Daniel Burnham

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At age 26, Burnham moved on to the Chicago offices of Carter, Drake and Wight where he met future business partner John Wellborn Root, who was 21 and four years younger than Burnham. The two became friends and then opened an architectural office together in 1873. Unlike his previous ventures, Burnham stuck to this one. Burnham and Root went on to become a very successful firm. Their first major commission came from John B. Sherman, the superintendent of the massive Union Stock Yards in Chicago, which provided the livelihood – directly or indirectly – for one-fifth of the city's population. Sherman hired the firm to build for him a mansion on Prairie Avenue at Twenty-first Street among the mansions of Chicago's other merchant barons. Root made the initial design. Burnham refined it and supervised the construction. It was on the construction site that he met Sherman's daughter, Margaret, whom Burnham married in 1876 after a short courtship. Sherman commissioned other projects from Burnham and Root, including the Stone Gate, an entry portal to the stockyards which became a Chicago landmark.

In 1881, the firm was commissioned to build the Montauk Building, which was then the tallest building in Chicago at the time. To solve the problem of the city's water-saturated sandy soil and bedrock 125 feet (38 m) below the surface, Root came up with a plan to dig down to a "hardpan" layer of clay on which was laid a 2-foot (0.61 m) thick pad of concrete overlaid with steel rails placed at right-angles to form a lattice "grill", which was then filled with Portland cement. This "floating foundation" was, in effect, artificially-created bedrock on which the building could be constructed. The completed building was so tall compared to existing buildings that it defied easy description, and the name "skyscraper" was coined to describe it. Thomas Talmadge, an architect and architectural critic said of the building, "What Chartres was to the Gothic cathedral, the Montauk Block was to the high commercial building."

Burnham and Root went on to build more of the first American skyscrapers, such as the Masonic Temple Building in Chicago. Measuring 21 stories and 302 feet, the temple held claims as the tallest building of its time, but was torn down in 1939.

The talents of the two partners were complementary. Both men were artists and gifted architects, but Root had a knack for conceiving elegant designs and was able to see almost at once the totality of the necessary structure. Burnham, on the other hand, excelled at bringing in clients and supervising the building of Root's designs. They each appreciated the value of the other to the firm. Burnham also took steps to ensure their employees were happy: he installed a gym in the office, gave fencing lessons and let employees play handball at lunch time. Root, a pianist and organist, gave piano recitals in the office on a rented piano. Paul Starrett, who joined the office in 1888 said "The office was full of a rush of work, but the spirit of the place was delightfully free and easy and human in comparison to other offices I had worked in."

Although the firm was extremely successful, there were several notable setbacks. One of their designs, the Grannis Block in which their office was located, burned down in 1885 necessitating a move to the top floor of The Rookery, another of their designs. Then, in 1888, a Kansas City, Missouri, hotel they had designed collapsed during construction, killing one man and injuring several others. At the coroner's inquest, the building's design came in for criticism. The negative publicity shook and depressed Burnham. Then in a further setback, Burnham and Root also failed to win the commission for design of the giant Auditorium Building, which went instead to their rivals, Adler & Sullivan.

On January 15, 1891, while the firm was deep in meetings for the design of the World's Columbian Exposition, Root died after a three-day course of pneumonia. As Root had been only 41 years old, his death stunned both Burnham and Chicago society. After Root's death, the firm of Burnham and Root, which had had tremendous success producing modern buildings as part of the Chicago School of architecture, was renamed D.H. Burnham & Company. After that the firm continued its successes and Burnham extended his reach into city design.

Burnham and Root had accepted responsibility to oversee the design and construction of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's then-desolate Jackson Park on the south lakefront. The largest world's fair to that date (1893), it celebrated the 400-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus's famous voyage. After Root's sudden and unexpected death, a team of distinguished American architects and landscape architects, including Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Richard M. Hunt, George B. Post, Henry Van Brunt, and Louis Sullivan radically changed Root's modern and colorful style to a Classical Revival style. To ensure the project's success, Burnham moved his personal residence into a wooden headquarters, called "the shanty" on the burgeoning fairgrounds to improve his ability to oversee construction. The construction of the fair faced huge financial and logistical hurdles, including a worldwide financial panic and an extremely tight timeframe, to open on time.

Considered the first example of a comprehensive planning document in the nation, the fairground featured grand boulevards, classical building facades, and lush gardens. Often called the "White City," it popularized neoclassical architecture in a monumental, yet rational Beaux-Arts style. As a result of the fair's popularity, architects across the U.S. were said to be inundated with requests by clients to incorporate similar elements into their designs.

The control of the fair's design and construction was a matter of dispute between various entities, particularly the National Commission which was headed by George R. Davis, who served as Director-General of the fair. It was also headed by the Exposition Company which consisted of the city's leading merchants, led by Lyman Gage which had raised the money needed to build the fair, and Burnham as Director of Works. In addition the large number of committees made it difficult for construction to move forward at the pace needed to meet the opening day deadline. After a major accident which destroyed one of the fair's premiere buildings, Burnham moved to take tighter control of construction, distributing a memo to all the fair's department heads which read "I have assumed personal control of the active work within the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition ... Henceforward, and until further notice, you will report to and receive orders from me exclusively."

