In late 1890, Daniel Burnham, the eminent architect charged with turning a boggy square mile of Chicago into a world-dazzling showpiece, assembled an all-star team of designers and gave them one directive: “Make no little plans.” Burnham was laboring in the shadow of a landmark erected the year before in Paris, an elegant wrought iron structure rising a thousand feet into the air. But nobody in the States had an answer for the Eiffel Tower. Oh, there were proposals: a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, enabling visitors to toboggan home; another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in cars attached to thick rubber bands, a forerunner of bungee jumping. Eiffel himself proposed an idea: a bigger tower. Merci, mais non. As plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago took shape… read more >
