Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

Daniel H. Burnham

Chicago, Central Business Section,
Arno B. Reincke, map artist,
1916.
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

Architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham was born in Henderson, New York on September 4, 1846. As a young man of 27, Burnham joined architect John Wellborn Root to establish one of the most famous architectural firms in U.S. history. Pioneering the construction methods which made modern skyscrapers possible, Burnham and Root changed forever our city skylines.

Burnham and Root's prolific partnership ended in 1891 upon Root's death from pneumonia. Taking over Root's role as chief architect of Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Burnham coordinated the design and construction of an elaborate fairground complete with grand boulevards, classical building facades, and lush gardens. His "White City" popularized the neoclassical style, prompting U.S. architects to incorporate similar elements into their own designs.

After his triumph at the fair, Burnham masterminded a variety of other architectural projects including New York's dramatic Flatiron Building and Washington, D.C.'s Union Station.

Burnham presented his most ambitious work, the Plan of Chicago, in 1909. Coproduced with architect Edward H. Bennett, the plan anticipated by several decades the need to control random urban growth. The proposed system of city parks, civic buildings, commercial boulevards, transportation routes, and lakefront recreation areas not only influenced Chicago's development, it set the standard for urban design.

Chicago's Lake Front, 1938.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

• To see more images of Chicago, search on Chicago in these collections:
  • Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
  • Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929
  • Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
  • FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945
  • Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present
  • American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936
• Search on the term Chicago parks in American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936 to see both landscape drawings and lantern slide images related to that city's extensive park system. See, for example, the landscape drawing of the Armour Square Playground as well as a lantern slide image of children in the Armour Square Wading Pool.
• To learn more about skyscrapers, search across American Memory, or in the Today in History Archive, on skyscraper. In case you missed it, see yesterday's Today in History feature on Burnham's great architectural rival in Chicago, Louis Sullivan.

The Town of the Queen of Angels

Broadway Street, Los Angeles, Showing City Hall,
March 11, 1946.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991

On September 4, 1781, Mexican settlers celebrated the founding of El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels). Located between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, El Pueblo, as it was called, remained independent of the United States until the Mexican War in 1846, when the city was taken in a bloodless effort by U.S. forces. On April 4, 1850, the city was incorporated as Los Angeles and designated the county seat of Los Angeles County.

During the California gold rush, Los Angeles prospered through sales of agricultural goods to hungry miners. The stories of these early settlers are contained in California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900, a collection of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history. Search on Los Angeles in this collection to find memoirs such as Katherine Abbott Sanborn's that includes advice for tourists planning a rail trip to Southern California:

For the stranger Los Angeles is the place to go to see a new play, or marvel at the display of fruits seen at a citrus fair--forts made of thousands of oranges, and railroad stations and crowns of lemons, etc.--and admire a carnival of flowers, or for a day's shopping; but there are better spots in which to remain. I found the night air extremely unpleasant last winter, and after hearing from a veracious druggist, to whom I applied for a gargle, that there was an epidemic of grip in the city, and that many died of pneumonia and that a small majority of the invalids got well, I packed my trunk hastily and started for Pasadena.

Katherine Abbott Sanborn, A Truthful Woman in Southern California, 1893.
California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900

Los Angeles as it Appeared in 1871,
map created in 1929.
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929

The city grew considerably with the arrival of the railroad in the mid-1870s allowing both the easy export of agricultural products and an influx of immigrants. During the 1880s, the population of Los Angeles more than quadrupled, increasing from 11,183 in 1880 to 50,395 by 1890. As the city continued to grow in the new century, planners sacrificed several thousand acres of farmland for highways and housing. Los Angeles, once the nation's wealthiest agricultural county, now derives its wealth from tourism, banking, insurance, and the motion-picture industry.

• To find more panoramic images of Los Angeles, search on Los Angeles in these collections:
  • Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
  • Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929
• American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920 contains the preliminary plans for the city of Los Angeles, as well as photographic images. Browse the following American Memory collections to find a diverse historical array of photographs of the city:
  • Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
  • American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936
  • FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945