Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846–1912), architect and planner, was Director of Works for the World’s Columbian Exposition. A native of Henderson, New York, Burnham moved with his family to Chicago in 1855. There he eventually found a mentor in architect Peter Wight, and it was in Wight’s office that Burnham met John Wellborn Root. In 1873 Burnham and Root formed a partnership, and over the next seventeen years they were responsible for designing some of the most important skyscrapers erected in Chicago.

Olmsted and Burnham had met perhaps a decade before they began work planning the World’s Columbian Exposition, as they corresponded briefly in early 1881. When Chicago’s civic and commercial leaders began planning for the Columbian Exposition, Burnham became their unofficial adviser. Upon receipt of a telegram inviting Olmsted to advise on a site for the exposition, he and Henry Sargent Codman traveled there on August 8. Burnham escorted them to the seven sites then being considered for the world’s fair. The exposition was their first collaboration.

Burnham, who generally deferred to Olmsted’s greater experience in determining the site and plan for the exposition, strongly endorsed Olmsted’s recommendation of Jackson Park. As they were preparing the plan, Burnham recalled that Olmsted’s “familiarity with the site and his superior knowledge of landscape effects caused us to be guided by him in general features.” Olmsted and Codman, together with Burnham and Root, then sketched a preliminary plan that included the grand basin, the Lagoon and Wooded Island, and the sites for principal buildings. That initial plan would be refined in succeeding months, but it established the general outlines for the world’s fair.

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Olmsted, Codman, and Burnham developed a close working relationship. Olmsted considered boating on the Lagoon an important feature of the exposition, and Burnham ultimately supported his recommendation of electric launches and Venetian gondolas. Burnham defended the Wooded Island against incursions and gently persuaded Olmsted that locating the Ho-o-den Temple there would be the least objectionable addition to the island. He also endorsed other of Olmsted and Codman’s recommendations, including the use of gaily colored awnings for the launches and for seating areas throughout the grounds, as well as adequate resources for obtaining plants. The two men occasionally clashed, as the Columbian Exposition added another heavy workload to Olmsted’s already overextended firm, and Burnham frequently telegraphed or wrote pleading for him or Codman to come help resolve important issues of design. In 1893 Olmsted expressed frustration that Burnham frequently assigned other responsibilities to Rudolph Ulrich, superintendent of landscape, which Olmsted believed detracted from his responsibilities for directing the planting and other elements of constructing the landscape.

Daniel H. Burnham

During the second week of June 1893, Olmsted wrote a blistering letter to Burnham criticizing the shabby state of the gravel walks, inadequate maintenance of the grounds, poor signage, the screeching of the steamboats on Lake Michigan, and the need for brightly colored awnings and seating areas, especially around the basin in the Court of Honor. Burnham responded generously, agreeing with most of Olmsted’s complaints and explaining the steps he had taken to correct them. He also conceded that the Chicago directors had insisted on greater economy, which made accomplishing all of Olmsted’s suggestions difficult. Burnham added that while the exposition was complete, “the fight must go on till the gates close.”

Together, Burnham, Olmsted, Codman, and their collaborators created a magnificent setting for the exposition, one that combined the formality of the Court of Honor and the canals with the naturalistic design of the Lagoon waters and the Wooded Island, which Olmsted intended as a relief from the architectural formality of the rest of the fair. Burnham testified to the work of the Olmsted firm in a report to the Chicago directors just before the October 21, [67] 1892, dedication ceremonies, in which he gave the firm “the credit in a broad sense of [t]he design of the whole work.”

In his remarks at a March 1893 dinner hosted by the New York architects in his honor, Burnham singled out Olmsted for special praise as “the planner of the Exposition.” He described Olmsted as “our best adviser and our common mentor,” whose words of advice were cherished by all who collaborated in creating the fair. Burnham then stated that Olmsted should have been the honoree that evening, “not for his deeds of later years alone, but for what his brain has wrought and his pen has taught for half a century.”

Olmsted likewise paid tribute to Burnham’s leadership in the creation of the exposition. Although Olmsted was unable to attend the dinner, he wrote of the Director of Works: “I hardly think that any one man living has a better knowledge or a higher appreciation of the broadness of views or the singular ability with which he has met the great and complex responsibilities thrown upon him in connection with the Columbian Exposition. Nor can any one be more disposed to join in giving honor and expressing gratitude to him.” In his address to the World’s Congress of Architects in August 1893 Olmsted said of Burnham, “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.”