Great Chicago Fire

Great Chicago Fire, conflagration that began on October 8, 1871, and burned until early October 10, devastating an expansive swath of the city of Chicago.

Chicago’s growth in the mid-19th century was unprecedented. The population reached nearly 30,000 in 1850 and was triple that a decade later. Cheap transportation to the outskirts of the city encouraged middle-class dispersal, but poor neighbourhoods near the downtown area were congested; structures there were also built of wood. Serious fires were frequent, but none would compare to the one started on October 8, 1871. Months without rain had parched the city, and a major fire the previous night had exhausted firefighters and damaged equipment.

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The Great Chicago Fire began on the city’s West Side, in the De Koven Street barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, though it is not known what happened there. Vandals, milk thieves, a drunken neighbour, spontaneous combustion, even (though unlikely) the O’Learys’ legendary cow—any could have started that blaze, which roared out of control in minutes. Misdirected fire equipment arrived too late, and a steady wind from the southwest carried the flames and blazing debris from block to block. The slums became kindling for the downtown conflagration, where even the supposedly fireproof stone and brick buildings exploded in flames as the destruction swept northward. Only rainfall, the lake, and stretches of unbuilt lots on the North Side finally halted the wave of destruction on the morning of October 10.

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Disasters of Historic Proportion

The fire, the most famous in American history, claimed about 300 lives, destroyed some 17,450 buildings covering almost 3.5 square miles (9 square km), and caused $200 million in damage. Roughly one-third of the city lay in ruins, and an equal proportion of the population—nearly 100,000 people—was homeless.

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While the fire had devastated the downtown and North Side of Chicago, the stockyards and lumberyards on the South and West sides remained intact. The city rebuilt quickly, and by 1880 its population had reached a half million. A host of talented architects—including Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, William Holabird, Daniel H. Burnham, John Wellborn Root, and William Le Baron Jenney—who had been attracted to Chicago by the postfire rebuilding opportunities stayed on in the 1880s to design a new generation of even taller downtown buildings. Department stores and offices crowded into the central area, and industrial growth along the river branches and rail lines was equally phenomenal.