Daniel H. Burnham: Visionary Architect and Planner [Hardcover]

Kristen Schaffer (Author)

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A wag might remark that, as a visionary, architect, and city planner, Burnham looked east toward Europe and backward in time. Burnham masterminded Chicago's classically styled World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, fathering a craze for the old just as engineering advances allowed for something new. Schaffer believes Burnham's work is both misunderstood and unfairly neglected. Though known as the businessman in partnerships with talented designers John Root and Charles Atwood, Burnham was very much involved with design, claims the author, steering buildings' concept and focus, and influencing their shape through his space planning. Furthermore, as the first large-scale architectural practitioner achieving commercial profitability through flexible and repeatable strategies, he achieved modernism in practice if not aesthetics. Readers may struggle to reconcile Burnham as contributor to such airy delights as the Reliance, and such earthbound plodders as People's Gas, but there's enough background here for neophytes, and the large, beautiful photos of such buildings as Chicago's Rookery, New York's Flatiron, and Buffalo's Ellicott Square are a draw for everyone. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Kristen Schaffer is a professor of Architectural History at North Carolina State University, whose expertise is nineteenth and twentieth-century American architectural history. She is a leading Burnham scholar.

Scott J. Tilden has served on the board of directors at the Chicago Architecture Foundation and directed the Campaign for the Chicago Historical Society.

Paul Rocheleau has devoted his career to making exquisite images of America's architectural heritage and landscapes. He has been the photographer for numerous books, including Frank Lloyd Wright, the Masterworks.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (October 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847825337
• ISBN-13: 978-0847825332
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 1.1 x 12.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,249,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, but Brief, October 24, 2003

By 

Edward J. Shannon, AIA (Elgin, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Daniel H. Burnham: Visionary Architect and Planner (Hardcover)

A monograph on Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham is well over due. This is a big, beautiful book that has recent color photos of many of his major works. That being said, the book also has many shortcomings. The essay is relatively brief. There are no illustrations of Burnham & Root's earlier works such as the houses and commuter train stations that gave the firm its start. There's not even an illustration of the Montauk Building, known by many as the first skyscraper. There are very few plans and no sections or details (Wouldn't it be great to see a wall section of the Manadnock Building?). There is no building chronology, such as that contained in Thomas Hines Book. This is an expensive book, and for $95.00 (or even the reduced Amazon price) I would expect that this would be the one and only source book necessary for the study of Daniel Burnham. Unfortunately it's not. If you want a big picture book of Daniel Burnham's work, this is the book. If you want a more scholarly study, I suggest Thomas Hines "Burnham of Chicago".