Burham was not a good student , but he was good at drawing . He went east at the age of 18 to be taught by private tutors in order to pass the admissions examinations for Harvard and Yale , failing both apparently because of a bad case of test anxiety . In 1867 , when he was 21 , he returned to Chicago and took an apprenticeship as a draftsman under William LeBaron Jenney of the architectural firm Loring & Jenney . Architecture seemed to be the calling he was looking for , and he told his parents that he wanted to become " the greatest architect in the city or country . " Nevertheless , the young Burnham still had a streak of wanderlust in him , and in 1869 he left his apprenticeship to go to Nevada with friends to try mining gold , at which he failed . He then ran for the Nevada state legislature and failed to be elected . Broke , he returned again to Chicago and took a position with the architect L. G. Laurean . When the Great Chicago Fire hit the city in October 1871 , it seemed as if there would be endless work for architects , but Burnham chose to strike out again , becoming first a salesman of plate glass windows , then a druggist . He failed at the first and quit the second . He later remarked on " a family tendency to get tired of doing the same thing for very long . " At age 26 , Burnham moved on to the Chicago offices of Carter , Drake and Wight , where he met future business partner John Wellborn Root , who was 21 , four years younger than Burnham . The two became friends and then opened an architectural office together in 1873 . Unlike his previous ventures , Burnham stuck to this one . Burnham and Root went on to become a very successful firm . Their first major commission came from John B. Sherman , the superintendent of the massive Union Stock Yards in Chicago , which provided the liveliehood &ndash; directly or indirectly &ndash; for one-fifth of the city 's population . Sherman hired the firm to build for him a mansion on Prairie Avenue at Twenty-first Street among the mansions of Chicago 's other merchant barons . Root made the initial design . Burnham refined it and supervised the construction . It was on the construction site that he met Sherman 's daughter , Margaret , whom Burnham would marry in 1876 after a short courtship . Sherman would commission other projects from Burnham and Root , including the Stone Gate , an entry portal to the stockyards , which became a Chicago landmark
Great Chicago Fire
Great Chicago Fire
Daniel Burnham