After the fair opened, Olmsted, who designed the fairgrounds, said of Burnham that "too high an estimate cannot be placed on the industry, skill and tact with which this result was secured by the master of us all." Burnham himself rejected the suggestion that Root had been largely responsible for the fair's design, writing afterwards:

Nevertheless, Burnham's reputation was considerably enhanced by the success and beauty of the fair. Harvard and Yale both presented him honorary master's degrees ameliorating his having failed their entrance exams in his youth. The common perception while Root was alive was that he was the architectural artist and Burnham had run the business side of the firm; Root's death, while devastating to Burnham personally, allowed him to develop as an architect in a way it might not have, had Root lived on.

In 1901, Burnham designed the Flatiron Building in New York City, a trailblazing structure that utilized an internal steel skeleton to provide structural integrity; the exterior masonry walls were not load-bearing. This allowed the building to rise to 22 stories. The design was that of a vertical Renaissance palazzo with Beaux-Arts styling, divided like a classical column, into base, shaft and capital.

Other Burnham post-fair designs included the Land Title Building (1897) in Philadelphia, the first major building in that city not designed by local architects, and known as "the finest example of early skyscraper design" there, John Wanamaker's Department Store (1902–1911) in Philadelphia, now Macy's, which is built around a central court, Wanamaker's Annex (1904, addition: 1907–1910), in New York City, a 19-story full-block building which contains as much floorspace as the Empire State Building, the neo-classical Gimbels Department Store (1908–1912) also in New York, now the Manhattan Mall, with a completely new facade, the stunningly Art Deco Mount Wilson Observatory in the hills above Pasadena, California, and Filene's Department Store (1912) in Boston, the last major building designed by Burnham.

In 1904, Burnham accepted a commission from Philippines Governor-General William Howard Taft. He had the opportunity to redesign Manila and plan a summer capital to be constructed in Baguio. Due to the Philippines status as a territory, Burnham was able to pursue his vision without having to win local approval. Altogether the project took six months to design, with only six weeks spent in the Philippines. During his time there, Burnham did not interact with Filipino locals concerning the project. After his plans were approved by William Cameron Forbes, Commissioner of Commerce and Police in the Philippines, Burnham was allowed to choose the principal architect, William E. Parsons. Burnham then departed to keep tabs on the project from the mainland. Burnham's plans emphasized improved sanitation, a cohesive aesthetic (Mission Revival), and visual reminders of government authority. In Manila, wide boulevards radiated out from the capital building, while in Baguio government structures loomed from the cliffs above the town. The land for the Baguio project, 14,000 acres (5,700 ha) in total, was seized from local Igorots with approval of the Philippine Supreme Court. In Manila, neighborhoods ravaged by the war for independence were left untouched while a luxury hotel, casino, and boat clubs were designed for visiting mainland dignitaries.

Initiated in 1906 and published in 1909, Burnham and his co-author Edward H. Bennett prepared a Plan of Chicago which laid out plans for the future of the city. It was the first comprehensive plan for the controlled growth of an American city and an outgrowth of the City Beautiful movement. The plan included ambitious proposals for the lakefront and river. It also asserted that every citizen should be within walking distance of a park. Sponsored by the Commercial Club of Chicago, Burnham donated his services in hopes of furthering his own cause.

Building off plans and conceptual designs from the World's Fair for the south lakefront, Burnham envisioned Chicago as a "Paris on the Prairie". French-inspired public works constructions, fountains and boulevards radiating from a central, domed municipal palace became Chicago's new backdrop. Though only parts of the plan were actually implemented, it set the standard for urban design, anticipating the future need to control urban growth and continuing to influence the development of Chicago long after Burnham's death.

Burnham's city planning projects did not stop at Chicago. Burnham had previously contributed to plans for cities such as Cleveland (the 1903 Group Plan), San Francisco (1905), Manila (1905), and Baguio in the Philippines, details of which appear in the 1909 Plan of Chicago publication. His plans for the redesign of San Francisco were delivered to the Board of Supervisors in September 1905, but in the haste to rebuild the city after the 1906 earthquake and fires Burnham's plans were ultimately ignored. In the Philippines, Burnham's Plan for Manila never materialized due to the outbreak of World War II and the relocation of the capital to another city after the war. Some components of the plan, however, did come into fruition including the shore road which became Dewey Boulevard (now known as Roxas Boulevard) and the various neoclassical government buildings around Luneta Park, which very much resemble a miniature version of Washington, D.C., in their arrangement.

In Washington, D.C., Burnham did much to shape the 1901 McMillan Plan which led to the completion of the overall design of the National Mall. The Senate Park Commission, or McMillan Commission established by Michigan Senator James McMillan, brought together Burnham and three of his colleagues from the World's Columbian Exposition: architect Charles Follen McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Going well beyond Pierre L'Enfant's original vision for the city, the plan provided for the extension of the Mall beyond the Washington Monument to a new Lincoln Memorial and a "pantheon" that eventually materialized as the Jefferson Memorial. This plan involved significant reclamation of land from swamp and the Potomac River and the relocation of an existing railroad station, which was replaced by Burnham's design for Union Station. As a result of his service on the McMillan Commission, in 1910 Burnham was appointed a member and first chairman of the United States Commission of Fine Arts helping to ensure implementation of the McMillan Plan's vision. Burnham served on the commission until his death in 1912.

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