The "Saturday Night Fire" Struck Chicago on Saturday, October 7, 1871.

The so-called "Saturday Night Fire" of October 7, 1871, was an omen of the Great Chicago Fire, which would erupt about twenty-four hours later and ten blocks to the south. 

This fire ignited around 10 p.m. in the boiler room of Lull and Holmes Planing Mill, located at what is now 209 South Canal Street, and burned for 17 hours. It was suggested that the fire that began in the basement of the Lull and Holmes was most likely arson, but there was no time for any formal investigation.

The Chicago "Saturday Night Fire" of October 7, 1871, Burned District.

The neighborhood was popularly known to insurance brokers as the "Red Flash" so named because a large percentage of its occupiers were lumber yards and coal yards.

The Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago railroad tracks ran along the Chicago River, bordering the eastern edge of the west side. The National Elevator, presumably stocked with grain, was sandwiched between lumberyards, with the tracks on its west flank and the river on the east. Saloons, wooden tenements, and factories such as a paper box factory and a sash factory filled the rest of the space of these four city-block areas.

The 'Chicago' Steamer was wrapping up a small fire across the river when the call came for this new fire. Before the fire gained ground, they set up on the north end of the fire. As they were connecting the hose to the hydrant, the hose burst.

While they were fitting a new hose, the building in front of them collapsed, shooting flames into the street aiming at the steamer. The firemen had to make a run for it. With the horses unhitched and tethered safely away, the firemen had to return to pull their steamer by hand or lose the engine to the fire.

The fire soon crossed Jackson Street and spread through the next block as well. The firemen then relocated the Chicago steamer to protect the National Elevator. A fire started up a few times, but they quickly extinguished it. The elevator was one of the only standing structures when the blaze was over.

The great number of spectators who came to watch the free entertainment also had their share of calamity. A roof of a shed collapsed at Clinton and Jackson under the weight of nearly 150 spectators. A raised sidewalk gave way, as well. Each incident doled out its share of injuries. And several volunteers who were fighting the fire at the lumberyards found themselves in the river when they got caught between flames. They threw planks into the river and jumped in after them, paddling them across to the other side of the river.

Some other volunteers came in quite handy as the fire was trying to spread north across Adams Street. Quirks saloon, on the northwest corner of Adams and Canal, started smoking. A number of men from the insurance patrol were in the area (perhaps enjoying Quirk’s generosity as he was giving away his stock of liquor and cigars). They were ready with portable extinguishers and kept the walls wet when they started to smoke. This action helped keep the fire at bay. Another set of volunteers was tearing down sheds and fences along the train track when a small hut on the corner across from Quirks caught. They ran in and brought out a terrified old woman who was caught inside. She lost her home, but her life was safe.

The fire raged for many hours. It was under control by 3:30 in the morning. And the last of the fire engines left the scene around 4 pm, Sunday afternoon. The Chicago steamer was one of them.

The 'Chicago' Steamer.

After seventeen hours of fighting Chicago’s worst fire to date, the fire department was hurting. Hoses took a beating, coal was running low, the William James steamer was badly damaged and deemed unusable. The Clybourne hose cart was lost and the 190, or so, firemen who worked it were exhausted, suffering from smoke poisoning, swollen eyes, dehydration, and burns.

Yet, the fire department was seen as the heroes of the event as historian A. T. Andreas captures, “It was not an accident, nor the extraneous influence that checked the fire here, but calm deliberate, intelligent heroism; and to those heroes, Chicago owes eternal gratitude.”

The pathetic side of this fire has never been given the vital touch of personal narrative. From among the hundreds of experiences, one is selected that tells, in a simple form, the grief of a broken life; it is the humble story of J. Develin, and is given in his own words:

“Previous to the fire of 1871, I lived on West Jackson Street, near Clinton. I occupied a two-story house, which I had lived in from the time it was built, in the spring of 1857; and, although I did not own the property, I had paid more for it, in rent, than the whole thing was worth. At the time of the fire, we happened not to have a servant, and my wife was not only quite alone but was suffering from a swollen ankle. We had no family, and I was employed in business down in the city. This was on Saturday evening, the night before the great conflagration. My house was fully furnished and contained many pieces of costly, if not elegant, furniture. I had also about three hundred volumes of well-selected books, mostly English publications. My wife was a careful, saving woman, and much attached to reading and home comforts. She had saved a little money and was her own banker. She had been for some years gathering and holding on to gold and silver, specie being then scarce. I myself had, on that day, in the inside pocket of a vest, the same being in a bureau drawer, $825 in currency (all bills of large denomination), with the intention of depositing the sum in the bank immediately. In all, we had between us, in cash, on that fatal day, not less than $2,300, and our furniture and clothing cost about $2,700. This to us would have been quite a heavy loss, but—oh, the horror of horrors!—when I reached what I supposed to be my home, about ten o'clock that evening, I could not get within half a block of where my home had stood, and my wife was nowhere to be found. As soon as it was daylight on the following morning, I and a few friends gathered up the charred remains of my poor wife—a mere handful of burned bones. The coroner was summoned, and all there was left me in this world was the contents of a small wooden box, which I had the melancholy satisfaction of taking to the place of Mr. Wright, the undertaker, on Madison Street, near LaSalle, for internment on the following day. It is needless to say that on that day, not only Wright's place, but the entire city was swept out of existence so that I was even deprived of the poor bones of my beloved wife. This was my share of the blaze of 1871. At that time I was sixty-three years of age and was left on the sidewalk, with a thin rag of a summer coat and a pair of rather old buckskin boots. My nervous system was completely unstrung with the fright consequent upon my then state of mind, and bad health followed so that my ambition was entirely destroyed. I have been comparatively a pauper ever since.”

