The Great Chicago Fire
The spark that leveled a metropolis
Alex Q. Arbuckle
October 1871
On the night of Oct. 8, 1871, a fire erupted in the O’Leary family barn at 137 DeKoven Street in Chicago. The most famous and enduring explanation is that a cow kicked over a lamp while being milked by Mrs. O’Leary, but this story was a baseless rumor spread by local papers. It caught on with the public partly due to anti-Irish sentiment and the desire for a clear scapegoat for the destruction that followed.Whether the fire was sparked by chance, accident or intent, it soon engulfed the barn and spread, aided by drought conditions and strong winds from the southwest.
It was like a snowstorm, only the flakes were red instead of white. - Bessie Bradwell Helmer
The city’s 185 firefighters, already exhausted from fighting smaller fires, were quickly outmatched as superheated winds sent burning debris flying across the Chicago River, igniting wooden buildings, plank sidewalks and even the greasy surface of the river itself. City officials evacuated prisoners from the basement jail of the courthouse, just before its bell tower caught fire and sent its great bell crashing through the building. At 3:30 a.m., the Pumping Station on Chicago Avenue collapsed, crippling the fire department’s ability to combat the blaze. The conflagration raged out of control as the panicked and awestruck population fled the city. By the time a rain began to fall on Tuesday morning, more than 2,000 acres of the city had burned, leveling 17,500 buildings and causing $222 million in damage. A third of the city’s 300,000 residents were left homeless, and as many as 300 dead. As soon as the ashes had cooled, the city set about rebuilding, now with stringent fire codes and less flammable materials.
It was the completeness of the wreck; the total desolation which met the eye on every hand; the utter blankness of what had a few hours before been so full of life, of associations, of aspirations, of all things which kept the mind of a Chicagoan so constantly driven. - Elias Colbert & Everett Chamberlin, “Chicago and the Great Conflagration,” 1871
