Daniel Burnham

Test anxiety kept him out of college. His father had moved the family from Henderson, New York, to Chicago when the boy was eight and built a successful wholesale drug business there, and at 18 Burnham went east to be crammed by private tutors for the Harvard and Yale admissions examinations. He failed both. Back in Chicago in 1867 he took a draftsman's apprenticeship under William Le Baron Jenney and told his parents he intended to be the greatest architect in the city or the country. Then he quit to prospect for gold in Nevada, failed at that, ran for the state legislature, lost, came home broke, sold plate glass badly, and worked briefly as a druggist. He blamed a family tendency to tire of doing one thing.

At 26 he met John Wellborn Root in a Chicago drafting room and stuck with him. Burnham and Root built the Montauk Building on a raft of concrete and steel rails driven down to clay — a tower so far above its neighbors that the word skyscraper was coined for it — and then the Rookery, the Masonic Temple, the Reliance, the northern half of the Monadnock. Root died of pneumonia on January 15, 1891, at 41, three days after falling ill and midway through planning the World's Columbian Exposition. Burnham ran the fair alone as Director of Works, living in a shanty on the site, and turned it classical. Then the Flatiron Building, Washington Union Station, the McMillan Plan for the National Mall, and in 1909 the Plan of Chicago.

A hotel his firm designed in Kansas City collapsed during construction in 1888, killing a worker, and the coroner's inquest went after the design. The publicity flattened him. The larger charge came from Louis Sullivan, who wrote in 1924 that the damage done by the World's Fair would last half a century from its date if not longer — a judgment sharpened by clients having chosen Burnham's classicism over Sullivan's and going on choosing it. And the man who wrote that every citizen should live within walking distance of a park took Taft's commission for Manila and Baguio in 1904 because the Philippines were an American territory and no local approval was required. Six weeks in the country, six months of drawings, and boulevards radiating from the government buildings as visual reminders of who was in charge.

He had colitis, and diabetes diagnosed in 1909 left an infection in his foot that never cleared. On April 14, 1912, sailing to Europe on the Olympic, he tried to cable his friend Frank Millet aboard the Titanic and learned the ship had gone down. He died 47 days later at Heidelberg and was buried at Graceland Cemetery, his firm then the largest in the world. Frank Lloyd Wright, who detested what the fair had done to American building, eulogized him anyway. The line everyone quotes him for — make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood — reaches us only through Charles Moore's 1921 biography and a newspaper piece of 1927.

Daniel Burnham's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Montauk Building building
  Root's floating foundation. The building that got the word skyscraper invented for it. 1882
• Rookery Building building
  Chicago. His own office was on the top floor. 1886
• World's Columbian Exposition building
  Director of Works. He lived on the site in a shanty until it opened. 1893
• Flatiron Building building
  A steel skeleton wedged into a triangular New York block 1901
• Washington Union Station building
  Built to clear the railroad off the National Mall 1908
• Plan of Chicago book
  With Edward H. Bennett. The first comprehensive growth plan for an American city. 1909

• 1869 aged ~23 Quits his apprenticeship to mine gold in Nevada and fails He then ran for the state legislature and lost.
• 1873 aged ~27 Opens an office with John Wellborn Root
• January 20, 1876 aged 29 Marries Margaret Sherman, daughter of the firm's first major client They met on the construction site of her father's house.
• 1888 aged ~42 A Kansas City hotel by the firm collapses during construction One man was killed. The coroner's inquest criticized the design.
• January 15, 1891 aged 44 Root dies of pneumonia at 41, three days after falling ill The firm was then deep in planning for the Columbian Exposition.
• 1901 aged ~55 Joins the McMillan Commission and redraws the National Mall With Charles McKim, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
• 1904 aged ~58 Takes Taft's commission to replan Manila and build a summer capital at Baguio Because the Philippines were a territory, no local approval was needed.
• 1910 aged ~64 Becomes the first chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts He served until his death.
• June 1, 1912 aged 65 Dies at Heidelberg, 47 days after learning the Titanic had taken a friend

• Louis Sullivan 1856–1924
  Architect whose skyscraper designs and “form follows function” principle helped define modern architecture. attacked by
• Frank Lloyd Wright 1867–1959
  Architect and engineer whose organic architecture, including Fallingwater, reshaped the built environment. eulogized by
• William Le Baron Jenney 1832–1907
  Architect and engineer who designed the first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago. apprenticed under
• Frederick Law Olmsted 1822–1903
  Landscape architect who designed Central Park and established public parks as essential American civic infrastructure. laid out the fair with
• William Howard Taft 1857–1930
  Only person to serve as both president and Chief Justice of the United States. commissioned by
• Augustus Saint-Gaudens 1848–1907
  Sculptor whose public monuments, including the Shaw Memorial, are among America's finest. shared the McMillan Commission with