Edward H. Bennett: New Light on the Plan of Chicago 1909
From the Collection of Marcia O. and Edward H. Bennett III
Special Collections, Donnelley and Lee Library
Lake Forest College
June 2009
Overview of New Information from the Collection
In November 2008 the Marcia O. and Edward H. Bennett III collection came to the Lake Forest College library’s Special Collections. This followed work between the Bennetts and Arthur H. Miller, Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections, for a slide lecture for the Lake Forest Preservation Foundation, October 19, 2008, on the subject of Lake Forest resident Edward H. Bennett (1874-1954). The program covered the earlier Bennett's role in the 1909 Plan of Chicago and his career before and after that century-old plan. A cursory overview of the collection promised to alter the understanding of the development of the relationship between Burnham and Bennett and to give insight into the workings of the Plan and the people involved. This new material included images by amateur photographer Bennett of the Plan and the people associated with it, the future Grant Park, etc., along with letters to Bennett (EHB) from Daniel Hudson Burnham (DHB), Charles Moore (the Plan’s editor), Fernand Janin (staff artist), Jules Guerin (staff artist), and Charles Dyer Norton (chair of the Plan committee, Merchant’s/Commercial Club),
Collection’s Origins and Relation to Bennett Donations to the Art Institute of Chicago
In 1953 Bennett donated the body of his professional archives and a large portion of his personal papers to the Art Institute of Chicago for which an extensive finding aid is available online:
http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/findingaids&CISOPTR=926&CISOSHOW=869.
Bennett died in 1954, with his remaining family and personal papers inherited by his only son, Edward H. Bennett, Jr., also of Lake Forest. In the 1970s and 1980s EHB, Jr. donated more material to the AIC and supported the late Joan E. Draper’s 1982 biography, also arranging for her to speak at the Lake Forest (town) Library in November 1982. This exhibit and biography called attention to Edward H. Bennett's contribution to the 1909 Plan of Chicago and to his subsequent career as one of the founders of city planning in the U.S. and creators of modern Chicago's world-renown lake and river fronts.
In 2004, after the passing of EHB, Jr. (EHB’s only child) and EHB, Jr.’s second spouse Kay, their Lake Forest home, papers and photos from EHB were transferred to the home of Edward H. Bennett III, in turn his father’s only child. EHB’s personal photos and letters had been intermingled with family business papers, so that EHB, Jr. appears not to have seen them in the 1970s when transfers were made to the AIC. When the Bennetts sorted out this material in 2008, though, it became clear that EHB had kept for himself much of his personal correspondence, amateur photographs, and also his office’s study photographs (these last perhaps passed up by the AIC).
EHB, in 1953, had retained or held back personal letters from colleagues, his amateur images of his colleagues and from his roof-top vantage point, etc., and sketches he made, including some materials relating to his own home. Some of the Plan-related letters less than fifty years after the publication of the Plan could have been too personal for public view and others, such as the fifteen hand-written letters from Burnham, were important mementos for EHB. Some of the photographs may be duplicates, as with five candid views of a September 1910 luncheon for former committee chair Charles D. Norton; though here they relate directly to this correspondence. No matter how they managed to survive but escape scrutiny for a century, today these papers and photographs, etc. offer a new window into the workings of the Plan as it was being formulated from 1906 to 1909 and into the careers of the major participants and their interactions, most notably Bennett's with Burnham.
Burnham, Bennett, and the San Francisco Plan
In particular, a letter to EHB from California architect Bernard Maybeck (1862-1957) on December 4, 1898 makes it clear that Phoebe Hearst’s Architectual Plan fund is paying for the completion of his Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris) studies, with the understanding that he will need to return to California to practice following his studies: “Of course the understanding is that you will make your home in California,” added under Maybeck’s signature.
This in turn had an effect on the lives of both Burnham and Bennett. In 1899 Bennett returned to Paris to complete his degree, receiving his diplôme in 1902. After a study tour of Mediterranean sites, he returned via New York, stopping to work for George B. Post, September 1902 to March 1904. Fellow student W. Peirce Anderson had returned with his diplôme to Chicago and Burnham’s firm, having studied with encouragment from Burnham. In February 1902, according to Charles Moore’s 1921 biography of DHB (I, p. 230), Burnham first visited San Francisco to discuss a possible plan for that city. Early in 1903, Bennett biographer the late Joan E. Draper (AIC, 1982) notes (p. 8), Anderson called Bennett to Burnham’s attention, and Post agreed to loan him to Burnham to work on a competition plan for West Point on the Hudson. Though the submitted plan did not gain the commission, Burnham must have liked the young man. The day after the West Point drawings were due [May 10, 1903], Draper reports (p. 10), “Burnham wired former San Francisco mayor James D. Phalen: ‘[I] would consider making a design of improvement of your city if given single charge of it.’” Maybeck’s December 4, 1898 letter requiring Bennett’s return to California helps to explain the motivation behind that move. This in time took Bennett back to California, by September 1904, to work on that plan and, as agreed to, “make [his] home in California.” Thus, thanks to EHB’s Paris friend, Peirce Anderson, Burnham’s desire for a plan for San Francisco and Bennett’s obligation to return there came together.
Plan of Chicago, 1909: Burnham Calls Bennett Back to Chicago
Burnham’s 1906 commitment to undertake a formal plan for Chicago is documented in the 1922 history of Chicago’s Merchants Club, in a first-hand account by Charles Dyer Norton, who was the chair of the Club’s committee for the plan. Norton recounts (pp. 95-103) going to see Burnham who looked downcast and said that his doctor had just told him he had “at most” (p. 99) three years to live. “There was an embarrassed and painful silence, and then I blurted out, ‘But Mr. Burnham, that is just time enough; it will take only three years.’ Burnham looked startled, then he broke into a laugh and said: ‘You are right. I will do it.’” Burnham indeed lived six more years. But concern about his health would have contributed to his urgent wish to pull Bennett back to Chicago to be his understudy, in effect, as well as right-hand man on the plan.
