Chicago ifire3/28/2023 ![]() ![]() As a result, the two-story wood-frame cottages in the area resemble the Italianate homes and humbler two-story worker’s cottages found throughout the city prior to the fire. Old Town avoided (through a strong-arm political deal) the new boundaries that dictated fireproof construction. Although the neighborhood was nearly leveled in the fire, it was immediately rebuilt in a similar style and scale. Old Town gives us a glimpse of what pre-fire Chicago looked like. It would be another 10-15 years before the earliest skyscrapers-8 to 10 stories, with structural steel frames, elevators and innovative foundations-would come to replace those first post-fire buildings. Typical four-story downtown commercial buildings were often a hybrid of brick, stone and iron construction. With time and money at stake, as often happens after a natural disaster, business owners quickly rebuilt what they knew. Immediately after the fire, both downtown and in the neighborhoods, new construction looked very similar to what was built before the fire. But in reality, a different story unfolded. The myth is often told that the fire cleared the city-wiping the slate clean so tall new skyscrapers could be designed and built. Following another destructive fire in 1874, new building codes were written to ensure that most new construction contained more fire-resistant brick and stone. But within months of the fire, a land rush began. Chicago’s old wooden infrastructure may have slowed industrial growth and the development of lands for residential and commercial use. Timber and paper industries took hold first, then came meat packing and steel production. It was the most important processing point for raw materials heading east from the frontier and the biggest interchange in the new national railroad system. By 1871, Chicago had already claimed a central role in the U.S. Booming industries such as the Union Stockyards and lumberyards were located outside of the burn zone, which was roughly Halsted Street east to Lake Michigan and Roosevelt Avenue north to Fullerton Parkway. And because much of the city’s major industries were not destroyed in the fire, those economic engines continued to fuel the city’s growth and rebuilding. While many wooden houses and businesses were leveled by the fire (plus 500 miles of wooden sidewalk!), some multi-unit residential and institutional buildings were already being built using solid masonry construction. Would Chicago have developed in the same way without the fire? As author and Chicago historian Neal Samors told CAF and WBEZ’s Curious City, had the fire not occurred, “Chicago would probably have been a much smaller metropolis and not the second largest city in the United States.” ![]() Historians love to debate the impact of the Great Fire on Chicago’s development. ![]() Yet, just 20 years after the fire, the city’s population had grown from 300,000 to 1 million people. The center of Chicago and the heart of the business district were wiped out. An estimated 300 people died and 100,000 were left homeless by the three-day inferno that erased 2,100 acres of the city. While the cause of the blaze is unknown, its origin was at 558 West DeKoven Street-an address that today is home to a Chicago Fire Department training facility. On the night of October 8, 1871, fire spread across Chicago. How did the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 impact Chicago and its architecture? October inferno ![]()
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