a Chicago original 



The Burnham Plan 



and Field Museum 



by Patricia M. Williams, Field Museum Press 



Right, The piers which support Field Museum, surrounded by fill. 

 The piers, in turn, are built on piles, some of which go down nearly a 

 hundred feet below lake level. Photo was taken looking northwest. 

 It is interesting that the Michigan Avenue sky- 

 line, after half a century, still has most of the 

 buildings shown here, although many additions 

 have been made. These were the great land- 

 marks of the Chicago School of architectiire, 

 buildings by Adler, Sullivan, Daniel Burnham. 



The arches oj ,;.« -t.t.iid floor gallery. I'u tin Ufl, between the 

 arches, one now looks down into Stanley Field Hall. The area 

 shown houses a remarkable collection of Chinese pottery and 

 metal work. Photo was taken in January, 1919. 



Today downtown Chicago is in the midst of an enormous 

 construction boom, and controversy rages over almost every 

 building that goes up. The traditionalists call the new 

 buildings glass boxes, the futurists decry the lack of archi- 

 tectural imagination, and the average pedestrian complains 

 about the mud all over the sidewalks surrounding construc- 

 tion sites. 



The Columbian Exposition of 1893 created a lakefront 

 building boom too, that was the subject of great dissension. 

 At that time Chicago was an important force in modern 

 architecture, and designers and writers maligned the neo- 

 classical "White City" that was the fair. Not only did the 

 Fair slow down the modern movements in architecture, they 

 accused, but it "strangled the bustling Chicago style" as well. 



"But even that much-maligned World's Columbian Ex- 

 position of 1893 was full of technological marvels; however 

 fake the exhibition buildings looked on the outside, the great 

 steel vaults of the Manufacturers Building were anything 

 but fake. And the fantastic Ferris wheel in the amusement 



Pages MAY 



