Project would create interactive trail stretching to Millennium Park; funding remains hurdle

A rendering shows two glass walls set at right angles as part of the View Chicago project, a planned memorial to Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham. (David Woodhouse Architects LLC 

Five years after unveiling plans for a public memorial to the great Chicago architect and planner Daniel Burnham, the project's backers issued a revised concept Thursday that includes an interactive, 1.6-mile walking trail stretching from Millennium Park to the Museum Campus.

They need no little cash — roughly $7.5 million — to transform their concept into reality.

Like the original plans, designed by Chicago architect David Woodhouse and made public in 2009 on the 100th anniversary of Burnham's influential Plan of Chicago, the new version calls for two tall walls, which would be set at right angles in the Field Museum's north plaza. Visitors would slip between the walls and gaze upon the dazzling cityscape that Burnham did so much to shape.

In Woodhouse's new plan, the walls would be of glass, not granite, and a statue of Burnham has been eliminated. But the biggest shifts in the plan are already in place: The project, now called View Chicago, features a mobile devices app, available at viewchicago.org/path, that guides visitors through 16 stops, beginning at Millennium Park's Cloud Gate sculpture and ending at the planned site of the right-angled walls....Continue Reading

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