October 8 - Great Chicago Fire

Image courtesy nationalgeographic.org

On this day, in 1871, the Great Chicago Fire started, eventually burning down a large chunk of the city. Maybe it's just a Midwest thing, but when I went to camp one of the songs we used to sing that went like this:

Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Old lady Leary left the lantern in the shed
And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said
It'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!

The lyrics weren't ever really explained to us kids, it was just a fun ditty to sing. We knew it had something to do with a fire but that was it. No one ever told us of the devastation the fire caused or the fact that the whole cow theory of ignition was just a bunch of bull.

Image courtesy mentalfloss.com

We do know that the fire did indeed start sometime after 9 p.m. in the shed next to the O'Leary family barn at 137 DeKoven Street. Later, the legend of a cantankerous cow kicking over an oil lamp while being milked and setting the barn on fire would take hold of the public's imagination but there is no evidence to support it. The O'Learys claim they were already in bed when the flames roused them. Other people claimed it wasn't the cow who knocked the lantern over but some intoxicated men playing cards in shed. The fact remains, however, that we will never know what started the conflagration (and no, it wasn't aliens or a comet either) which hardly matters anyways. It's what came next that changed Chicago forever.

Image courtesy wikipedia.org

Prior to the blaze, Chicago had been in the grip of a hot, dry summer. Between July 4 and the night of October 8,  the city only experienced one inch of rainfall total. Two-thirds of the buildings in the Windy City were made almost entirely of wood. The only part that wasn't wood were the highly flammable tar roofs. Additionally, the sidewalks and most of the roads were of wood construction. The city of Chicago only employed 185 firefighters at that time, with only 17 horse-drawn steam engines, most of whom were already worn out having battled several small blazes during the week before. Put all those things together and it's basically a miracle that the fire wasn't worse.

The fire spread incredibly quickly, partly due to conditions and partly because the firefighters were accidentally sent to the wrong place at first. When they finally arrived on DeKoven Street, things were already out of control. Over the next forty hours or so, it moved north, spurred on by high winds that actually caused several other large fires around the Midwest on the same day. When it reached the south branch of the Chicago River, firefighters crossed their fingers that it would stop but it barely paused. The lumber yards on the river's bank coupled with the large number of barges in the river itself made the jump into the downtown area easy peasy. Officials again hoped that the main branch of the river would provide a natural firebreak and were again disappointed. A good chunk of the north end of the city also burned before the flames were brought under control and burned out.

Image courtesy chicagotribune.com

In the end, a swath of Chicago about four miles long and half a mile wide burned to the ground. Over 17,500 buildings were destroyed by the Great Fire. At least 300 people were dead and nearly 100,000 were left homeless (that's about a third of the residents for those of you counting). The charred remains of downtown smoldered for several days. In financial terms, the damage topped $222 million (the equivalent of nearly $4.7 Billion today).

The good news is that the ruins of Chicago weren't allowed to hang around for very long. The city council immediately adopted new construction standards mostly designed to stop the spread of fires in the future. Rebuilding efforts began shortly thereafter, mostly due to a huge outpouring of donations from around the world. Thanks in part to a bequest from London, England, the city was able to start a new public library system, replacing the private, members-only libraries that existed before. Working closely with fire prevention specialists and insurance executives, Chicago also soon had one of the top fire fighting companies in the world. None of this helped the people who had lost important papers like birth and marriage certificates in the fire and struggled to recover for the rest of their lives, but it did make life better for those who came after.

Image courtesy ghostwatch.net

A few remnants of the Great Fire can still be seen in Chicago. There were only a handful of buildings left standing in the affected areas of the city. The Water Tower, the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station and St. Michael's Church in Old Town are still links to the past. If you visit St. James Cathedral on the corner of Huron and Wabash, the church is new but if you look at the top of the bell tower, you should be able to notice some bricks that were blackened by the massive amounts of soot that enveloped the city 147 years ago. But if you're looking to take a gander at the O'Leary's shed, where the whole thing started, you're out of luck. The shed, barn and house were torn down in 1956 to make way for the Chicago Fire Academy, one of the premier firefighter training facilities in the country. It's not a place where cows or gamblers are allowed any where near open flames.

Also on this day, in Disney history: Art Babbitt