Disruptive street widenings were particularly contentious, but the city’s overall growth and prosperity usually provided the benefits promised by boosters. This 1922 cartoon appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

A 1919 rally at the Garrick Theater (left) encouraged voters to approve various bond issues for Plan improvements such as the widening of Roosevelt Road (right).

This summary of central area projects was shown in magic lantern slide presentations and reproduced in such magazines as National Geographic.

With things as they should be, every business man in Chicago would make more money than he does now.

—Plan of Chicago, p. 76

The Plan’s dramatic proposals to reshape the metropolis fit the spirit of a place used to big engineering solutions to its problems. Within the memory of its readers, Chicago had raised itself 10 feet out of the mud, tunneled two miles under the lake for fresh water, rebuilt a third of the city after the Fire, transformed a swamp into the biggest World’s Fair ever, and had reversed the flow of an entire river. The city’s leaders, looking at the city’s rapid growth, honestly thought Chicago was destined to become the world’s largest city.

The story of the Plan of Chicago is the story of a city, not a man. Burnham’s charismatic leadership was vital, but he himself credited Edward H. Bennett as coauthor, and Charles Moore as editor. After Burnham’s death in 1912, implementation of the Plan was the result of inspired leadership and persistent work by others. Retired brewer Charles Wacker devoted himself to realization of the Plan, leading the Plan Commission until 1926, when he was succeeded by James Simpson. Walter Moody, the Plan Commission’s public-relations genius, kept the Plan in the public eye as Chicago entered the boom years of the 1920s.

The Plan’s advocates were tireless, giving “magic lantern” slide talks (in a variety of languages) to any group that would listen. Promotional brochures were sent to all the city’s property owners and renters paying more than $25 per month. Articles in newspapers and magazines across the nation showcased the improvements. A short film, “A Tale of One City,” was shown over and over in the city’s movie houses. Ministers and rabbis were urged to give sermons about the virtues of city planning. A textbook summarizing the Plan, Wacker’s Manual of the Plan of Chicago, was adopted by city schools and a generation of eighth-graders were taught the benefits of the Plan.

The document itself was neither vague encouragement to lofty goals nor mere technical diagrams. Instead, it was a list of specific public improvements that should be made, and the reasons why. It emphasized Chicago’s tradition of optimism and bold thinking. It was regional in scope. It focused on quality of life for all residents. And it concluded with a clear call for action.

Rich illustrations—particularly those executed by Guérin—allowed Chicagoans to imagine a transformed city. Reproduced in booklets, pamphlets and magazines, those are the images we remember.

For decades, the young Beaux-Arts–trained Bennett advised the Plan Commission and governmental bodies constructing the projects. He fiercely defended the Plan’s core principles, even as that eventually led to conflict with the commission itself. His use of neoclassical elements for modern infrastructure—from park viaducts to bridgehouses to Wacker Drive—brought the Plan’s drawings to life.