In less than five hours from the time the last engine left the burned district, a new fire started mere blocks away in a little wooden barn that would indeed spread across the city.

Read about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Lunchtime Theater - The Great Chicago Fire 1871

THE DIGITAL RESEARCH LIBRARY OF ILLINOIS HISTORY JOURNAL™ PRESENTS

THE LUNCHTIME THEATER.

The Great Chicago Fire 1871

Presented to the Great Lakes Historical Society, Cleveland, 1971.

The History of Chicago Historical Society and Buildings.

The Chicago Historical Society (now named the Chicago History Museum) was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. Much of the early collection of the Chicago Historical Society was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, but like the city, the society rose from the ashes. Among the many documents that were lost in the fire was Abraham Lincoln's final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

After the fire, the Society began collecting new materials, which were stored in a building owned by J. Young Scammon, a prominent lawyer and member of the society. However, the building and new collection were again destroyed by the Chicago fire of 1874.

The Chicago Historical Society built a fireproof building on the site of its pre-1871 building at 632 North Dearborn Street (700N, 100W) at the NW corner of Ontario Street built-in 1892 by Henry Ives Cobb. 

The replacement building opened in 1896 and housed the Society for thirty-six years. The building was later added to the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Chicago Historical Society Building.

The Third Chicago Historical Society Building.

Charles F. Gunther, a prominent Chicago collector, donated some items to the Society. In 1920, the Society purchased the remainder of the large history collection from his estate, with the intention of changing its focus from only a research institution into a public museum. Many of the items in Gunther's collection, in addition to Chicago, were related to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War. These include Lincoln's deathbed, several other pieces of furniture from the room where he died in the Petersen House, and clothing that he and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln allegedly wore the evening of his assassination. The collection also contains the table on which General Robert E. Lee signed his 1865 surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant, an official act which ended the American Civil War, at the McLean House in Appomattox, Virginia.

After 36 years on Dearborn Street, the Society moved to the current structure in Lincoln Park. The current home of the museum was designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White and constructed in 1932 by the WPA, with the aim of creating an expanded public museum.

The Forth Chicago Historical Society Building.

The 1932 Federal-style structure has been expanded twice. The first addition clad in limestone opened in 1972 and was designed by Alfred Shaw and Associates. The second addition was designed by Holabird and Root, which was built in 1988 and included refacing the earlier expansion in red brick to give a unified look to all three portions of the building. Both expansions occurred on the west side of the 1932 structure, leaving intact its original porticoed entrance facing Lincoln Park.

The Current Look of the Third Chicago Historical Society Building.

The main entrance and reception hall, however, was moved to the new western addition facing Clark street. The 1988 extension, in addition to expanded exhibition galleries, also contains the museum's store and a public cafe.

The Chicago Historical Society changed its name to the Chicago History Museum in 2006.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The story of the tragedy at Chicago's "Our Lady of the Angels" School Fire on December 1, 1958.

The fire at Our Lady of the Angels School, 909 North Avers Avenue in Humboldt Park, Chicago, snatched the lives of 87 children and 3 nuns on December 1, 1958, and then claimed 5 more children who later died from their injuries.

Founded in 1894, Our Lady of the Angels Church and School had once been predominantly Irish. Still, by 1958, the church, school, and neighborhood had transformed into a mixture of working-class immigrant families from Eastern and Northern Europe – especially Italy. Less than a decade after the fire, many parishioners of Our Lady of the Angels in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, once one of Chicago's largest parishes, moved away from the neighborhood full of haunting memories.

Several months after the fire, the Chicago Archdiocese razed the remains of the old school building and built a new steel school building in operation by 1960.

Our Lady of the Angels School closed in 1999 and was eventually renovated and transformed into a charter school. Our Lady of the Angels parish merged with St. Francis Assisi Parish in 1991, and the Archdiocese rented the church, which was undamaged by the fire, to the New Miracle Temple Church of God in Christ for 20 years. Over time, Francis Cardinal George hoped to renovate the church.

Transforming the Remnants of Tragedy
Fifty-plus years after the 1958 fire at Our Lady of the Angels Catholic School, work on the once forlorn and neglected church next door is completed, and the church again presents a proud and hopeful face to a shabby neighborhood. Our Lady of the Angels Church, the scene of such tragedy, is now known as the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels. Father Bob Lombardo, the pastor of the Mission, remembered the church as a "handyman's special" when he arrived in 2006. He called the transformation of Our Lady of the Angels a miracle because estimates of the cost of its renovation reached nearly two million dollars. The actual cost was minimal because of volunteer labor and donated supplies.

