|Introduction | Before the Plan | Creating the Plan | Drafts of the Plan | Images of the Plan | Supplementa|
|DRAFTS OF THE PLAN|
|The published Plan of Chicago comprises 164 pages of illustrations
and text. The Commercial Club printed 1,650 limited-edition
copies of the Plan, distributing them primarily to "subscribers," or
those who contributed financially to the effort.
Divided into eight chapters, plus an additional section on the legal requirements for implementation, the Plan presents a comprehensive scheme for an orderly and beautiful urban environment. At times the Plan refers to the city as an "organism in which all the functions are related one to another." Indeed, as the book progresses, the maps become cumulative, depicting additional layers of proposed parks, roads, and railroad lines to illustrate the interrelationship between transportation, recreation, and commerce.
The Plan of Chicago recommends the following major improvements: development of Grant Park and the lakefront; construction of regional highways; improvement of railway terminals and systems, for both freight and passengers; creation of an "outer park system" throughout the city; widening of existing avenues and cutting diagonal thoroughfares; erection of a cluster of civic buildings; and construction of the Field Museum and a library near the Art Institute to form an intellectual and cultural center.
Yet, for all the ideas that appeared in the final document, others failed to make it into the text. This section contains several versions of the Plan, mostly drafts and outlines that show the development of Burnham's thoughts and the collective editing process. Of particular interest is Burnham's own manuscript draft, from which some sections were translated verbatim into the final copy, while other passages were omitted entirely.
See also full reproductions of the published version of the Plan of Chicago and Wacker's Manual of the Plan of Chicago: Municipal Economy, Especially Prepared for Study in the Schools of Chicago. This publication, more commonly known as Wacker's Manual, was an abridged textbook version of the Plan taught in the Chicago public schools for over a generation. This book by Walter Dwight Moody, first published in 1911, went through several significant revisions throughout the 1920s that eliminated a chapter on the planners and sets of review questions appended to each chapter. Moody, who was first managing director of the Chicago Plan Commission, was entrusted with the task of making the content of the prohibitively expensive Plan available to the 1.5 million citizens of Chicago. Moody astutely recognized that in order to promote awareness and execution of the Plan and its ideals in the future, the introduction of architecture and urban planning concepts into secondary education was critical.
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