on the Chicago architectural scene from his arrival in the 1870s until his death in 1912, and John Wellborn Root, his extravagantly talented first partner (and principal designer). With The Rookery, Root pioneered the central lightwell highrise design that dominated Chicago for decades; its curtain wall structure is most evident on the building’s alley façades where one can see the daring proposition of nine floors of heavy brick and stone sitting atop two lower floors clad entirely in glass.
After Root tragically died in 1891 at the age of 41, Burnham chose Charles Atwood as his next designer and he responded with Chicago’s first glass skyscraper, The Reliance (1891–95), on State Street. One block south of The Reliance is Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott store (1899; 1902–03). Its two-story base of sculpted metal is a hyper-foliated expression of Sullivan’s decorative impulses. A terra cotta cornice with related motifs – just recently restored after a long absence — crowns the building.
Burnham remained the consummate salesman and maintained his sharp eye for architectural talent. He even tried to hire Frank Lloyd Wright and offered to send the young architect to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris for classical training, an offer the young individualist found easy to refuse. But Wright did work on one Burnham design: in 1907, he designed a makeover of The Rookery’s lobby, whose elaborate geometric ornament and shallow urns that flank the central stairs offer a quick taste of Wright’s Prairie School designs.

But to really understand the genius of the Wisconsin-born Wright, you need to venture nine miles west to the suburb of Oak Park. Here, you’ll find streets filled with Wright and Prairie-inspired structures. Most worthy of a visit are the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio and Unity Temple. The Home and Studio is a rambling complex that evolved between 1889 and 1911 and presents a working laboratory of Wright’s work from that seminal period. Nearby, Unity Temple (1905–08) is a tour de force of modern design. Its rigorous geometric volumes and matching abstracted ornamentation prefigure the work of Dutch de Stijl architects more than a decade later. Within Chicago’s borders, in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park, is the Prairie-style Robie House (1909), whose broad cantilevered eaves help protect its exterior terraces from the elements while eloquently evoking the strong horizontals of the Midwestern landscape.

The City Beautiful movement in America traces its roots to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago, and its legacy is still visible throughout the city. All of the White City’s structures were clad in staff (a blend of plaster and fiber) and quickly demolished, although the Palace of Fine Arts was eventually reconstructed in stone to house what is now the Museum of Science and Industry. It’s worth a visit for its kid-friendly interactive exhibits – and it’s important to note its scale. What now seems a large civic structure within the South Side’s Jackson Park, was actually one of the smaller buildings at the great fair. The rest of the main buildings and the Great Court were located to the south on land that’s all lakefront park today.

Other vestiges of the City Beautiful include the double-decked Wacker Drive along the south bank of the Chicago River, west of Michigan Avenue, and the Beaux Arts–inspired bridge houses, especially where Michigan Avenue crosses the river. Many of these
elements were included in Burnham’s seminal 1909 Plan of Chicago, which re-envisioned Chicago as Paris on the Prairie. By the 1920s, with the opening of the Michigan Avenue bridge, development moved north of the river where the twin sentinels of the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower mark the start of this historic street and reflect the concerns of that period. The Wrigley was designed by Graham Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125