Eye On Illinois: Can voices from the past inspire bold visions for our civic future?

“Make no little plans.”

I didn’t set out to launch Architect Week, but Daniel Burnham was born this day in 1846, and after writing about Louis Sullivan on the 168th anniversary of his birth yesterday, it seems only natural to give some attention to his contemporary and rival.

Whereas Sullivan’s most prominent legacy is his commercial buildings, and while those structures often visually define their communities, Burnham’s work is more directly intertwined with government via municipal planning. His influence on Chicago’s 20th-century growth is well known, and his fingerprints are evident in Washington, D.C., and even the Philippines.

Burnham’s famed phrase came from a 1910 speech in London. The larger context: “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 never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”

Yesterday I wondered how Sullivan would apply his “form follows function” ethos to the modern problem of all our unneeded office space, at least as presently constituted. But a true solution, one to meaningfully transform the communities where millions of square feet sit vacant, would require an equal infusion of Burnham’s spirit as well.

Also from that 1910 address: “Pessimists abound and have always abounded. To them most of the big and splendid things are chimerical. Well, in 1850, there was little street paving in the United States, and not much in London or Paris. There were no great sewerage systems, water systems, gas, electric power and light, street cars, sidewalks or other systems, but all these we have now. We do things that would make our forbears think us magicians.

“Our city of the future will be without smoke, dust or gases from manufacturing plants, and the air will therefore be pure. The streets will be as clean as our drawing rooms today. Smoke will be thoroughly consumed, and gases liberated in manufacture will be tanked and burned. Railways will be operated electrically, all building operations will be effectually shut in to prevent the escape of dust, and horses will disappear from the streets. Out of all these things will come not only commercial economy but bodily health and spiritual joy.”

Burnham also was an early environmentalist. How many massive commercial properties occupy land that might be repurposed for broad societal and natural betterment?

Big plans require big money. Yet inaction and reticence have their own inescapable costs.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.