"City planning is not only the design of physical spaces. Its essential elements include consideration and care for people, and including them in the planning process! Burnham’s Plan of Chicago could have been a comprehensive one, but it wasn’t. Every person—especially every city planner—who reads the 1909 Plan of Chicago should read this book.  You will be nodding throughout and find yourself astounded that so much was missing.”

—Karen L. Stonehouse, AICP, President, American Planning Association—Illinois Chapter

City Beautiful, City Livable

What Would Jane Say? tells the tale of two approaches to city-building in the early 1900s and the people and ideas behind them. It also tells the story of what was created in Chicago and what could have been created.

In 1909, architecture giant Daniel Burnham, Edward Bennett, and the Commercial Club of Chicago developed the Plan of Chicago, primarily with personal and business interests in mind. They subscribed to the City Beautiful movement, which assumed that a city that was attractive and well organized would resolve the vexing troubles around them. At the same time, the formidable Jane Addams and many female contemporaries were engaged in city-building work of a different sort. Their achievements still resonate today, even if the women's names do not. They subscribed to City Livable ideas that addressed the social, economic, and cultural needs of the population.

The city that is, the city that might have been.

After author Janice Metzger sets a detailed stage of Chicago at the turn of twentieth century the players and the movements, the problems and the reform efforts, the conflicts and the possibilities she takes readers into wonderful speculative chapters in the areas of transportation, law, housing, neighborhood development, immigration, labor, health, and education. What would Jane Addams and her peers say if they had been involved in the Plan of Chicago? Using painstaking research, historical detail, and a pinch of imagination, Metzger thinks she has a pretty good idea... 

“What Would Jane Say? is not only an insightful historical work that highlights the work of Jane Addams and her progressive contemporaries, it is also a helpful guide that offers valuable lessons and ideas that planners and public-policy makers can apply today. If you are considering a career in urban planning, social work, or local government, What Would Jane Say? is a recommended read. There is much to glean from this book that speaks to why and how social factors should be incorporated in the crafting of any master development plan.”    

—Alderman Manny Flores, 1st Ward, Chicago

Some Early City-Builders
From the pages of What Would Jane Say? 

Grace Abbott
Led investigation of employment agencies and child labor; headed Immigrant Protective League.

Anita McCormick Blaine
Daughter of Cyrus McCormick; socialist; philanthropist with an interest in progressive education and housing.

Louise de Koven Bowen
Probably the largest donor to Hull-House—inherited a fortune from pioneer grandfather who owned much of what became the central business district; involved in a wide range of civic reform efforts; early proponent of racial justice.

Helen Culver
Donated Hull-House building and land; subscriber to the Plan of Chicago; real estate developer with progressive business practices.

Elizabeth Lindsay Davis
African-American clubwoman, author, and journalist; co-founder of Phyllis Wheatley Club and Phyllis Wheatley Home.Ethel Sturges DummerPhilanthropist; theorist, Juvenile Protective Association; founder of Juvenile Psychopathic Institute.

Fannie Hagen Emanuel
Physician; supported Frederick Douglass Settlement; founded Emanuel Settlement.

Alice Hamilton
Physician; epidemiologist, studied industrial disease; first woman on faculty of Harvard Medical School.

Florence Kelley
Social scientist; first woman factory inspector in Illinois; head of National Consumers’ League.

Julia Lathrop
Founder of first juvenile court in the nation; first head of the Federal Children’s Bureau.

Marion Lucy Mahoney (Griffin)
Second woman to graduate MIT architecture school; a “community planner”; primary designer for Frank Lloyd Wright.

Annette E. Maxson McCrea
Landscape architect of railroads and depots.

Mary McDowell
Taught Hull-House kindergarten; headed University of Chicago Settlement; founding member of Women’s Trade Union League.

Harriet Monroe
Poet laureate of World’s Columbian Exposition; briefly a resident at Hull-House; started Poetry magazine in 1912.

Mollie Netcher
Chicago’s “Merchant Princess”—owner of the Boston Store, where she employed almost 4,000 people, provided some benefits uncommon at the time, such as generous commission (small salary), lunchrooms, classrooms, and tennis court on roof.

Margaret Dreier Robins
President, Women’s Trade Union League; Executive Board of Chicago Federation of Labor from 1908.

Ellen Gates Starr
Co-founder of Hull-House; teacher; arts supporter; labor activist.

Ida Wells-Barnett
Journalist; anti-lynching activist; worked with settlement leaders; co-founded Frederick Douglass Center.

Fannie Barrier Williams
Became major force in founding Provident Hospital and Training School, 1891; active in Frederick Douglass Center, Ida B. Wells Club, Phyllis Wheatley Club, and Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls; co-founder of National Association of Colored Women.

Ella Flagg Young
Highly respected educator who was named Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools later in 1909.