On Saturday, April 15, 2012, an emotional crowd of about 400 people commemorated the reopening of Our Lady of the Angels. Francis Cardinal George dedicated the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels, and the Chicago Archdiocese decided that the renovated church would function as a neighborhood outreach and prayer center, offering occasional Masses. The Mission plans to expand its current "Feed the Needy" program, which already serves about 700 West Side families.

Many people in the crowd were survivors of the Our Lady of the Angels fire, and many were former parishioners. The memory of that cold, clear first Monday in December 1958 remained as vivid to them as sunlight glinting off Lake Michigan.

Just an Ordinary School Day in an Ordinary Chicago Parochial School
Our Lady of the Angels parish, with more than 4,500 families, was one of the largest parishes in the Chicago Roman Catholic Archdiocese during the 1950s. Our Lady of the Angels Church, an adjacent rectory, a convent of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the school was the neighborhood's central hub.

Our Lady of the Angels School provided education for pupils from kindergarten through eighth grade for over 1,600 students. Over 1,400 second through eighth-graders attended classes in the main school building at 909 North Avers Avenue at the intersection of West Iowa Street and North Avers Avenue in the Humboldt Park section of Chicago's west side. More than 200 kindergarten and first-grade students went to classes in two annexes on the Our Lady of the Angels campus on Hamlin Avenue.

Built in 1910, the school's two-story north wing had been remodeled several times, and in 1939, the entire building became a school when a newer church opened. By 1951, an annex connected the north wing to a south wing dating from 1939. The two original buildings and the annex formed a -U-, with a narrow fenced courtyard separating them. The school had a brick exterior, and its interior consisted of wooden stairs, walls, floors, doors, twelve-foot acoustical tiled ceilings, and a wooden roof. The school's second-floor windows were 25 feet above the ground, and its English-style basement extended partially above ground level.

Each classroom door had a glass transom above it, providing ventilation and a pathway for flames and smoke to enter the room. The school had one fire escape, no automatic fire alarms, and no direct fire alarm connection to the fire department. It had no fire-resistant stairwells and no heavy-duty fire doors from the stairwells to the second-floor corridor. There were two unmarked fire alarm switches in the school, both in the south wing. The four fire extinguishers in the north wing were mounted seven feet off the floor, unreachable for many adults and virtually all children. The school didn't have a fire alarm box on the sidewalk outside.

Although Our Lady of the Angels was generally clean and well maintained, it mirrored some potentially fatal flaws of 1950s schools and municipal and state fire regulations. Pupils hung their coats on hooks in the hallway or in cloakrooms instead of in metal lockers, and there was no limit to the number of children in a classroom. Sometimes, as many as 60 students crowded a classroom built to hold half or one-quarter of that number.

Our Lady of the Angels school legally met the 1958 municipal and state requirements and had passed a routine fire department safety inspection a few weeks before December 1, 1958. A grandfather clause in the 1949 state fire safety codes said that older schools like Our Lady of the Angels were not required to install safety devices that the code required in schools built after 1949. Our Lady of Angels was a fire waiting to be ignited by modern standards, and it ignited on December 1, 1958.

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In 1958, the ethnic makeup of Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels was predominantly Italian-American, with a smaller but significant presence of Polish-American members. The parish had experienced a demographic shift in the decades leading up to the fire, transitioning from a predominantly Irish-American community to one with a larger Italian-American population. This shift was reflective of broader trends in Chicago's neighborhoods as Italian Americans migrated to the city from the early 20th century onwards.

While the exact percentages of each ethnic group within the parish are difficult to determine definitively, estimates suggest that Italian Americans likely comprised around 70-80% of the membership, with Polish Americans accounting for the remaining 20-30%. There were also a small number of Mexican-American families who belonged to the parish.

A Fire Flares and Flourishes
At 2:35 PM Central Standard Time on December 1, 1958, many Our Lady of the Angels School pupils concluded their lessons. In Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng's seventh-grade history class in Room 208, Andrea Gagliardo, 12, concentrated on "The Missionaries in Florida and Louisiana." In Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne's fifth-grade geography class in Room 212, John Mele, 10, wrote a question in his notebook: "Where along the Atlantic Coastal Plain can oysters be found?" In room 209, Michele McBride, 13, waited with her eighth-grade classmates for the closing bell to ring at 3 o'clock, less than half an hour away.

While students upstairs waited to be dismissed, a fire smoldered in a cardboard trash barrel at the foot of the northeast stairwell in the basement of the older north wing of Our Lady of the Angels School. For about thirty minutes, the fire burned undiscovered, and it heated the stairwell and filled it with light grey smoke that eventually turned thick and black. At about 2:25 PM, three eighth-grade girls, Janet Delaria, Frances J. Guzaldo, and Karen Hobik, were returning from an errand.

