D.H.BURNHAM & Co. Orchestra Hall. A Good Old-Fashioned Georgian Mystery.

D.H. Burnham and Company produced a remarkable series of designers. Each with a clear sense of aesthetic and a stylistic signature. Following John Root (who is a separate story), Charles Atwood produced both Neo-classicism (the Fine Arts Building at the Columbian Expostion) and Chicago School Masterpieces (including the Reliance and the Fisher). Frederick Dinkelberg continued with Atwood's Chicago School aesthetic and began the transition of Burnham's work to the Beaux Arts (The Heyworth, The Railway Exchange and The Conway). Peirce Anderson took Burnham "international" in the Beaux Arts movement with remarkable interpretations of the classical including the Illinois Merchants Bank and the Field Museum. A few others including Peter Weber, George Nimmons, and Dwight Perkins also designed buildings for Burnham, but they tended to the Chicago School and were responsible primarily for lesser buildings.

So. What's this?
.

Clearly Georgian, it is D.H. Burnham and Company's Orchestra Hall, built in 1904. GEORGIAN. Either designed by one of Burnham's own, whose penchant for Georgian (and this Georgian is well done) went somehow unnoticed -- or the design came from someplace or someone else.

I love a mystery.

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