On 18 April 1906 a major earthquake struck San Francisco, and the fires it set burned for three days, destroying around 80 per cent of the city and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Daniel Burnham had only recently completed an ambitious City Beautiful replan with grand boulevards and civic centres, but pressure to rebuild quickly led the city to discard it and reconstruct on the existing street grid. Property owners and commerce demanded speed, and reconstruction proceeded lot by lot rather than to a comprehensive scheme. Building improvements were limited largely to fire-resistant materials and updated codes.
It became a landmark case of reconstruction speed and private property interests defeating comprehensive planning. The episode illustrated the recurring tension between visionary master plans and the urgency of getting a destroyed city working again.
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