c. Focus on points in the city: arches, fountains, statues, an and other works of urban design and decoration II. Civic Improvement a. Back by Municipal Art Movement b. To counterbalance the heavy hand of industrialization III. Outdoor Art a. Led by Frederick Law Olmsted b. Promotion of park, park system, and parkways IV. Classical design a. Neoclassical style: great boulevards, grand perspectives, grouped public buildings, etc.

America  Middle and upper-middle class Americans attempt to refashion their cities in order to boost business

 Aesthetic improvement  Functional improvements (“city practical”); sewerage and water supply, refuse collection, active recreation, and public transportation  Promote a harmonious + social order that would increase the quality of life Colonial Spaces  To express imperial dominance and racial exclusiveness European (1930s)  By totalitarian dictators to impose megalomaniac visions of glory on their capitals (Stalin, Hitler)

World’ Fair: Columbian Exposition May- October, 1893: Celebration of 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus Daniel Burnham (1846-1912): Chief of Construction Definitive World Fairs of all time: • • • •

Exposition covered 600 acres Based on French Neoclassical architecture principles of symmetry, balance and splendor Exceeded the scale and grandeur of world fairs Became a symbol of emerging American Exceptionalism.

Kansas City, MO Movement took root in the great commercial cities of Midwest-Kansas City, Denver, Seattle KANSAS CITY • •

A system with parks and boulevards Begin in 1893

KANSAS CITY BEAUTIFUL: KEY PEOPLE William Rockhill Nelson (1841-1915) • •

A real estate developer and founder of The Kansas City Star Using his newspaper, he convinces the community that parks and boulevards were necessary

•

Aggressively supported the parks and boulevards, rallying public enthusiasm, showcasing achievement, and helping the community mindful of the value of green spaces.

August Robert Meyer (1851-1905) •

A successful businessman and developer of the park and boulevard system for Kansas City as first president of the Commission of Parks.

George E. Kessler (1862-1923) •

A city planner and landscape architect who designed the Kansas City park and boulevard system

Report of 1893 (Meyer and Kessler) • • •

A comprehensive plan Favored scenic preservation and recreation within the city Rejected Olmsted suburban landscape park

“We recognize that there exist within the boundaries of our city other special and urgent problems and peculiar conditions that…should engage our attention first.”

“A comprehensive, well-planned and thoroughly maintained boulevard system would combine rural with urban advantages and check the tendency to…build residences in the suburbs…

Compact settlement would result in better sanitation, street maintenance, and street services…the best and most expensive residences will go up along boulevards…” (Meyer)

Swope Park (1896) •

Thomas H. Swope donated almost 1,334 acres

Union Station (1909) • • • • • Park • •

Architect Jarvis Hunt Financed by levies on business property in the downtown area Plans for a civic center To eliminate saloons and possible crimes Acquisition of a four-block front of land, extending south to Penn Valley Widening the street required 1915 Links between the great North Terrace Park and Swope parks Passed through or near all the interior parks and some of the playgrounds

Kansas City Beautiful • • • • • • • • • • • •

The boulevard and their East-West links tied the parks and entire city together Almost 1,992.25 acres of parks, 676 parkways acres, and almost 90 miles of boulevards (1915) – some 219 parks in the city limit (current) Beautifying neighborhood Increased property values Prevalence and effects on substandard housings (massive slum clearance, minority property owners, low-income white squatters) Recreational opportunities for residents’ people Environmental benefits Establishing the Kansas City Art Commission Civic arts-“City of Fountains” Too concerned with cosmetic display Little concerned with housing Lack of practical humanitarianism

“The poor only occasionally could afford to escape from their squalid, confining surroundings to view the architectural perfection and to experience the aesthetic delights of the remote improvement” (Benjamin Marsh). “we have rushed to plan showy civic centers of gigantic cost”, “A city planned for social benefit and economic efficiency would be beautiful.” (Pope)

The Chicago Plan • • • •

1909 The birth of modern city planning Architect-Urban Planner Daniel H. Burnham & Edward Bennett Begun by the Merchants Club in 1906-Published the plan by the Commercial Club of Chicago in 1909-A gift to the city

Six Major Physical Elements • • • • • •

Improvement of lakefront (parks for the public) Developing a highway system (radial and circumferential highways) Improving a complete railway system (freight and passenger) Acquisition of an outer park system (parks & forest preserves) Arranging systematic streets (streets and bridges in the city) Creation of a civic center of cultural institutions and government

Chicago •

Acquisition of an outer park system (parks and forest preserves) Arranging systematic streets (streets and bridges in the city)

DECLINE OF THE CITY BEAUTIFUL (Chicago) The movement weakened in 1909 because planners and critics find it expensive and impractical and disliked its obviously discriminatory and artificial characteristics.

