The Chicago Water Tower

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 burned for three days, killing more than 300 people and leaving another 100,000 without shelter. As with most disasters, moralists and religious fundamentalists called the event an example of heavenly retribution directed at the immoral and wicked community Chicago had become. Others simply blamed it on a cow accidentally knocking over a lantern. Both suggestions are likely untrue, though the fire did start in the vicinity of the O’Leary barn, located in an alley behind DeKoven Street. The most likely cause of the fire is now believed to be accidental ignition of hay by gamblers, though the exact cause will never be known.

What is known is that Chicago of the day was for the most part built of wood, with tarpaper the favored roofing material. The hot, dry conditions of the summer of 1871 coupled with the steady breezes to the southwest to create perfect conditions for the blaze to spread, and the severely undermanned Chicago fire department could do little to stop it. Chicago’s growing stature as a rail hub and lake shipping port ensured that there was plenty of coal stored around the city, which added to the intensity of the fire and the smoke. Only rain, which began late in the second day of the fire, brought the blaze under control, but by then it had begun to burn itself out anyway, having consumed much of the city.

The Chicago Water Tower was one of the very few buildings to survive the fire. Built two years before the fire, ironically in part to support firefighting, the Tower’s limestone structure was scorched and blackened, but both the building and the standpipe within were undamaged. The Chicago Avenue Water Pumping Station nearby was destroyed by the fire, as well as the pumping equipment located within the building. The Water Tower became a symbol of the city’s survival and resilience, and led many to believe, incorrectly, that it was the only building in the city to have survived the fire. This belief remains today, despite a few other surviving structures remaining.

Subsequent to the fire the Water Tower was renovated, with many of the blackened limestone blocks of which it is constructed replaced. Changes to the street layout of the city led to the Water Tower being afforded a location in which it was a feature of the downtown area. Dwarfed today by the high rises of Chicago, it remains sited in a small park, home of the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower. The gallery displays the work of local artists as part of the Chicago Office of Tourism. The flamboyantly castellated tower has been said to have been an inspiration for the design of the early White Castle hamburger restaurants, but this has never been proven.

The Chicago Water Tower remains a symbol of Chicago, one of the few buildings in the burned area to survive, and a sentinel over the rebuilding of the city. It is the second oldest water tower extant in the United States, and arguably the most famous. Less famous is the story of Frank Trautman, a Chicago firefighter who likely saved the tower during the fire by keeping the building covered in water soaked canvas, protecting it from the cinders and flaming debris which swirled around it as the rest of the city burned. Although the Water Tower failed to save the city, the city managed to save the tower.