When the girls reached Room 211, their second-floor classroom in the north wing, they encountered thick smoke. They promptly told their teacher, Sister Helaine O'Neill, who jumped up from her desk and lined up her students to evacuate the building. Moments later, she opened the classroom door to the hallway, but she decided that the dense smoke made it too dangerous to escape down the stairs leading to Avers Avenue on the building's west side. She and her students sat in their classroom, waiting to be rescued.

Two other events occurred approximately the same time Sister Helaine O'Neill and her students waited for rescue. Intense heat shattered a window at the foot of the staircase, feeding the fire and serving as a chimney, sending hot gases, fire, and black smoke pouring up the stairs to the second floor.

As he walked by the building, the school janitor, James Raymond, saw a red glow through a window and raced into the basement furnace room. He saw a fire through a door leading into the stairwell. He warned two boys emptying trash baskets in the boiler room to leave, and then at approximately 2:30 PM, he rushed to the rectory and told the housekeeper to call the fire department. Then he raced back to the school to help students to escape down the fire escape. The boys ran back to their classroom and warned their lay teacher, and after unsuccessfully searching for the school principal, she and another lay teacher led their students out of the school building.

The lay teacher pulled the fire alarm as she left the school building, but it didn't ring. She left her students safely in the church, returned to the school, and successfully activated the fire alarm. The fire alarm rang inside the school, but since the notice was not automatically connected, it did not summon the fire department.

The first telephone call from the rectory reached the fire department at 2:42 PM. A second call came in from Barbara Glowacki, the candy store owner in the alley along the north wing of Our Lady of the Angels.

The Fire Stalked Them, but Brave Rescuers Saved Many
By the time the fire department arrived, the fire had spread rapidly for about forty minutes. The Chicago Fire Department initially fought an uphill battle to control the fire at Our Lady of the Angels School. The housekeeper calling in the fire alarm had given the rectory address on West Iowa Street instead of the school address, making it necessary to reposition fire trucks and hose lines.

Firemen rose to the challenge, called additional firefighting equipment and immediately began to rescue the pupils still in the burning school. Still, the teachers and students on the second floor of the north wing were trapped. The firemen had to back a fire truck into a seven-foot iron picket fence to get ladders to the windows on the north wing. Five teaching nuns and 239 children had two terrible choices. They could either jump from their second-floor windows to land on the concrete and crushed rock 25 feet below them or wait for the fire department to rescue them.

Some nuns urged the children to sit at their desks, form a semicircle, and pray. In-room 209, Sister Mary Davidis Devine ordered her 55 students to pile books and furniture in front of the classroom doors, which helped slow the invasion of smoke and flames until rescuers came. Eight Room 209 students escaped with injuries, and two died.

Firefighter Richard Scheidt carrying
John Michael Jajkowski, Jr. from the school.

Michelle McBride from Room 209 burned over 60 percent of her body, and she spent four and a half months in the hospital, enduring numerous operations. The operations continued for years after the fire, as did the constant pain from her injuries. In 1979, Michele McBride wrote a book, The Fire That Will Not Die, about her Room 209 experience, the only firsthand account of that day. Her sister reported that Michele died on July 4, 2001, from chronic physical problems from the fire.

Sam Tortorice, the father of another student from 209, Rose Tortorice, ran into the school, climbed onto an awning below Room 209's rear window, and began to help students escape. Father Joseph Ognibenewho, who happened to be driving by the school, joined him, and as a team, they helped students flee through the window and into a window in the annex. From there, they hurried down the only metal staircase in the school and escaped through the main entrance on Iowa Street.

Neighbors of Our Lady of Angels ran home and brought ladders to the alley on the north side of the school, hoping to rescue students through classroom windows. Mario Camerini, a part-time assistant janitor at the school, had the only ladder tall enough to reach the windows of Room 208. The tall ladder and the men operating it allowed approximately 25 children to escape room 208. Twelve students and their teacher, Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng, died in room 208.

Andrea Gagliardo, the 12-year-old –girl in Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng's seventh-grade history class in Room 208 who had been studying "The Missionaries in Florida and Louisiana," climbed out on a ledge, and firemen eventually rescued her. Andrea remembered that "some of the boys jumped out of the window. When we looked down, we saw them lying still on the ground. It was like a miracle when we saw the firemen with their ladders."

The 57 children in room 210, located on the north side of the second floor in the center of the north wing overlooking the alley north of the school, were fourth-graders, younger and smaller than the children in the other five north wing second-floor classrooms. People placed several ladders below the windows of Room 210 before the fire department arrived, but the ladders were too short. Many children hung from the window ledge and dropped onto a ladder or directly to the ground.

When they finally reached Room 210, the firemen found many dead fourth-graders wrapped around Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley for protection. Although 29 students managed to escape, 28 students and Sister Kelley died in Room 210, more students than in any other classroom.

Room 212 housed Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne's fifth-grade class of 55 students. The fire didn't invade Room 212 as quickly and burned less intensely because of its location in the northwest corner of the north wing, the second floor of the school, which could account for the fact that 29 pupils survived in this room. The smoke and toxic fire gases were as deadly here as in the other school rooms, and most of the 26 pupils who died here were smothered before the fire department could rescue them. Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne also died.