Burnham’s plan was never implemented, and the real estate companies built a city that would yield high profits, adopting the skyscraper design and technology developed in Chicago by Sullivan and other.

WASHINGTON D.C. CITY BEAUTIFUL The 1901 Plan for Washington D.C. was the first expression of the City Beautiful movement in the United States, influencing the emerging profession of city planning and the subsequent beautification projects in Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco, among other cities. Building on the core of government and monumental buildings, supervised by the Commission of Fine Arts headed by Burnham and Olmsted, was interrupted during WWI, and resumed in the 1920s.

The initial plan was completed in May1922 with the erection of the Lincoln Monument.

The plan itself was a reworking of L'Enfant's plan, creating a monumental core, a great public Mall, and a series of public gardens. The focus of the plan, however, was on the Mall itself.

The center of the city had been beautified and became a focus for national pride. Yet the impoverished living in the shadow of the Capitol's dome were not necessarily inspired with civic loyalty, and were certainly no better off economically for the expensive monumental plan.

CONCLUDING POINTS The City Beautiful 1. Manifested over an 80-years period I a variety of social, political and cultural contexts 2. Planning: A tool of finance capitalism; an agent of imperialism; an instrument of personal totalitarianism 3. Architecture: A symbol of power, concentration on the monumental and the superficial 4. Complete lack of interest in the wider social purposes on planning 5. Planning for display, architecture as theater and design intended to impress and control

SELF-ACTUATING QUESTIONS 1. What was the premise of the City beautiful movement?

Answer: The premise of the movement was the idea that beauty could be an effective social control device.

2. What are goals and objectives of the City Beautiful Movement?

Answer: 1.) To introduce beautification and monumental grandeur in cities.

2.To sweep away social ills 3.To have a cultural resemblance with their European competitors through the use of Beaux-Arts Idioms.

4.To prevent upper classes back to live, but to work and spend money in the urban zone 3. What is the idiom of City Beautiful leaders in their civic centers?

Answer: The idiom the City Beautiful leaders used in their ideal civic centers was the Beaux-Arts styles, named for the famous Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, which instructed artist and architects in the necessity of order, dignity, and harmony in their work.

4. Where was the first expression of the monumental style of the City Beautiful found?

Answer: The first expression of this monumental style in the United States was found at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. The shimmering “White City” as the fair

came to be known during that summer in Chicago, was a tour de force of early city planning and architectural cohesion.

5. What Burnham believe to be needed as grand entrance in a city?

Answer: Burnham believed that a city needed a grand entrance and that was the railway depot.

6. What was justified to be a solution to city traffic problems by suburban commuters?

Answer: The grand boulevard was justified as a solution to traffic problems encountered by suburban commuters and a way to provide housing for their income people in the city.

7. What are the six major physical elements of the Chicago plan?

Answer: 1)Improvement of lakefront (parks for the public) 2)Developing a highway system (radial and circumferential highways) 3)Improving a complete railway system (freight and passenger) 4)Acquisition of an outer park system (parks & forest preserves) 5)Arranging systematic streets (streets and bridges in the city) 6)Creation of a civic center of cultural institutions and government 8. According to the report of Meyer and Kessler in 1893 what would result to better sanitation, street maintenance, and street services?

Answer: Compact settlement would result in better sanitation, street maintenance, and street services…the best and most expensive residences will go up along boulevards…”

9.In what place does the City Beautiful Movement rooted?

Answer: Movement took root in the great commercial cities of Midwest-Kansas City, Denver, Seattle 10. What is the reason why the City Beautiful weakened in 1909?

Answer: The movement weakened in 1909 because planners and critics find it expensive and impractical and disliked its obviously discriminatory and artificial characteristics.

Bibliography Burnham, Daniel H., and Edward H. Bennett. Plan of Chicago, ed. Charles Moore. 1909 Fuller, Henry Blake. With the Procession. 1895; 1965 Hines, Thomas S. Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner. 1974 The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago © 2005 Chicago Historical Society.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago © 2004 The Newberry Library. All Rights Reserved.

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