BENNETT, Edward Herbert (1874-1954), a well-known architect and city planner from Chicago who was appointed to develop a new City Plan for the Ottawa and Hull region in 1913-14 (Building News [London], cvi, 9 Jan. 1914, 54, descrip.; Charles C. Hill, edit., Artists, Architects & Artisans - Canadian Art 1890-1918, 2013, 243, illus. & descrip.). Prepared for the Holt Commission, the visionary proposal was a comprehensive plan for the enlargement and beautification of the capital region, and included suggestions for park schemes, arrangement of governmental and civic buildings, driveways, and industrial sites, all inspired by the City Beautiful movement which influenced the field of town planning in the early 20th century. One of Bennett's skilfully drawn perspectives, likely from the hand of the brilliant delineator Jules Guerin, showing the redevelopment of the centre of Ottawa, was reproduced in John H. Taylor, Ottawa: An Illustrated History, 1986, 147. Many of his papers relating to the Ottawa Plan now form part of the Bennett Collection held at the Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago. His proposals for Ottawa, prepared in collaboration with Frank Darling, were published in 1915 in large illustrated folio entitled "Report of the Federal Plan Commission on a General Plan for the Cities of Ottawa And Hull 1915" (copy at the City of Ottawa Archives). That same year, in 1913, Bennett presented his ideas on an urban plan for the City of Windsor and surrounding townships. A description of his public talk, with an interview, was published in the Evening Record [Windsor], 27 Feb. 1913, 1; and 28 March 1913, 1, illus. & descrip.)
Born in Cheltenham, Engl. on 12 May 1874 he came to the United States in 1890 and trained with Robert White in San Francisco. He moved to Paris in 1896 to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and after receiving his diploma there in 1902 he settled in New York City and trained under George B. Post. In 1904 he joined the office of Daniel H. Burnham and remained there until 1909, assisting with the preparation of the Plan of Chicago, as well as the City Plan of San Francisco. He later opened his own office as an architect and city planner in Chicago; his firm was renamed Bennett & Parsons in 1919, and as Bennett, Parsons & Frost in 1922. One of his best known commissions was for the colossal Buckingham Memorial Fountain in Grant Park (1924-27), and several exhibition buildings at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, 1933. He can also be credited with more than two dozen urban plans for cities including Brooklyn, N.Y. (1912-14), Portland, Oregon (1910-12), Phoenix, Ariz (920-21), Milwaukee, Wisc. (1922), and Pasadena, Calif. (1929-30). He retired in 1944 and died at Tryon, North Carolina on 14 October 1954 (biog. and port. in National Cyclopedia of American Biography, xliv, 1962, 140-1; biog. MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982, i, 179).
An exhibition catalogue on the career of work of the architect entitled 'Edward H. Bennett: Architect and City Planner 1874-1954' was published by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. Bennett's skill as a delineator and draftsman, and his ability to visualize his urban concepts, was presented in a feature article : 'Master Draftsmen: Edward H. Bennett' in the American architectural journal Pencil Points [New York], vi, Aug. 1925, 42-56, illus.