John Raymond, the son of James Raymond, the school janitor, jumped from a window and survived. He recalled, "Although we did not have a fire in our class, the heat and smoke were unbearable. Sister did all she could to buy us time, but it was not. She gave her life trying to save kids right to the end."

John Mele, 10, the boy from Room 212 who wondered, "Where along the Atlantic Coastal Plain can cans of oysters be found?" did not survive to discover the answer to his question.

As the fire progressed, thick black smoke and superheated air turned second-floor classrooms into infernos. Children crawled and fought their way to the windows, and many with their hair and clothes on fire jumped, fell, or were pushed out of windows before the firemen and ladders could reach them. The fall killed some of the children and seriously injured others. Many smaller children couldn't climb over the high window stills or were pushed aside by other children desperately trying to escape. Firemen struggled to rescue students and nuns as the fire flashed over classrooms filled with screaming children. Most of the school's roof collapsed, and the superheated downdraft likely killed anyone left on the second floor.

Panicked parents raced to Our Lady of the Angels from all over the city, and the police soon had to set up barriers to restrain the anxious crowd of about 5,000 parents and onlookers. The group grew as the afternoon wore on, and firefighters carried a blanket and sack-covered bodies from the school.

The December Day That 92 Pupils and Three Nuns Didn't Return from School
By early evening, fire departments from all over Chicago had the five-alarm fire under control, and firemen had rescued more than 160 children from their burning school. They carried others out already dead, some with badly charred bodies. Injured children were taken to local hospitals, and the deceased to the Cook County Morgue basement and to a police station where officials had set up a makeshift station to identify the dead children.

A United Press International story reported when the firemen extinguished the fire at Our Lady of the Angels about six o'clock that evening, the second floor was blackened entirely, and people could look through the second floor from one end to the other, with just a wall in the middle to obstruct their view. Ladders leaned against the burned-out school on three sides, hoses and safety nets covered the ground, and discarded children's clothing and school books scattered about, poignant reminders of the tragedy. News of the fire spread across and stunned Chicago and, eventually, the entire country.

Three Nuns and 92 Children
Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne, Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley, and Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng died protecting and consoling their pupils at Our Lady of the Angels school. They were not identified by name in many newspaper stories or at their funeral mass. Before the 1960s, few professional women had a public presence -many were invisible and silent. Catholic women in the traditional patriarchal church knew and accepted this as a fact of life.

In his sermon during the funeral mass for the three nuns on December 4, 1958, Monsignor William E. McManus referred to the three nuns as "professional women and experienced teachers." He praised them for their "gallant heroism," but he didn't name them because he believed that they "would want to be remembered simply as the Blessed Virgin Mary Sisters who died with their pupils in the fire."

In her article "Stunned with Sorrow, " Suellen Hoy," in the summer of 2004, Chicago History Magazine, pieces together the lives of Sister Mary Clare Therese Champagne, Sister Mary Seraphica Kelley, and Sister Mary St. Canice Lyng. She resurrects them from the mists of time and history and reveals them as vibrant people and teachers. She gives them a presence and a voice.

A comprehensive website called Our Lady of the Angels features stories of the children who survived and did not survive and their pictures. The site reconstructs the details of the fire and its aftermath and has links to newspaper stories of the day about the tragedy.

The Fire is Gone, but its Impact Lives On
In 1962, a boy who had been a ten-year-old fifth-grader at Our Lady of the Angels at the time of the fire confessed to setting the fire. On the day of the fire, his teacher had excused him to go to the boy's restroom at 2:00 PM when the fire had begun smoldering in the bin at the foot of the stairs. A fire investigator later found burned matches in the sacristy area of the basement chapel of the north wing of the school. Although the boy had a history of setting fires and told details about the fire that he should not have known, he recanted his confession. He was never prosecuted. Officially, the cause of the fire is unknown.

Officials inspect Sister M. Clare Therese Champagne's classroom after the 1958 fire at Our Lady of the Angels School.

In 1959, the National Fire Protection Association issued a report about the Our Lady of the Angels fire, blaming civic authorities and the Archdiocese of Chicago for, in its words, allowing "fire traps such as Our Lady of the Angels School to be legally operated despite having inadequate fire safety standards." The report also noted that the open stairways, delayed discovery, alarms, and lack of automatic fire protection in the building were the same time-worn reasons for fires.

A coroner's jury recommended wiring all schools to the city fire alarm box, enclosing open stairwells, and installing automatic sprinklers.

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Some critics have alleged that the Archdiocese attempted to "sweep the fire under the rug" in order to avoid negative publicity and protect its reputation. They point to several factors that they believe support this claim.

• The Archdiocese initially blamed the fire on faulty wiring, despite evidence that suggested otherwise. Investigators later determined that the fire was likely caused by an overheated fan in the school's basement.

• The Archdiocese resisted calls for a public inquiry into the fire. The Archdiocese argued that such an inquiry would be unnecessary and would only serve to relive the pain of the families who had lost loved ones.

• The Archdiocese settled lawsuits with the families of the victims out of court. This decision prevented the release of potentially damaging information about the Archdiocese's role in the fire.

