Daniel H. Burnham Collection
1836-2019 (bulk 1880-1925)
Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912) Burnham and Root D.H. Burnham & Co.
Although he was never formally educated in architecture, Burnham (1846–1912) established a successful Chicago practice with John Wellborn Root, producing such significant buildings as the Rookery and the first building for the Art Institute of Chicago. As Director of Works for the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) he supervised the design and construction process for all buildings on the fair grounds. During the next twenty years his firm became internationally known for commercial skyscrapers, department stores, and railroad stations primarily designed in the classical Beaux-Arts style. Burnham’s vision of the City Beautiful ideals, tentatively explored in the planning of the world’s fair, was realized in his report Plan of Chicago (1909). The plan has long served as the most important of City Beautiful documents and continues to be the benchmark for planning decisions in Chicago. The Art Institute holds the largest body of documents on Burnham’s life and works, including business and personal correspondence, diaries, project files, photographs, drawings, memorabilia, published and unpublished manuscripts for speeches, articles, and reports.
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Contact the Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives:
archives@artic.edu
Printed papers, correspondence, manuscripts, diaries, maps, black and white photographic prints, and architectural reprographic prints, ephemera, realia, and an oil painting.