Friday, January 9, 2015

Burnham Park

BURNHAM PARK

Designed by and named after premier American architect and urban planner, Daniel Hudson Burnham, who also designed the original plan for Baguio City. Burnham Park remains, to this day, one of the Philippines' most well known and best-loved parks.

The park retains much of Daniel Burnham's original design and layout a century ago, with a few features added, in true Filipino fashion, to make it a vibrant center of activity for everyone to enjoy.

The very heart of Baguio City in the Philippines
Burnham Park truly is the very heart of Baguio City. With an area of 32.84 hectares its central location makes it the most valuable piece of Baguio real estate.

Burnham (1846-1912) was one of Chicago's greatest architects and planners, whose Philippine resume includes Dewey (now Roxas Boulevard) in Manila, Philippines as well as Baguio City itself, which was both a bustling mining and and recreational town!

Mr. Burham had grand  visions for everything he designed. In 1904, the Philippine capital city of Manila, he developed the areas outside the walled city of Intramuros, with a great emphasis on classic-al buildings and wide open spaces, taking into consi-deration the Philippines' Spanish influence as Spain had just six years before turned the Philippines over to the Americans.

For Baguio, he 'forced' a splendid geometric pattern amid rolling hills and wind-ing roads, which is what we know now as Burnham Park, around which the rest of the city was built.

My gracious hostess thoughtfully took me up to Baguio on the second or third day after I arrived and I felt I had discovered the most perfect spot in the world.

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