Meanwhile EHB was going back and forth to the west coast, but generally was engaged in drawing up a new San Francisco street plan, especially after the April 1906 earthquake devastated the city, clearing the way for a new pattern of streets, in the mode of Haussmann’s Paris. But in the midst of campaigning for these changes, EHB was pulled back to Chicago to join Burnham (July 7, 1906), having the drawings already submitted. The day before (July 6, 1906) Burnham had written to accept his role on the Chicago plan (Norton, p. 98). Draper observes that Burnham's contact, former mayor Phalen, a reformer, was embroiled in a pitched fight with corrupt local officials, undermining his effectiveness in pushing forward a plan (Draper, pp. 11-13). Burnham's letter to Bennett appears to reflect his realistic asessment of the situation. Once in Chicago EHB also worked on other local projects for Burnham, notably with John Shedd for the dome and dining room of the new Marshall Field’s store, State Street. Bennett spent Sundays with Burnham and much work time on the plan, as documented in his diary at the Art Institute. EHB’s Chicago plan notebook, with its notes and sketches, is in this 2008 acquisition, with a sketch for a bi-level bridge shown here.
The Work of the Plan
The work of the Plan of Chicago, 1906-09, is documented both in correspondence to EHB and also in photographs he took of “the crowd at 1800,” the roof-top suite four flights up from the D. H. Burnham & Company offices of the Railway Exchange Building. Of the letters, the most significant ones appear to be Burnham’s to Bennett and Charles Moore’s to Bennett. At Christmas 1908 EHB recorded photographs of his fellow workers on the Plan, the team he led especially when Burnham was away and writing to him. Burnham is also captured in a photograph, in the 18th floor studio surrounded by Plan illustrations, writing, apparently, the Plan draft.
Of the correspondence to EHB, when in Europe, DHB wrote with directions on illustrations and on the process of editing, rather than on the substance of the reported text, which he left in EHB’s hands.
Charles Moore, Plan editor, wrote to Bennett (January and February, 1909) from Detroit about the stiff criticism of the Plan in draft form by the Commercial Club committee, singling out Charles H. Thorne among those with concerns. The members' criticisms came from a short term, business or cost focus rather than a long term vision of economic vitality, aesthetic value or social progress. For example, some opposed relocation of the river freight traffic to a new port further south.
Though it occured a year after the Plan's publication, an early September 1910 luncheon to honor former Committee chair Charles D. Norton, recently appointed secretary to U.S. President William Howard Taft, offered an opportunity for Burnham to pull the committee back together and to rekindle the fire of the Plan years, 1906-09. The luncheon was held in Burnham's office in the Railway Exchange Building, on the 14th floor overlooking the lake and the future Grant Park. Bennett recorded this occasion in a series of photos, and the participants can be identified from a more formal photograph of what appears to be the occasion from the Chicago History Museum collection, with those in attendance named in a caption in an article on the 1909 Plan by Ira Bach, published in Chicago History in 1973.
The Committee members who reconvened for this 1910 festive occasion represented the leading progressive and reform organizations as well as businesses of Chicago, working together in the Commercial Club.
--Edward B. Butler (b. 1853, Lewiston, Me.) was a partner in the multi-city Butler Brothers wholesale dry-goods firm, while supporting as a trustee many reform causes (Hull House, Manual Training School for Boys, and the Erring Woman's Refuge, among others).
--Clyde M. Carr (b. 1869, Illinois) attended Lake Forest Academy, Princeton and Northwestern; chair of the Plan's crucial Upper Michigan Avenue sub-committee, he was president of Joseph T. Ryerson & Son (steel) while also serving as a trustee of the Art Institute, the Orchestral Association and also Lake Forest University (vice president, 1911-13).
--Edward F. Carry (b. 1867, Fort Wayne, Indiana) was first vice president and general manager, American Car and Foundry Company (railroad cars).
--John De La Mater has not yet been identified.
--John Villiers Farwell, Jr. (b. 1858, Chicago) was treasurer and manager of his late father's John V. Farwell & Company, educated at Lake Forest Academy and Yale; also a notable reformer, he was president of the Merchant's Club (1897) and the Commercial Club (1907), and was president of the trustees of Lake Forest University, 1908-11.
--Theodore W. Robinson (b. 1862, Boston), after study at Boston's MIT, rose from chemist at Frances Steel to first vice president, Illinois Steel Company.
--John W. Scott (b. 1870, Ottawa, Illinois), like Farwell, was a second-generation dry-goods merchant (Carson Pirie Scott).
--Charles H. Thorne, see the caption for the Charles Moore letters, below.
--Emerson B. Tuttle, lawyer whose brother, Henry, was married to Fannie Farwell, sister of John V. Farwell (Jr.).
--Charles H. Wacker (b. 1856, Chicago) was a capitalist (brewing, real estate and development, elevated trains, etc.) who became president of the Chicago Plan Commission that by 1913 would engage Bennett as consulting architect.
(These references come from The Book of Chicagoans (1905, 1911), City Blue Book (1914), and the 1977 History of the Commercial Club of Chicago.)
Kristen Schaffer, in her introduction to the 1993 reprint of the 1909 Plan, cannot account for what is dropped out of the Plan as Burnham wrote it, in manuscript now in the Art Institute (p. xiv), so Moore’s letters shed valuable light on the dialectic at work between the project staff and the Commercial Club committee. Further research might warrant speculation that Burnham distanced himself from this stage of development of the Plan. On some level he realized compromises would have to be made with this no-nonsense committee group and thus gave him motivation or an excuse for not losing prestige or face over the impending struggle and the inevitable changes.