The Archdiocese has denied that it attempted to cover up the fire or its aftermath. The Archdiocese has said that it did everything it could to help the families of the victims and to prevent future tragedies.

In the six decades since the Our Lady of the Angels fire, many safe new schools have been built, and fire fighting and fire prevention technology have made tremendous strides. But old-school buildings still have open stairwells, insufficient fire alarms, and no automatic sprinkler system.

A monument to the victims of Our Lady of the Angels School in the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

FILM FOOTAGE

Chicago Fire Department:

Our Lady Of Angels School Fire

Francis Cardinal George and Hope for the Future
Francis Cardinal George told the congregation at the Mission of Our Lady of the Angels dedication ceremony that he hoped the renewed building would be a beacon of peace that could give a new start to a struggling neighborhood. He praised the groups contributing to the rapid renovation of the church, saying, "I was so pleased and grateful that they all dared to come out and be together in this way, and that's the best sign of hope."

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Lots of mistakes were made by lots of individuals. This includes building codes, historic safety exceptions, the fact that fire engines couldn't get close enough, and second-floor windows were out of range of the fire department's highest ladders. Even standard floor wax and wooden school infrastructure led to igniting and spreading the fire. Meanwhile, one nun saved her entire class with quick thinking.

By Kevin Sinnott, whose father served on a commission that studied the fire and response. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
Contributor Kathy Warnes

1871 Great Chicago Fire. Destruction at Fifth Avenue and Madison Street.

A portion of Wells Street (named for Captain William Wells, hero and martyr of the Fort Dearborn Massacre in July of 1812) south of the Chicago River was renamed Fifth Avenue in 1870 to remove negative associations with the Wells name and the street's disrepute. Fifth Avenue was reverted to Wells Street in 1916. It is not to be confused with Fifth Avenue on the west side, formerly Colorado Avenue. 

Both Fifth Avenues were named after the famous New York Avenue in failed efforts to convey prestige.

Fifth Avenue in 1911, five years before the street's name reverted to Wells St.

The January 16, 1967 McCormick Place Fire, Chicago, Illinois.

McCormick Place, an exhibition center on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, opened in November 1960. The center included a theater, several restaurants and banquet rooms, and over 500,000 square feet of exhibition space.

In January of 1967, McCormick Place hosted the National Housewares Manufacturers Association Show, which featured nearly 1,250 booths selling kitchen and household appliances. The event was scheduled to open on Monday, January 16, but, at around 2 AM that morning, McCormick Place janitors noticed smoke rising from a small fire at the back of an exhibition booth.

The janitors waited to raise the alarm and instead attempted to extinguish the fire themselves by beating at it with brooms and pieces of carpeting. The flames quickly spread to the walls of the booth, prompting the janitors to call the Chicago Fire Department. Firefighters responded immediately and, within five minutes of the first alarm, an officer on-scene ordered a second alarm.

By 2:30 AM, five alarms were sounded, bringing 94 apparatus and over 500 fire and rescue personnel to the scene. Fire fighting efforts were severely delayed, however, as four of the seven McCormick Place fire hydrants were shut off.

To attack the flames, firefighters had to draft water from Lake Michigan and rely on fire hydrants a quarter-mile away. The fire was extinguished by 10AM, around the time the N.H.M.A. show was scheduled to begin, but McCormick Place was essentially destroyed.

Initial investigations by the City of Chicago exposed several serious fire safety issues that had been overlooked by McCormick Place management. The exhibition area did not have fire sprinklers or fire walls, and fire proof materials did not protect the steel roof supports. Also, most of the electrical wiring for the booths did not follow electrical safety standards, as the facility was still using temporary electrical systems for the exhibition are as. Most tragically, one McCormick Place security guard was killed in the fire, presumably because he could not find an unlocked emergency exit. Other employees who escaped the blaze confirmed that they had never been told how to find unlocked emergency exits.

In the months following the fire, the Illinois Inspection and Rating Bureau launched a comprehensive investigation into the McCormick Place Fire and published a detailed report on its findings. The investigators did not determine a definitive cause, but it is assumed that the temporary electrical wiring started the fire. The report did, however, shine light on many of the difficulties the firefighters faced, noting how “firefighting was seriously hampered because of lack of adequate water, intense heat, rapid fire spread, early roof collapse and unstable exterior panel walls.” The report helped to bring about numerous changes to the Chicago Municipal Code, as ordinances on exhibition halls, electrical facilities, emergency exits, fire walls, and smoke and heat vents were soon revised based on the lessons learned from the McCormick Place Fire. 

by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Lunchtime Theater - The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 - "YOU ARE THERE"

THE DIGITAL RESEARCH LIBRARY OF ILLINOIS HISTORY JOURNAL™ PRESENTS

THE LUNCHTIME THEATER.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 - "YOU ARE THERE"

[runtime 15:38]

This film, narrated by Walter Cronkite, takes you through the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 as if it was a news broadcast from the beginning years of Television. A wonderful way to "experience" what it might have looked like through the TV camera and perhaps what it could have been like to live through the Great Chicago Fire.

