2 – Great Chicago Fire, October 1871
If we fast-forward 50 years and move inland, we come to a fire that shaped the destiny of the industrial United States. 1871 Chicago was a sprawling city of some 300,000 people, drawn largely to work at the railroads, lumber yards and meat stockyards. The city had grown tenfold in the last two decades and most of those new Chicagoans had been housed in hastily erected wooden homes. These would be the kindling to the Great Chicago Fire.
The cause of the Chicago Fire is long lost to myth. The main story – that of Mrs O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lantern – has been largely laughed off over the years, but the fire certainly did start near to the O’Leary’s cottage in what is now University Village, just to the southwest of the Loop. The story of Mrs O’Leary has long been associated with anti-Irish sentiment in the Chicago area and was reported in the first post-fire edition of the Chicago Tribune, though the reporter later admitted that it was a fabrication.
The origins of the fire may be unknown, but the devastation that it wreaked was easy to see. The whole city was built from wood and the fire spread rapidly across the North, West and Southwest of Chicago. As it leapt the Chicago River, the city’s waterworks were taken into the inferno, halting any attempts by firefighters to get the blaze under control. Eventually a rainstorm extinguished the flames. 300 lay dead and another 100,000 had been left homeless, a third of the population of the city. The panorama of Chicago after the fire is one of the most shocking photographs in American history.
The effect on the city was terrible, but the way in which Chicago rebuilt was nothing short of outstanding. Within weeks, donations had come in from around the world to fund the reconstruction of buildings, which were built using brick rather than timber. The level of construction required created an economic boom that drew yet more immigrants to the Midwest, enlarging the city from 300,000 to over 1 million by 1900. The demand was such that towns all over Illinois and Wisconsin became boom towns, supplying lumber to the city. Singapore, Michigan was reduced to a ghost town after the whole city’s timber supply was used to rebuild Chicago.
In the aftermath, a whole new style of architecture was developed that now characterises Chicago. The railroad hub and steelyards remained untouched as the Southside was largely shielded from the flames and they fuelled the rebuilding of the city as one of stone and steel, the most modern in America. The first skyscraper built in 1885 and became a symbol of the new Chicago, emerging from the ashes of the old city.