Bennett’s sketches also cast light on the process. He maintained a Plan notebook with notes and also sketches, including what appears to be the first attempt to visualize a bi-level bridge over the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue, with sturdy pylons at either side. There are photos, too, of the South Water Street area prior to the development of Wacker Drive, study “before” images for planning. Also, on scrapbook pages with some of the early photographs, there are two watercolor sketches of a bird’s-eye view of Chicago from the southeast, preliminary versions of Jules Guerin’s frontispiece in the published Plan.
For purposes of the Plan and (in part) inherited by Bennett with the office on the 18th floor was a collection of study photographs, most mounted on linen and bound together, in Chicago (binders labeled A.C. McClurg), and smaller postcards, nearly 1,500 images in total. This large, untidy gathering in thirteen notebooks and in boxes may have been passed over by the AIC in the 1950s and 1970s. But it includes interfiled photos stamped as Plan of Chicago property and Burnham office property. Also, there are several Baedeker maps and one large scale plan of Paris (1906), all mounted on linen.
After the Plan’s 1909 Publication
Finally, letters after the Plan’s publication shed light on the early stages of selling it by Burnham, as he went to a London planning conference in 1910 and made it an international sensation and benchmark for city planning on both sides of the Atlantic. This international acclaim in turn helped to garner support back in Chicago for implementation, a task given to others while EHB worked on the design side. Letters to EHB from Charles Dyer Norton after DHB’s death in mid-1912 and later letters from Mrs. Norton in 1923 after Charles’s death show the depth of regard among them and Bennett and their assessment of how much of an heir to Burnham's planning legacy was Bennett, a “son.” The Nortons came to Lake Forest just shortly before Bennett, building their house (550 E. Deerpath) in 1906; EHB joined Lake Forest’s Onwentsia early in 1907 and spent the summer living in the club house’s bachelor quarters.
Clipper Ship Thessalus (reference image only; not part of this collection)
E. C. Bennett, Edward H. Bennett's father, was master of the clipper ship Thessalus, built in 1874 and one of the very fastest and latest of these sailing vessels. E. C. Bennett was the captain from 1874 until the early 1890s. Among the cargoes for theThessalus was grain, carried to San Francisco, and it was in this way, traveling with his father, that young Edward, at about the age of sixteen, arrived in California to seek his fortune, perhaps in ranching.
Sketch of a Polynesian or Hawaiian Bungalow, ca. 1890
Among EHB's personal and family papers was this dog-eared drawing on tracing paper, dated ca. 1890 by "R.L.B.," of a shoreline bungalow, shown against the mountains in the background and with palm trees. This appears to have been sent to EHB, Jr. after EHB's death, by a relative, not yet identified.
Letter from Maybeck to Bennett Dec. 4, 1898
California architect Bernard Maybeck (1862-1957) is writing from Paris to Bennett, who was working in an architect's office in London, on behalf of Phoebe Apperson (Mrs. George) Hearst (1842-1919) and her Architectural Plan for the University of California. By ca. 1900 it would be published from Berkeley The International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California (152 pp.), with its first prize going to Monsieur E. Benard for a Beaux-Arts campus plan with buildings not dissimilar to some of those that would be proposed in the 1909 Plan of Chicago. Mrs. Hearst also corresponded directly with Bennett.
Photo of Wm. Peirce Anderson, Paris.
William Peirce Anderson (1870-1924), known as Peirce or Andy to his colleague peers, after his Harvard bachelor's degree completed two years of engineering coursework. At this time he was encouraged by Daniel Burnham to continue his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Anderson began in 1894 at the Atélier Paulin, soon passed the series of entrance exams, and in two years, ca. 1897-99, won four prizes. Anderson completed his degree in 1899, having become acquainted with many peers, including fellow diplôme receiver Edward Bennett and also French-born Fernand Janin, who also would work on the 1909 Plan. Anderson's practice in Burnham's firm included city planning from 1901-02 in Washington, D.C. through 1910, when Bennett took the planning practice out of the Burnham firm. Yet Sally Chappell cites Graham (p. 275) giving Anderson credit for later also selecting the sites for Plan related buildings such as the Wrigley Building (1919-24), along the Chicago River. As Bennett's photos indicate, he knew Anderson well, as a student and then as a colleague after the older Ecole graduate led Burnham to engage this Englishman from the West. Chappell reports that "Anderson looked back on his years in Europe with his studies and his close friends as a golden period" (p. 274).
Reference Photograph Collections
Among the materials preserved by the Bennett family relating to the 1909 Plan of Chicago, the largest group consists of the reference photographs, over 1,500, including both standard sized post cards and also larger-scaled photographic prints of various sizes, usually 8" x 10" or larger, and mostly mounted on linen and loosely tied/bound into thirteen cloth-covered scrapbooks from Chicago's A.C. McClurg bookstore. Shown here is a very small sample of the photographs, a gathering not untypical of such collections by other Ecole alumni who returned to this country after their studies. This group includes not only some duplication, but also marking for the Burnham firm, "EHB," Ecole-educated future partner William E. Parsons (1872-1939), and others, indicating that this was an organic group of study images, evolving over time. While it included many traditional classic images of interiors, sculpture, wall paintings/decorations, ironwork, churches, etc., this collection is heavily weighted with thoroughfares, street scenes (with people and vehicles) and views; large public squares in England, France, and Italy; garden vistas and features (fountains, sculptures, lighting); pavillions and towers; etc.
