Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
The proportions of the building, as designed by Daniel Burnham, are clunky AF
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Now, let's not get carried away. Daniel Burnham had been dead nearly a decade when the railroads stopped construction and went back in with new caissons so they could add some office floors on top. The designer of the Union Station we know was Peirce Anderson, using a
parti developed by Thomas Rodd of the Pennsylvania RR. After Anderson's 1924 death, Alfred Shaw took over.
Nor should Burnham's signature mean much to us regarding
architecture. He was a great rainmaker, was very good at persuading clients to create quasipublic spaces, and was a gifted planner (of floor layouts, of sites, of cities). But Burnham always kept much more talented people (Charles Atwood, Peter Weber, Anderson, Ernest Graham, Edward Bennett) around to handle actual building design.
Here's the last design Burnham would have been aware of:
For those interested, I highly recommend the
new book Chicago Union Station, by Fred Ash.
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