Daniel Burnham, 1846-1912: An architect and city planner who created the model of the Swedenborgian heavenly city here on earth.
Daniel
Burnham, a renowned Chicago architect, was a pioneer in both skyscraper
design and city planning. A lifelong Swedenborgian (and grandson of a
Swedenborgian minister) he attended Swedenborgian schools as a boy and
teenager.
After completing an architecture apprenticeship, he
joined a firm and met fellow trainee John W. Root, who shared Burnham's
enthusiasm for Swedenborgian ideas. They formed Burnam and Root, which
became the leading architectural firm in Chicago, responsible for some
of the most admired buildings of the renowned Chicago school, among them
the Monadnock Building and Masonic Temple. After Root's death in 1891,
Burnham designed the famous Flatiron Building, New York's' first
skyscraper, and Union Station in Washington, DC.
It was in the
realm of city planning, however, that Burnham realized his greatest and
most enduring achievements and it is there that the inspiration of
Swedenborgian ideas is most profoundly imbedded. Burnham supervised
construction of the great Chicago World's Fair of 1893, creating the
"White City" as an ideal model for a modern city. His work, which
strived to realize Swedenborg's heavenly city in stone, steel and
concrete, has shaped much of twentieth century America's urban
landscape.