These views are introduced here to reflect the exposure by Bennett and other contributors to the collection while they were in Paris as students or on tours around Europe and the Mediterrean (Greece, Turkey, Egypt). The scenes at Versailles include the Fountain of Latona which would provide the model or inspiration in the 1920s for the Clarence Buckingham Fountain and its sculptures and also the Orangerie reflected in the Botanic Garden in the Mall, Washington, DC, in the 1930s. Grand spaces like the Place de la Concorde or in front of Buckingham Palace, London, offered suggestions for the entry to Grant Park from the west side thoroughfare, Congress Street, for example. The bird's eye view of Paris from the time of Napoleon III shows the impact of Haussmann's broad thoroughfares on the medieval city, opening up circulation. Flow, whether in a plan or a building, was a first priority in classical training.
Versailles's Gardens and Fountain of Latona
The Fountain of Latona, with the Palace behind it to the east
Paris Street Scenes
Bird's Eye View of Paris ca. 1860s (prior to destruction of the Tuileries palace, 1871)
This albumen print photograph is part of series, "Le Nouveau Paris," by photographer "J. D." This view looking east from above the Arc de Triomphe prior to the May 23, 1871 destruction by fire of the Tuileries Palace shows Baron Haussmann's new diagonal boulevards and roadways along the river quais, creating modern vehicular circulation in the choked medieval city. This updating of the old city was accomplished during the reign of the Second Empire, 1852-70, under Napoleon III.
Tuileries Palace (Burned) (a reference link)
This electronic version of an albumen print shows the Tuileries Palace after it was burned, 1871. This view is from a photographic and related materials exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York, on "Napoleon III and Paris," June 9, 2009 to September 7, 2009.
The Tuileries Palace had been damaged in the Revolution of 1848, and by the 1850s it was refurbished under the restored Empire of Napoleon III. The Emperor was captured in the Franco-Prussian War, July 1870, and deposed a few days later. Eleven years after the fire, the Third Republic that had succeeded the Emperor chose not to restore the ruined palace, a symbol of royal and imperial regimes of the past. By 1883, over the protests of civic planner Baron (Georges-Eugene) Haussmann (1809-1891) and other artists and architects, the ruins were demolished, leaving an open view from the Tuileries formal gardens (Le Notre, 1664) to the west of the former Palace into the courtyard of the Louvre.
Small sketches of Chartres 1, 2
Like Peirce Anderson who had won prizes in his final period at the Ecole, Bennett's large-scale drawings of the portals at Chartres Cathedral won top honors, though the prize of post-graduate study in Rome was reserved only for French nationals. But these two, soon reunited in the Burnham firm by 1904, were peers in their Paris accomplishments. Bennett's prize-winning sketches, privately held but one of them reproduced in the 1982 monograph by Draper (p. 49), are detailed renderings of two portals, north (northwest bay) and west (Royal) facades of Chartres Cathedral. Shown here from Chartres are two small details of doorway pilasters. They show the extent of Bennett's drawing mastery by his late twenties, and can be compared with the ca. 1890 bungalow sketch above, done when he was around the age of sixteen.
Daniel H. Burnham informal sketches for an unbuilt (?) Fifth Avenue, New York, large residence in the style of a Parisian "hotel" or aristocratic residence (1907) 1, 2
This piece of letterhead stationery with pencil sketches of plans and elevations on two sides is labeled by/attributed by Bennett as being in Burnham's hand, from 1907. The job list in Charles Moore's 1921 biography of Burnham does not have any projects in New York around this time, on Fifth Avenue, etc., suggesting that this is an unrecorded Burnham design. Further research or information is required before other conclusions can be drawn.
Burnham and Twin Peaks cabin, San Francisco
This 1904-06 photo apparently by Bennett, found in his personal scrapbook, was published in Moore's 1921 biography, I., p.230.
This 1904-06 photo shows the cabin designed by Burham firm associate architect Willis Polk (1867-1924), on a high vantage point overlooking San Francisco. The person shown here on the deck appears to be Polk. For more information on Polk's career, which included several buidlings in San Francisco for the Burnham firm to 1910, see the online Encyclopedia of San Francisco.
San Francisco Plan illustration of Telegraph Hill (a reference file; not part of this collection)
This rendering from the San Francisco Plan, 1906, notes that it is "prepared by Daniel H. Burnham, assisted by Edward H. Bennett." It appears on p. 430 of Charles W. Eliot's 1909-10 Century article (v. 79, new series v. 57), "a Study of the new Plan of Chicago." The article's genesis is mentioned in a January 24, 1909 letter from Charles Moore to EHB, below.
The inscription on this Burnham firm plan of the City of Baguio, summer capital of the Philippines, reads: "Given to EHB by Parsons in Chicago May/11--much of this work is now accomplished EB". While Bennett was left to work on the San Francisco plan in 1905, Burnham and Anderson sailed off to the 1898-U.S.-acquired Philippines to plan Manila and the summer capital at Baguio. William E. Parsons (1872-1939), Columbia U. B.S. degree, 1898, and Ecole attendee for three years, in 1905 was appointed Consulting Architect to the U.S. government in the Philippines, based in Manila, where he directed implementation of the Burnham plans for the two cities, as well as designing buildings. He left the Philippines in 1914, came to Chicago then and went into practice with Bennett. This inscribed plan shows that he was in Chicago also in May, 1911 and that he knew Bennett. (Source: Withey and Withey, p. 459.)
"The Merchants Club and The Plan of Chicago" by Charles D. Norton (1922) (a reference file; not part of this Collection)
In the 1920s the Commercial Club undertook a history of the relatively short-lived Merchant's Club, 1896-1907, that merged with the Commercial Club as the 1909 Plan of Chicago project gathered steam, under Norton's and Burnham's leadership. They called on Charles Dyer Norton, who by then was living in New York, to write the history of the Club's role in the Plan, essentially a first-hand autobiographical account of the move to get a serious plan process underway. For biographical information on Norton, see the caption below for the group of photos by Bennett of the September 1910 luncheon in Burnham's office for Norton. He is being honored by his Chicago friends for newly being appointed personal secretary to U.S. President William H. Taft.
