Chicago Fire

Chicago Fire. The Chicago fire of 8–10 October 1871 is perhaps the most famous urban disaster in American history. Its exact cause is unknown, notwithstanding the legend that it was started by Mrs. Catherine O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern. Whatever the conflagration's origin, the combination of a long drought, high winds, a delay in the alarm system, and an overmatched fire department assured catastrophe for the new metropolis, which was constructed almost entirely of wood. The flames destroyed a third of the city, including the entire commercial downtown and the homes of about 100,000 of Chicago's 334,000 residents. The fire claimed remarkably few lives (estimates range in the low hundreds), however, and it spared most of Chicago's factories and railroad facilities.

Striking a city that seemed to embody the spirit of modernity in the United States, the disaster drew worldwide attention and evoked a massive outpouring of charity. No less impressive than Chicago's destruction was the astonishing rapidity with which it was rebuilt, a testimony not only to the grit and energy of its citizens but also to the young city's strategic location between the industrial East and the agricultural West which made it a major center of communications, transportation, manufacturing, and trade. The heroic story of Chicago's triumphant resurrection from the ashes, endlessly retold, overlooks many social divisions accentuated by the whole experience, but the city's recovery does reveal the resilience of the individual spirit and the force of urbanization in nineteenth‐century America.

Bibliography

Karen Sawislak , Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire, 1871–1874, 1995.
Carl Smith , Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb, and the Model Town of Pullman, 1995.

Carl Smith