On Monday, September 6, PBS will air the documentary Make No Little Plans: Daniel Burnham and the American City. Check local listings, as the tote-bag cadres like to say.
Watch it.
And it wouldn’t kill you to become a member of your local PBS station during the next pledge drive.
The DVD can also be bought directly from the film’s site.
(via Blair Kamin’s CityScapes blog)
PBS stations nationwide will air the documentary Make No Little Plans; Daniel Burnham & The American City Monday, September 6 (Labor Day).
Daniel Burnhnam pioneered the the modern skyscraper, shepherded the 1892 World’s Fair to success and influenced the growth and shape of Chicago with his 1909 Plan of Chicago. He also was the architect of some of the greatest buildings in America: the Rookery, the Monodock Building and the Flat Iron building in New York. He was criticized by Louis Sullivan and eulogized by Frank Lloyd Wright.
“Burnham was fully engaged in civic life,” says the film’s director, Judith Paine McBrien. “He made the architect a public figure. He was bold, inspiring, competitive and complex. We’ve worked hard to bring his big personality to life.” Narrated by Oscar-nominated actress Joan Allen, the program combines digital models, original drawings, personal letters, animated graphics and stunning visuals to highlight dramatic developments that transformed both Burnham and the American city — the early development of the skyscraper; the awesome impact of the 1893 World’s Fair; and the physical reconfiguration of existing cities, including our nation’s capital. Insightful commentary by some of the country’s most distinguished historians, architects, critics and urban planners enlivens the story as does an original musical score by composer Michael Bacon.
Early in Wright’s career, Daniel Burnham offered to pay for several years of study in Europe, if Wright agreed to work for him — fortunately (for Burnham as much as anyone, I suspect) Wright turned down the offer.
One of the great chicago blogs is Chicago — Architecture & Cityscape, a photoblog that covers the architecture and great spaces of Chicago. The quality of the photography is excellent (certainly better than I can manage) and the blogger has an eye for the places that fans of Frank Lloyd Wright would want to see. The site is highly recommended for your RSS reader or bookmarks menu.
Recently, the site had had a number of posts on the Rookery Building (Burnham Library, elements of the original Light Court, Wright’s Light court, John Root’s Oriel staircase, the elevator court by William Drummond, and yet more Frank Lloyd Wright) It’s an exaggeration to claim that the least interesting feature of the Rookery Building is its Frank Lloyd Wright lobby, but not a great exaggeration. The Rookery that you see today has become a collaboration: designed by Burnham & Root in 1886, with a lobby redesigned in 1905 by Wright, and some Art Deco elements added by William Drummond in the 1930s. The Rookery was home to the offices of both Burnham & Root and, briefly, Wright. Renovations over the last twenty years have restored the building to its turn-of-the-century splendor. Regardless of architect, nearly every element on view to the public is exquisitely beautiful.
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