Letter from DHB: return to Chicago, July 7, 1906
Transcription:
July 7th, 1906
Dear Bennett,
Don't stay longer
than you absolutely need to.
There can be no good of it
except to ensure the lines
of those things the city will
do now. We want
you here as soon as
you can come.
yours ever,
D.H. Burnham
This short note was sent the day after Burnham had notified (on July 6, 1906) the Merchants Club in writing that he would undertake a three year project for a Plan of Chicago (see text above).
Sketch of bi-level bridge from Chicago Plan notebook
"The Crowd at 1800" -- Those working on the Plan in the studio on the 18th Floor, Railway Exchange Building.
Bennett's notes on this group of candid photos, mostly by him, are labeled as in the heading, "The Crowd..." and reflects the team spirit and camaraderie of the Plan working group, many of whom had worked together previously as students in Paris, at the Ecole. The studio for the Chicago plan was a rooftop informal space one flight of stairs up from the elevator on the 17th floor. Peirce Anderson and Bennett were joined by Fernand Janin, also an Ecole student friend and a French national who had painted a watercolor portrait of EHB as a student.
Burnham at table in studio, photographed by Bennett perhaps writing the Plan text, the original now in the Art Institute of Chicago.
The prominence of this image on scrapbook pages in Bennett's papers, retained by him in 1953, along with Burnham seen writing in the setting in the 1800 Railway Exchange Building studio suggested that this was an image of Burnham working on the Plan draft text. The image when blown up does show the pattern of the writing on the page he had just completed: a page number at the top, five lines down a word crossed out with a new one above, and in the next line something darker at the left side. But this may well have been subsequently changed further, so that that trying to match it up with the pages of Burnham's Plan text or of speeches on the Plan that he drafted probably can't ascertain this page's relationship to any surviving document. That his work was Plan related seems reasonable, since he is working in the studio dedicated to that purpose. But further specificity depends on assumptions about Bennett's sense of history, etc. in taking this candid photo.
Patrick Reardon, in a blog for the Burnham centennial, has discussed this issue. He cites both Carl Smith, author of Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (U. of Chicago Press, 2006) and Mary Woolever, the Art Institute's Archivist, concluding that identification of the text being written in this photo is not possible.
This approximately 3.5 inch by 5.25 inch black and white photographic print is mounted onto a page in a small group of such scrapbook pages, along with Bennett's two sketch plans for the frontispiece of the published Plan, and some of the other photos shown here. Most of the photos of this size were gathered into labeled and dated envelopes, as is the case for the other photos in this group, from late 1908.
Anderson and seated Janin, 1800
EHB and seated Janin, 1800 – apparently taken by Anderson
Notice near Bennett's hand, on the right, the hat sitting on the table. It appears in the photographer's shadow in the image second below, Janin and Anderson.
Anderson and Janin on roof, with the shadow of photographer EHB, lower left.
Five men at drawing table, Janin second right
One of the men standing alone, 1800 work area
Rendering of a 1950 divided highway with a double-tracked light rail line between the roadways (1908)
This image is of what the Chicago Plan Commission envisioned the Chicago highway system would look like by the year 1950. This artist's image appears in a 1908 pamphlet perhaps only issued in draft form, since it has a blank folded sheet on the inside cover. It was prepared and issued by a Plan committee sub-group on roadways. Only one other copy is reported in OCLC's Worldcat, at the Chicago History Museum, suggesting that this was a proof version, not formally distributed.
Bennett's sketches for the frontispiece by Jules Guerin
Two sketches for Plan frontispiece: 1, 2
Frontispiece from published Plan (reference image, not part of the Collection)
Letter from Guerin with P.S. about the Cubs, September 1908.
DHB letter about the Civic Center, etc. from ship, Rome.
Though the shipboard letter clearly is dated "Nov. 7, 1909," the context suggests that it was written a year earlier, Nov. 7, 1908, while Moore and Bennett still were in the process of editing the Plan text. More research is needed to sort this out.
Charles Moore letters regarding committee members' objections to the Plan
January 24, 1909 Transcript January 24, 1909
Feburary 14,1909 Transcript February 14, 1909
Commercial Club member and Plan committee representative Charles Hallett Thorne ("Mr. Thorne"), also treasurer of Montgomery Ward & Company since 1893, was born in 1868, according to Josiah Seymour Currey, Chicago: Its History and Makers, A Century of Marvelous Growth, v. 5 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1912), 214-15.
Presentation bookplate for Plan volume, its design origins:
Janin letter with bookplate sketch, vignette "in the spirit of Louis XVI"
Sketch of bookplate, an alternate
George Getz Plan bookplate (This is a reference image; not part of this collection.)
The bookplate as it appeared in the subscribers' books, following the form of Janin's sketch in his letter.
September 7, 1910 luncheon for Charles Dyer Norton (1871-1923), DHB’s office
Norton had just been made personal secretary (i.e., chief of staff) to U.S. President W.H. Taft, Washington, DC; he had gone to the capital after Taft’s election and inauguration, March 1909, as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, under Chicagoan Secretary Franklin MacVeagh.
In June 1910 the Society writer for the Chicago Tribune, “Mme. X,” remarked on Norton’s appointment: “He is certainly the young Lochinvar of the administration. He has come out of the west and through all the wide border his steed is the best. All his admirers here are nudging each other, and saying ‘I told you so.’” (“In Society: Summer Plans of Fashionable Folk,” Chicago Tribune June 19, 1910, B7.) The poem by Walter Scott, “Lochinvar,” from Marmion, begins
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;....