BURNT AREA FIRE MAP

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Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903 was the deadliest theatre and single-structure fire in the United States history, claiming over 602 lives in Chicago, Illinois.

On Wednesday, December 30,1903, the deadliest theatre and single-structure fires in United States history occurred at Chicago's new "Iroquois Theatre," at the northeast corner of Randolph and Dearborn Streets 79-83 Randolph (after the 1911 Loop Renumbering; 36 West Randolph Street), during the standing-room-only matinée performance starring the famous comedian Eddie Foy.

Regular "Iroquois" Prices: $1.50, $1.00, 75¢, 50¢

The fire claimed the lives of more than 602 people, including scores of children, who were packed into the place for the afternoon show.

The Iroquois Theatre was much acclaimed, even before it opened. In addition to being "absolutely fireproof," it was a beautiful place with an ornate lobby, grand staircases, and a front facade that resembled a Greek temple with massive columns. The theatre was designed to be safe, and it had 25 exits that, it was claimed, could empty the building in less than five minutes. The stage had also been fitted with an asbestos curtain that could be quickly lowered to protect the audience. It would have been impressive if it had been installed and the staff had any idea how to use the existing safety devices.

A view of the stage from the balcony shows the devastation of the fire.

And those were not even the worst problems. Seats in the theatre were wooden and stuffed with hemp. "Unattractive" safety doors were hidden from sight, and gates were locked across the entrance to the balcony during the show so that those in the "cheap seats" wouldn't sneak into the main theatre.

The building had no fire alarms, and many other safety equipment had been forgotten or ignored, leading to the ever-popular "Chicago pay-offs" to officials who allowed the new theatre to open on schedule anyway.

A photograph was taken from the stage of the fire-blackened theatre. 

As crowds filled the theatre on that cold December day in 1903, they had no idea how close their way was to meet their deaths. The horrific events began soon after the holiday crowd had packed into the theatre on Wednesday afternoon to see a matinee performance of the hit comedy Mr. Bluebeard. The main floor and balcony were packed; dozens more were given "standing-room-only" tickets, and they lined the rear and walls of the theatre.

The balcony of the theatre had the greatest loss of life. Theatre patrons were trapped there by gates that were locked across the stairways and then abandoned by theatre staff after the fire began. Others raced for the fire escapes—only to find that they had never been installed. Many in the balcony burned to death or plunged to their death outside the alleyway.

At the beginning of the second act, stagehands noticed a spark descend from an overhead light and watched some scraps of burning paper fall onto the stage. In moments, flames began licking at the red velvet curtain, and while a collective gasp went up from the audience, no one rushed for the exits. It's believed the audience merely thought the fire was part of the show.

A few moments later, a flaming set crashed onto the stage, leaving little doubt that something had gone wrong. A stagehand attempted to lower the asbestos curtain that would protect the audience, and it snagged halfway down, sending a wall of flame out into the audience.

Actors on stage panicked and ran for the doors. Chaos filled the auditorium as the audience rushed for the theatre's Randolph Street entrance. With children in tow, the audience members immediately clogged the gallery and the upper balconies. The aisles had become impassable, and as the lights went out, the crowd milled about in blind terror. The auditorium began to fill with heat and smoke, and screams echoed off the walls and ceilings. Through it all, the mass continued to move forward, but when the crowd reached the doors, they could not open them. The doors had been designed to swing inward rather than outward.

The crush of people prevented those in the front from opening the doors. Many of those who died burned and suffocated from the smoke and the crush of bodies. Later, as the police removed the charred remains from the theatre, they discovered several victims had been trampled in the panic. One dead woman's face even bore the mark of a shoe heel.

Backstage, theatre employees and cast members opened a rear set of double doors, which sucked the wind inside and caused flames to fan out under the asbestos curtain and into the auditorium. A second gust of wind created a fireball that shot out into the galleries and balconies filled with people. All of the stage drops were now on fire, and as they burned, they engulfed the supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain, and when it collapsed, it plunged into the seats of the theatre.

The fire burned for almost 15 minutes before an alarm was raised at a box down the street. There appeared to be nothing wrong from the outside, and it was so quiet that the first firefighters thought it was a false alarm.

This changed when they tried to open the auditorium doors and found they could not—too many bodies stacked against them. They were only able to gain access by actually pulling the bodies out of the way with pike poles, peeling them off one another, and then climbing over the stacks of corpses. It took only 10 minutes to put out the blaze, as the intense heat inside had already eaten up anything that would still burn. The firefighters made their way into the blackened auditorium and were met with only silence and the smell of death. They called out for survivors, but no one answered their cry.

The gallery and upper balconies sustained the greatest loss of life as the patrons had been trapped by locked doors at the top of the stairways. The firefighters found 200 bodies stacked there, as many as 10 deep. Those who escaped had literally ripped the metal bars from the front of the balcony and had jumped onto the crowds below. Even then, most of these met their deaths at a lower level.

Bodies of the dead lined up in the alley behind the theatre. Newspaper reporters dubbed this alleyway, officially known as Couch Place, "Death Alley" after the fire, and it still remains one of the most haunted spots in Chicago.

