DANIEL BURNHAM. The Railway Exchange. Apologia

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And so.

Stylistically.

Chicago School within a Beaux Arts Format. Ruskin's organics. Anderson's 4th Century Rome. Dinkelberg's (can't wait to blog the Jewelers' Building) enormous, philosophically anchored talent. The echo of Atwood. Not to mention the Vanderbilts.

This (all of this) is Daniel Burnham, "the man who set Architecture back by 50 years" (at a Fair that put Chicago on the Map) creating a synthesis of Regionalism and Classicism at the Railway Exchange -- the building that would become home to the creation of the 1909 Plan of the City of Chicago.

Within this framework, the synthesis of Greece and that Native American woman's perfect grace present irrefutable logic.
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Daniel, we've underestimated you.

DANIEL BURNHAM. The Railway Exchange. Angels. With Pigtails.

Daniel Burnham must have given some personal thought to the design of the cornice at the 1904 Railway Exchange Building. 224 South Michigan Avenue. His new offices. D.H. Burnham and Company was about to leave the Rookery and enter the Twentieth Century.   

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The motif he chose was a row of round windows.  

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Punctuated with Angels. Angels with pigtails.

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Not seen in Chicago since these (below) by Philip Martiny (assisted by Henry Hering) on Charles Atwood's Fine Arts Building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

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The Fair would become Chicago's inspiration in ways large and small, for the next 25 years. And Burnham's "launch" to successes unimaginable just five years previous. 

Two blocks north "Progress Lighting the Way of Commerce"  inspired by Saint Gaudens "Diana" (from the Fair's Agriculture Building) already "spun" above Aaron Montgomery Ward's headquarters at 6 North Michigan Avenue.

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Round windows at the cornice were not without precedent.  Take a look of Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York.

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PEOPLE'S GAS BUILDING. In Context

The People's Gas Building was meant to be the "Big Boy on the Block." From this photo it looks like "mission accomplished." The loggia, which looks somewhat arbitrary on today's skyline, literally overlooked the City in 1910. Corporate offices in the upper stories would have been spectacular. (Except for the smoke) And the cornice certainly befits a utility company with aspirations to be the largest in the world. People's only competition for prominence on the street was the Railway Exchange, and the half-completed McCormick Building.
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We all talk about the change of scale we're facing today with the "supertalls". In the early 1900's Chicago went through a similar transition. The Ward Tower (a little to the north) looks almost delicate. And Sullivan's Auditorium (to the south) which was the tallest building in Chicago and the largest in the country is dwarfed. .
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I have always felt that this Building has been somehow substantially diminished. I attributed it to difficult repairs and renovations. (More on this to follow) But looking at the full impact of this structure in its original context, I realize that I entirely misjudged what I was seeing. People's Gas was the biggest and best that 1910 Chicago had to offer. And the resources were significant.

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Credits to PatSabin.com and that incredible postcard collection. And wikepedia.