The finding aid for the Art Institute Bennett collection lists (p. 46) among its photographs five images for “Luncheon in Daniel Burnham’s office for Charles D. Norton, 09/07/1910.” By September 25, 1910 the Chicago Tribune was reporting that Norton was in Washington with the President. He resigned from his White House post in 1911, according to his biography in the Cyclopedia of National Biography, v. 6, 490. Norton was a reformer and perhaps resigned over policy issues, as Taft took a more conservative tack in his policies than had his reformer predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. Norton then became vice president of the First National Bank of New York, not returning to Chicago. Norton also organized in 1921 a planning effort for the New York region along the lines of the Chicago 1909 Plan, before he died in 1923, and with Bennett being included in a significant role, responsible for one of the five sectors of the plan (on the west, Staten Island and New Jersey). See Harvey A. Kantor, “Charles Dyer Norton and the Origins of the Regional Plan of New York,” Journal of the American Planning Association, v. 39, no. 1 (January 1973), 35-42.
Norton was from Kenosha, WI, the son of the Rev. Franklin B. Norton and Harriet (Dyer) Norton. In 1885 young Charles began working for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, and paid for his college education from his earnings, graduating from Amherst in 1893, at the age of twenty-two. After returning to Northwestern Mutual, in 1895 he moved to Chicago as a partner in Kimball & Norton, the general agents for Northwestern Mutual in Illinois. Apparently a born salesman, Norton was the ideal person to have met with DHB about doing a plan on that day in 1906 when the architect had just learned of his grim prognosis from his physician.
Norton married Katherine Garrison Norton in 1897. Her mother was Lucy McKim who married Wendell Phillips Garrison. They both were descendants of prominent Abolitionist (reform) families. Katherine Norton's uncle was Ecole-educated New York architect Charles Follen McKim, who worked with Burnham on the plans for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago. Norton also served as a trustee of Lake Forest University, near his home at 550 East Deerpath, Lake Forest, by 1906. He led that institution to undertake a Beaux Arts plan, under New York architect Benjamin Wistar Morris, incorporating ideas from an 1897 plan for the campus by landscape archtiect Warren Manning.
The photo identifications immediately below come from a Chicago History Museum photo apparently of the same occasion published in a 1973 Chicago History article by Ira Bach. Thumbnail biographies of many of those photographed here are provided above in the text under the heading "Work of the Plan."
September 1910 luncheon for Charles Dyer Norton, DHB’s office: men seated at the table
Burnham's Left: ----------, Clyde M. Carr, Edward F. Carry (behind centerpiece), John De La Mater
Burnham's Right: Edward B. Butler, Charles H. Thorne, Theodore W. Robinson, Emerson B. Tuttle, John W. Scott, John V. Farwell (Jr.), Charles H. Wacker
Men standing with Norton, center (rear), near plan mounted on the wall
Left to Right: Edward B. Butler, Daniel Burnham, Charles D. Norton
Burnham standing at table talking to seated Charles Wacker
Clockwise from Right (Standing) Daniel Burnham, Charles H. Wacker, John V. Farwell (Jr.), Clyde M. Carr,
Edward F. Carry
Though this photo dates from the year after the Plan's publication, it shows DHB entertaining the Commercial Club Committee in his office, in the key post-publication period, working the crowd, and employing his charisma to hold his team together to implement the Plan.
View of luncheon table with men seated
Left to right: Edward B. Butler, Daniel Burnham and Charles Norton
Edward B. Butler (chairman of Chicago Plan Commission)
[1911 Lake Forest harbor] (reference image, not part of this collection.)
![[1911 Lake Forest harbor]](images/bennettlakeforestlakefront.jpg){kind=link}
The AIC finding aid for its Bennett collections shows some correspondence with members of the McCormick family in 1911, and this rendering of a plan for a harbor at Lake Forest from Edith Rockefeller McCormick (Mrs. Harold) may be related. Certainly Bennett, who was active in Lake Forest, would have been the logical person to call on to propose a beach harbor plan for the town. The rendering appears in Second Book of the North Shore by Marion White, published in 1911.
Burnham color portrait (Pratt & Lambert)
This color portrait, copyrighted by paint manufacturers Pratt & Lambert, 1922, appears on the first page of a four-page advertising brochure, appealing to architect customers. The artist is not identified on the piece. Produced a decade after Burnham's 1912 death, the biographical text page on the verso of the image begins: "[o]ften the genius of a great man transcends his own time. The influence he exerts upon succeeding generations is even greater than the imprint he leaves upon his contemporaneous period." Bennett kept this in a file of Burnham-related items, including the 1907 sketches for a New York town house, above.
1912 condolence letter from Charles Dyer Norton ("CDN"), New York, upon the death of DHB, 1912: "For you are the son of his spirit, the heir to his noblest work."
"CDN" in the lower right corner of the third image, at the end, represents in initials the name of former Plan chair Norton, discussed above. That functions as his signature in this case.
Sketch plan of northwest corner of Grant Park, 1915
Orientation (clockwise): top, north (Michigan Avenue "wall" of buildings, with commercial district behind further to the top); right, north (with Michigan Avenue bridge, etc. center right); bottom, south (the lakefront); and left, south (Art Institute on Michigan Avenue and with Monroe Street).
While Wacker and Moody worked on selling the Plan, EHB was busy on the design of the lakefront park. At the south end of the park the Illinois Central Railroad Station and the projected Field Museum framed the perpendicular Michigain Avenue. This sketch plan from 1915 shows EHB projecting similar forms of buildings on the north side of the park. This side wall of building facades would have bracketed the vista from the row of Michigan Avenue buildings, many with high-up dining rooms (Chicago Athletic Association, 1893) or even roof terraces such as for the Cliff Dwellers club, on the roof of Orchestra Hall (1904) or the Plan office, on the 18th floor of the Railway Exchange Building.