A few who reached the fire escape door behind the top balcony found the iron staircase missing. In its place was a platform that plunged about 100 feet to the cobblestone alley below. Across the alley, behind the theatre, painters were working on a building occupied by Northwestern University's dental school. When they realized what was happening at the theatre, they quickly erected a makeshift bridge using ladders and wooden planks, extending across the alley to the fire escape platform. Reports vary regarding how many they saved, but several people climbed across the bridge.

Several plunged to their deaths as they tried to escape across the ladder, but many times, that number jumped from the ledge or was pushed by the milling crowd that pressed through the doors behind them. The passageway behind the theatre is still called "Death Alley" today after nearly 150 victims were found here.

When it was over, 572 people died in the fire, and more died later, bringing the eventual death toll up to 602, including 212 children. For nearly five hours, police officers, firemen, and even newspaper reporters carried out the dead. Anxious relatives sifted through the remains, searching for loved ones. Other bodies were taken away by police wagons and ambulances and transported to a temporary morgue at Marshall Field's on State Street. Medical examiners and investigators worked all through the night.

Two of Frank Lloyd Wright's sons, John, eleven, and Frank Jr., thirteen years old, escaped from the Iroquois Theatre with Flora Tobin, their grandmother. Catherine Lee Tobin Wright was Frank Lloyd Wright's first wife, and Flora Tobin was Catherine's mother. Catherine and Frank were married in 1890 and were divorced in 1923. [NOTE: "Flora was known in the family as "Blue Gramma," given the name by color-blind Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., who saw her red hair as blue."]

This view of the Iroquois Theatre outside was taken after 4:00 PM on December 30, 1903.

The city went into mourning. Newspapers carried lists and photographs of the dead, and the mayor banned all New Year's celebrations. An investigation into the fire brought to light several troubling facts. The investigation discovered that the supposedly "fireproof" asbestos curtain was made from cotton and other combustible materials and would have never saved anyone. In addition to not having any fire alarms in the building, the owners had decided that sprinklers were too unsightly and too costly and had never had them installed.

To make matters worse, the management also established a policy to keep non-paying customers from slipping into the theatre during a performance—they quietly bolted nine pairs of iron panels over the rear doors and installed padlocked, accordion-style gates at the top of the interior second—and third-floor stairway landings. Just as tragic was the idea they came up with to keep the audience from being distracted during a show: They ordered all of the exit lights to be turned off.

The investigation led to a cover-up by officials from the city and the fire department, who denied all knowledge of fire code violations. They blamed the inspectors, who had overlooked the problems in exchange for free theatre passes. A grand jury indicted several individuals, including the theatre owners, fire officials, and even the mayor. No one was ever charged with a criminal act. Families of the dead filed nearly 275 civil lawsuits against the theatre, but no money was ever collected.

The Iroquois Fire still ranks today as one of the deadliest in history. Nevertheless, the building was repaired and reopened briefly in 1904 as Hyde and Behmann's Music Hall and then in 1905 as the Colonial Theatre.

In 1924, the building was razed to make room for a new theatre, the Oriental, but the facade of the Iroquois was used in its construction. The Oriental operated at what is now 24 West Randolph Street until the middle part of 1981 when it fell into disrepair and was closed down. It opened again as the home to a wholesale electronics dealer for a time and then went dark again. The restored theatre is now part of the Civic Tower Building and is next to the restored Delaware Building. 

It reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre in 1998; however, it is commonly called simply the Oriental Theatre.

But this has not stopped the tales of the old Iroquois Theatre from being told, especially in light of more recent -- and more ghostly events. According to recent accounts from people who live and work in this area, "Death Alley" is not as empty as it appears. The narrow passageway, which runs behind the Oriental Theatre, is rarely used today, except for the occasional delivery truck or a pedestrian hurrying to get somewhere else. It is largely deserted, but why? The stories say that those few who do pass through the alley often find themselves very uncomfortable and unsettled here. They say that faint cries are sometimes heard in the shadows and that some have reported being touched by unseen hands and by eerie cold spots that seem to come from nowhere and vanish just as quickly.

Panoramic view into Couch Place Alley (Death Alley) and the Chicago Theatre used to be adjacent to the Iroquois Theatre. This alley in downtown Chicago held a six-foot-high pile of bodies of over 600 dead people after the Iroquois Theatre fire.

Could the alleyway and the surrounding area actually be haunted? And do the spirits of those who met their tragic end inside the burning theatre still linger here? Perhaps the strange sensations experienced here are "ghosts of the past" of another kind. A chilling remembrance of a terrifying event that will never be forgotten entirely.

Iroquois Theatre Memorial at the Montrose Cemetery, 5400 North Pulaski Road, Chicago, Illinois.

 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Contributor, Troy Taylor

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The Original Iroquois Theatre Matinée Playbill for the December 30, 1903. (pdf)

Couch Place, an Infamous Alley in Chicago's Loop.

Free PDF Book: The Great Chicago Theatre Disaster, the Complete Story Told by the Survivors, by Marshall Everett, published in 1904.