Edward J. Burling

Edward J. Burling (April 24, 1819, in Newburgh, New York – February 1892) was an American architect who designed buildings in Chicago in the 1840s through the 1890s.

He was never formally trained nor completed his education, but began a carpentry apprenticeship as a teenager, heading up the design and construction of a few homes after having experience.

He was hired to build a Greek Revival home for Eli B. Williams, one of Chicago’s earliest settlers and real estate developers.

Despite his work getting destroyed, his Tribune Building—the first supposedly fireproof building in the city—saw its iron beams melt into liquid rivers in the blasting heat, and its stone baked and crumbled to dust.

Still, a stone-walled survivor of Burling’s early work stands next to the Driehaus Museum today: St. James Cathedral, which he built in 1857 and rebuilt in 1875.