Views of Grant Park events, 1909 to 1920?, in chronological order. Includes sequence of development of the AIC.
Observe in the upper right the south end of Grant Park, with open water beyond: the future site of the Field Museum. This is, of course, prior to the release of the Plan on July 4, 1909.
Notable is all the smoke, along with the Memorial Day parade taking place on Michigan Avenue -- taken from the 18th floor roof terrace and showing the cornice/balustrade. West of the future field Museum site is the tall Illinois Central train station (demol.).
International Aviation Meet August 12-20, 1910
This view shows the flow or circulation of pedestrians in the future park space.
Workers filling in Museum Campus south of Grant Park
This view apparently from the east toward Michigan Avenue shows workmen in the 1910s working on the landfill for what would become the site of the Field Museum and today's Museum Campus. David Mattoon has observed that Bruce G. Moffat's 2002 CERA book The Chicago Tunnel Story..., pp. 119-121, explains that the landfill was accomplished by the tunnel railroad extending east to just west of the future Field Museum building. This rail line brought delivered free ash and cinders from Loop buisnesses' coal-fired furnaces to create the land under the Museum, which opened in 1921, and then Burnham Park to the south. Later the tunnel was a connection to bring coal to the building.
The later views show the Field Museum now located south from the park as seen previously, and the new plaza at Congress Street and Michigan Avenue. There is not yet a bridge across the tracks from the plaza leading to the future Clarence Buckingham Fountain.
The fifth of these six photographic views by Bennett shows a new section of the east side of Grant Park north of Monroe Street, with the view to the tracks blocked by the classic balustrade. The fountain and the columnar and wrought iron lamp posts create a sense of architectural drama ending this side of the balustrade. This classic design vocabulary was also seen both in the study collection photographic view of the Place de la Concorde, Paris (above), and in a view of wrought iron lighting and a balustrade on the Seine, Paris, in the Met's 2009 "Napoleon III and Paris" exhibit. This 1877 view shows an old model for a lamp post, by photographer Charles Marville (1816-1879).
In general, the photos in the collection show various activities (Aviation Meet, 1911; Military Tournament; etc.) in the space east of the tracks. This space functioned like a fair grounds, sometimes with small or large tents, a race track, grandstands for the tournament, etc. There appear to be no established landscape features, even consistent turf, on this space. The straight dirt roadways for circulation in the space east of the tracks also have a temporary character to them.
The Peristyle is shown in the northwest corner of the 1915 proposed sketch plan Grant Park (above), with a series of buildings along Randolph Street west of Michigan Ave. to Columbus Drive. This frames the vista from Michigan avenue east to the lake. Demolished in the mid 20th C., a new peristyle in Bennett's style was built in much the same location in the new Millennium Park, in the early 21st C.
Bagatelle, 1916: garden views, sketches of façade studies from EHB's loose scrapbook pages.
Bagatelle was the house Edward H. Bennett built for his spouse, Catherine Jones Bennett, with funds provided by her uncle, Thomas Jones. It is located on the northeast corner of the Pembroke Lodge estate (Henry Ives Cobb, 1895), on Green Bay Road, north of the Onwentsia country club, Lake Forest. It was built in 1915-16, with the plans by EHB. Catherine Bennett's initials are in the second floor centered ironwork balcony on the south, garden, facade of Bagatelle, facing the formal garden.
These preliminary sketches are from a notebook compiled of many of Bennett's rough sketches for the idea of Bagatelle. The photos, from the 1920s to the present, provide references to the garden and the house fully developed.
Preliminary pencil sketch of house front 1,
Preliminary pencil sketch of house front 2
Bagatelle garden (south) front, 2008 (Reference image; not part of the collection.)
Photograph by Baird Jarman, taken on a Society of Architectural Historians' Study Tour of Chicago's North Shore, July 2008.
Edward H. Bennett, shown with his new grandson, Edward H. Bennett III, ca. Spring 1946.
This view of EHB and his grandson is taken in the Bagatelle garden, west and down the hill from the main garden, as seen in the reference view immediately above. On the right is seen a corner of Bennett's Art Deco studio (1930), designed by him.
Wacker Drive Development
While work on selling the Plan went on in the 1910s, along with Grant Park Bennett was working on designing Wacker Drive, to replace the obsolete freight warehouse district once the new freight port at Calumet Harbor was ready for traffic. Included in the collection are some study photos of the district as it appeared then, from different angles such as the east and from the northwest, from the north side of the river. This fed into the design process. Some of these views also were used by the marketing end of the Plan program, for pamphlets in 1917 and 1922.
Bennett photos of South Water Street area, ca. 1907-15
Michigan Avenue looking south from the river
This view south down Michigan Avenue from the south bank of the Chicago River, near the 1920 bridge, shows how narrow this street was prior to the implementation of the plan for a new Michigan Avenue boulevard. This narrow street relates to the future wider Michigan Avenue much as did Haussmann's new Paris boulevards of the 1860s to the maze of medieval streets of Paris, as described in Victor Hugo's novels and also as seen in the "Napoleon III and Paris" exhibit at the Met in the summer of 2009, in a view of the Rue Chat-qui-Peche (photographer Charles Marville, 1816-1879, ca. 1868). (Reference image only; not from collection)
South Water Street (New Gateway to Chicago) (1922)
Proposal for Roadway (1922)
In June of 2009 Dr. Miller gave a presentation on Edward Bennett's work during the Plan of Chicago and after. The video is available here: Bennett From Under The Shaddow of Burnham
Lake forest College Press recently published a book on Burnham and Bennett's plan of chicago and it's impact on city planning. Beyond Burnham
Bach, Ira J. “A Reconsideration of the 1909 'Plan of Chicago,'” in Chicago History: The Magazine of the Chicago Historical Society. Chicago Historical Society, 1973, pp.139.
