On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire started to wreak havoc. This fire lasted for two days, but caused $200 million in damages, killed hundreds of people, and destroyed thousands of buildings. Chicago was an extremely rapid growing city in terms of population, but that meant many areas were very densely populated, and many fires broke out.
The cause of the Great Chicago Fire is unknown, but one legend is that a cow kicked over a lantern, causing the fire to start. Help arrived quickly from the fire department, however, an error caused some firefighters to be sent to the wrong place. As a result, the fire was able to spread easily. After the fire was over, there was still chaos in the form of looting. This prompted the government to send in the military to help restore order in the city. Another problem was that the remaining stores and businesses sold items for extremely high prices because they knew there was a high demand for things. This required the city to try to stop this, and they set one law that set the price of a loaf of bread at eight cents. Help came from other states. Cities and individuals donated necessities to help people. Some believed that the fire was a sign that Americans need to return to previous ways of life and stop industrialization, and others believed that building techniques needed to be improved. One famous architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, believed that the main problem was that buildings were poorly constructed and planned. Chicago’s new mayor, Joseph Medill, was elected one month after the fire, and he promised to create fire codes and buildings better suited for the dangers of industrialization.
As mentioned previously, one theory was that a cow kicked over a lantern. This story began to spread quickly, and the owners of the barn, the O’Leary family, was under heavy scrutiny from the public. Some believe that the reason that they were targeted might have been because the wife, Catherine, was an Irish immigrant and Catholic. The Chicago city council even officially blamed them in 1997, though the evidence was not conclusive. Another theory proposed in 1882 was that a meteor shower caused the fire. In 2004, a physicist named Robert Wood proposed that the Biela’s Comet, which was seen in 1826 but never seen again since 1852, could have struck down on Chicago and caused the fire. However, this theory is not supported as much because typically meteorites do not start fires. Overall, this fire was destructive but helped convince people of the need for better building planning.
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It's scary how bad the building codes must have been for such a huge fire to break out. I researched a little more of the "Great Rebuilding". Many people ignored laws that were passed to construct buildings with fireproof materials such as brick and stone because it was too expensive. Reconstruction was also halted by a bank failure in 1873 and a second, smaller fire in 1874.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.org/news/chicago-fire-1871-and-great-rebuilding/
It's ridiculous to that due to the rapid expansion of these cities officials missed or simply ignored critical building codes that would've prevented this tragedy. That mistake cost them over 200 million dollars which at the time was a crazy amount of money for a city to pay in damages and even now that amount is significant. It just goes to show that people were willing to expand regardless of the costs. But it all backfired on them.
ReplyDeleteI like how you discussed the different theories that possibly could have caused the fire. Upon further research, I read that approximately 100,000 people were left homeless as their houses burned down. However, the fire did play a crucial role in effecting change. After the fire, fire and building codes were improved to prevent another huge fire in the future. Additionally, the UK donated money to build the Chicago Public Library in contrast to the private establishments that existed before the fire.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire
This post is very insightful as the chicago fire revealed many of the problems of the early buildings. Despite being hit hard, the fire did not hit the stockyards or the lumberyards, allowing for the city to rebuild quickly. The new buildings gave way to phenomenal industrial growth and the city grew after being knocked down by the fire.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.britannica.com/event/Chicago-fire-of-1871