Burnham’s extraordinary leadership skills were made manifest when he became the director of works at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Burnham & Root were first named consulting architects, but Burnham resigned that position to become head of construction. When Root died suddenly in January 1891, Burnham assumed responsibility for overseeing and completing construction for some 150 buildings on more than 600 acres (240 hectares) of land.

In little more than two years, working with America’s most noted architects and designers, Burnham developed America’s most spectacular world’s fair of the 19th century. He led a workforce that reached 10,000 men, reviewed guidelines for the many state buildings, and oversaw the fair’s infrastructure, including transportation, sewage, and clean water delivery systems. Nicknamed the “White City,” the fair’s grand Neoclassical buildings were planned as a cohesive whole in a landscaped setting; they made a lasting impression on millions of visitors. Often noted as the inspiration for the City Beautiful movement, the fair proved to be a turning point both for Burnham and for the development of the modern American city.

D.H. Burnham and Company

When he was able to return to his architecture practice, Burnham reorganized it as D.H. Burnham and Company. Aesthetically, he embraced a traditional Neoclassical vocabulary utilized at the Court of Honor at the fair and exemplified by his friend the architect Charles F. McKim of McKim, Mead & White. Burnham’s firm completed designs for more than 200 buildings in the next 20 years, including many that are significant in American architectural history.

Among these is counted the Reliance Building (1895), by Burnham’s chief designer Charles Atwood, considered a landmark in the development of the tall office building, because the slim glass and steel tower presaged Modernist skyscrapers. Burnham continued to think big. At 500,000 square feet (45,000 square metres), his Ellicott Square Building (completed 1896) in Buffalo, New York, occupies a full city block and was the largest building of its time. Other notable Burnham structures are the famous Flatiron Building (completed 1902) in New York City; the Field Museum (completed 1920) in Chicago; the Frick and Oliver buildings (completed 1902 and 1910, respectively) in Pittsburgh; a series of department stores such as Wanamaker’s (1909) in Philadelphia, Selfridges (completed 1909) in London, Marshall Field & Company (completed 1907) in Chicago, and Gimbels (completed 1912) in Manhattan; and Union Station (completed 1907) in Washington, D.C.

Urban planner

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His work on the fair had developed in Burnham a keen interest in parks and city planning. He believed that an improved urban environment could provide a positive transformative experience for its inhabitants. Burnham’s first opportunity to put his ideas in action (he had set forth his ideas to no avail earlier in Chicago) came in 1901, when he became the de facto chairman of the Senate Park Commission, also called the McMillan Commission (for Michigan’s U.S. Sen. James McMillan, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia). Burnham invited his friend McKim and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (son of the famous landscape architect with whom Burnham had worked on the fair), to join him in re-envisioning and enlarging Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s original 1791 plan: they undertook much of the actual work. Under Burnham’s leadership and based on precedents in Paris and especially Rome, the team envisioned a grand, ordered national capital to reflect America’s status as an emerging world power. Their plan for the capital city included a comprehensive park system and redefined the National Mall and surrounding area. Burnham further conceived of Union Station, the railway station, as a formal public gateway to the city’s monumental core and as a feature integral to the city plan. Upon publication the McMillan Plan received widespread attention and approval.

Fueled by the Progressive era’s interest in municipal improvement, other cities requested Burnham’s planning services. In 1902–03 Burnham, with architects Arnold W. Brunner and John M. Carrère, prepared for the city of Cleveland a “Group Plan” for a new downtown civic centre of Beaux Arts buildings formally arranged around a rectangular park. In 1905, under the auspices of leading private citizens organized as the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco, Burnham devised for San Francisco a far more comprehensive plan. However, in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, this plan was not implemented. In the meantime, Burnham’s architectural practice continued to flourish. So famous had he become as a city planner that, when the Philippines were ceded to the United States after the Spanish American War, Burnham was asked by the federal government to create a “Beautification Plan” for Manila and to design an entirely new summer capital, Baguio, in the Luzon highlands. He responded by recommending the preservation of Manila’s old walled Spanish city, and in both cities he utilized familiar City Beautiful components: a system of parks, a network of diagonal roadways for traffic efficiency, and a civic centre complex, formally arranged as the heart of the community.

Burnham thus brought a lifetime of experience to his masterwork, the 1909 Plan of Chicago, written with his young associate, Edward Bennett. Published by and written for the Commercial Club of Chicago, a private group of civic-minded business leaders who worked closely with Burnham on the report, the book is considered a landmark in urban planning history. It recognized the city in its context, not as an isolated collection of buildings but as an organic whole interconnected with and interrelated to its region. It encompassed a 60-mile radius that included three states and Lake Michigan. Visionary yet detailed, the plan boldly confronted the complexities of the modern industrial city and argued that solutions could be found that would improve infrastructure, relieve traffic congestion, provide open space, and enhance the physical environment in lasting, meaningful ways for its inhabitants. Reserving the lakefront as public space was one of Burnham’s major concerns and one of the plan’s most notable accomplishments.

Burnham and the Commercial Club members realized the importance of marketing to gain support for their ideas. To this end, the Plan of Chicago was handsomely printed and included evocative drawings of what Chicago could look like interspersed with photographs and detailed maps and graphs. It was released to the public on July 4, 1909. Civic, cultural, and educational leaders were consulted during its preparation, and a traveling exhibition of the drawings created for the project was prepared for display both in the United States and abroad. The Plan of Chicago draws on European precedents, especially on Baron Haussmann’s Paris, with its broad diagonal streets, as well as on Beaux Arts concepts of balance, axiality, and symmetry. Although the Plan of Chicago received great acclaim initially, it did not take into account the enormous impact of the automobile. Some critics noted even at the time that it ignored housing and other pressing urban social issues. Burnham’s unpublished draft of the Plan, however, does include a remarkable social agenda. Others since have argued that Burnham’s plan represents an elitist viewpoint with an emphasis on social control and order; it is, these critics argue, too comprehensive to be fully realized and too monumental to be humane. Nonetheless, the Plan of Chicago has inspired generations of Chicagoans and others to work toward the ideal of a beautiful, efficient city.

Burnham did not see any aspect of his Chicago plan realized. Already diagnosed with diabetes, he died on June 1, 1912, of food poisoning while on a trip abroad and is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.