Burnham, Daniel H. and Edward H. Bennett, ed. Charles Moore, Plan of Chicago, with a new introduction by Kristen Schaffer. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 1993.
Chappell, Sally A. Kitt. Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912-1936: Transforming Tradition. Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1992.
Chicago Plan Commission. Reclaim South Water Street for All the People. Chicago: Chicago Plan Commission, 1917.
______. South Water Street Facts. Why the Improvement Should Go Forward Without Delay. Chicago: Chicago Plan Commission, 1922.
Commercial Club of Chicago. Inter-urban Roadways: About Chicago. Chicago: Commercial Club of Chicago, Inter-urban Roadways Committee, 1908. (A rendering of a divided highway with two light rail tracks between the roadways appears facing p. 30: "An interurban roadway in 1950...." There appears a blank folded dummy sheet for a map, not printed. The only other Worldcat-reported copy, at the Chicago History Museum, also has this dummy folded sheet.)
Currey, Josiah Seymour. Chicago: Its History and Makers, A Century of Marvelous Growth, v. 5. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1912, pp. 214-15.
Draper, Joan E. Edward H. Bennett: Architect and City Planner, 1874-1954. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1982.
_______. "Bennett, Edward Herbert." American National Biography. ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, v. 2, 576-77.
"Edward H. Bennett (1874-1954) Collection, 1901-1954," Finding Aid, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Art Insitute of Chicago, 2001.
http://digital-libraries.saic.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/findingaids&CISOPTR=926&CISOSHOW=869
Eliot, Charles W. "A Study of the New Plan of Chicago, With Remarks on City-planning in General," in Century Magazine, v. 79 (November 1909 to April 1910), pp. 417-31.
Herringshaw, Mae Felts. Clark J. Herringshaw's City Blue Book of Current Biography, Chicagoans of 1914... Chicago: American Publishers' Association, 1914.
International Competition for the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California. San Francisco: Trustees of the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California, 1899?
Jarman, Baird. Post from August 24, 2008, on SAH Study Tour Blog, Society of Architectural Historians
Johnson, Vilas. A History of the Commercial Club of Chicago,... Including the first history of The Club by John J. Glessner. Chicago: Commercial Club, 1977.
Marquis, Albert Nelson, ed. The Book of Chicagoans: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Living Men of the City of Chicago, 1911. Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Company, 1911.
Maybeck Foundation. Celebrating the Work of Bernard Maybeck. http://www.maybeck.org/maybeck.html
Miller, Arthur H. “Lake Forest Country Places, XXVI: ‘Roadside,’ 550 East Deerpath.”
http://www.library.lakeforest.edu/special/lind.html
Miller, Arthur H. and Shirley M. Paddock. Lake Forest: Estates, People and Culture. Chicago: Arcadia, 2000. (Norton’s Lake Forest house.)
Moffat, Bruce G. The Chicago Tunnel Story: Exploring the Railroad "Forty Feet Below". Chicago: Central Electric Railfans' Association, 2002. Bulletin 135.
Moore, Charles. Daniel H. Burnham: Architect, Planner of Cities. 2 v. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1921.
"Napoleon III and Paris" exhibit, June 9-September 7, 2009, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={47E49A38-646C-4D09-A142-4DEAD1FBCDCB}&HomePageLink=special_c2a
Norton, Charles Dyer. “The Merchants Club and the Plan of Chicago,” in The Merchants Club of Chicago, 1896-1907. Chicago: Commercial Club of Chicago, 1922, pp. 95-103.
"Norton, Charles Dyer." National Cyclopedia of American Biography.... New York: James T. White & Company, 1929. v. 6, pp. 489-90.
Parry, David. "Polk, Willis Jefferson." Encyclopedia of San Francisco. ed. John Ralston. San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, 2005. http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/p/polkWillis.html
Pastre, Paul. Hommage a Fernand Janin. 2008. www.vidourle.fr/fernandjanin/index.html (in French)
Plan of Chicago: Prepared Under Direction of the Commercial Club… by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett, Architects; edited by Charles Moore. Chicago: Commercial Club, 1909.
Plan of Chicago, 1909-1979: An Exhibition of the Burnham Library of Architecture, Art Institute of Chicago, December 8, 1979 through November 30, 1980. Chicago: Art Institute, 1979.
Smith, Carl. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Re-making of an American City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
White, Marian A. The Second Book of the North Shore: Homes, Gardens, Landscapes, Highways and Byways, Past and Present. Chicago: J. Harrison White, 1911. (Lake Forest harbor plan, p. 52.)
Withey, Henry F. and Elsie Rathburn Withey. Biographical Dcitionary of American Architects (Deceased). Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1970 (reprint of 1956 ed.).
Without Bounds or Limits: An Online Exhibit of the Plan of Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson and Burnham Archives. http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/research/specialcollections/planofchicago/introduction.html
Acknowledgements
Several people directly have helped and given advice on this project. Information on and assistance in the preparation and evolution of the content has come from Ted Bennett '71, Marcia Bennett, Sally Kalmbach, Nathaniel Parks (AIC Burnham Library archives), Patrick Reardon, Franz Schulze, Carl Smith, Austin Stewart '10, Steve Vignocchi '93, Special Collections senior associate, and Mary Woolever (AIC Burnham Library Archivist). The text has benefited from suggestions from Jan Miller, Patrick Reardon, Franz Schulze, Hannah Stoltz '10, and Steve Vignocchi. Technical assistance has come from systems librarian David Levinson, reference librarian Nancy Sosna Bohm, College web master Erik Larson, and academic technologist Connie Corso.
Arthur H. Miller, Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections, and Joshua Anderson '10, Special Collections Associate
June 30, 2009 In Progress! Send queries and suggestions, please, to amiller@lakeforest.edu