Bennett was born in
Bristol,
England on May 12, 1874, and later moved to San Francisco with his family. While an employee of Robert White, he was encouraged by famous architect
Bernard Maybeck to pursue his education in
Paris at the
École des Beaux-Arts, which he attended from 1895 to 1902 thanks to the generosity of
Phoebe Apperson Hearst. The training and friendships he made at the École shaped his entire career. After graduating, he worked for a short time in
New York City for prominent architect
George B. Post, who sent him to
Chicago to assist architect
Daniel H. Burnham in preparing a plan for the military academy at
West Point. Burnham found Bennett's work highly satisfactory and in 1903 invited him to move to Chicago to collaborate on the comprehensive
plan for San Francisco, and afterwards, the
Plan of Chicago. The completed San Francisco plan was not implemented in the aftermath of the
1906 earthquake, but Bennett became well known for his design work and co-authorship of the 1909
Plan of Chicago. While Burnham raised money and visibility for the Chicago Plan, Bennett created the actual layouts and drawings which are so well known today. Bennett also trained with Chicago's then leading country house architect
Howard Van Doren Shaw. Bennett made Chicago his personal and professional headquarters for the rest of his career. He served on the
Chicago Plan Commission in various capacities into the 1930s and developed a substantial private practice and a national reputation as a city planner. Burnham, who largely retired from active practice after 1905, other than for his work in Chicago, directed applicants to Bennett, who, with partners
William E. Parsons (1872–1939) and
Harry T. Frost (1886–1943), served as a planning consultant to many cities large and small. In the plan for Chicago, Burnham and Bennett created a working document giving substance to the City Beautiful philosophy. From this prototype Bennett developed comparable plans for numerous American cities, including
Minneapolis,
Detroit, and
Portland, Oregon. He also prepared the first Canadian comprehensive plan, the 1915 plan for Ottawa and Hull. in Lake Forest, Illinois Bennett married Catherine Jones from the prominent Lake Forest Jones family. They had one son, E. H. Bennett Jr., who was also an architect. In 1916 Bennett designed and built their estate,
Bagatelle, on the northeast corner of the original Jones estate. The house still stands at the corner of Deerpath and Green Bay Roads in Lake Forest. Bagatelle is an interpretation of the
Château de Bagatelle in Paris's
Bois de Boulogne. He also owned Deerpath Farm, a dairy farm and country retreat on just west of Lake Forest which he gave to his son, and which now remains intact as the Deerpath Farm
conservation community. For many years, Bennett's office was located in the penthouse of the Santa Fe building at 80 E. Jackson in Chicago. From this vantage point he could supervise the construction of Grant Park, which he designed as part of the
Plan of Chicago, and its structures including
Buckingham Fountain and the original
Peristyle in today's
Millennium Park. His son E. H. Bennett Jr. later occupied this same office through the late-1960s. Bennett's firm was a pioneer in the creation of
zoning ordinances and the study of transportation and
regional planning as urban design tools. He usually served on a consultant basis, frequently for quasi-public or commercial interests such as the
Commercial Club of Chicago. His vision of the city was formed in the application of Beaux-Arts design principles of axiality and the incorporation of monumental public buildings as civic markers, coupled with a systematic ordering of functions for efficiency. After
World War I, the nature of planning work changed. Fully three-quarters of the Bennett firm's work done in the 1920s was for official city planning agencies rather than for independent business or civic groups. With the
Great Depression, Bennett's volume of work declined. From the late 1920s, he was involved in planning for the 1933 Chicago
Century of Progress Exposition, and designed a number of structures for it. From 1927 until 1937, Bennett served as Chairman of the Board of Architects responsible for the development of the
Federal Triangle in
Washington, DC, a large complex of government buildings between the
White House and the
United States Capitol built to house a number of Federal agencies, including what is now the
National Archives and Records Administration. Although most of his life's work reflected the Beaux Arts tradition, Bennett also designed two known
modernist structures, one a personal studio on the south grounds of the Bagatelle estate, and the other a house in the artist colony of Tryon, North Carolina. After the retirement and death of his partners, Bennett closed his practice in 1944 and spent the final decade of his life in retirement. In the course of his career, Bennett had worked in nearly 20 states, from
California to
Florida, as well as in Puerto Rico and Canada. He presented his papers to The
Art Institute of Chicago in 1953, and these were supplemented by additional gifts and bequests from his architect son, Edward H. Bennett, Jr., over the following two decades. In 2008 Edward Bennett's Grandson, Edward Bennett III donated a substantial collection of Bennett's personal papers, drawings and photographs including his personal notebooks for the Plans of Chicago and San Francisco to
Lake Forest College. ==Works==