back
14 comments
The Chicago Fire Department training academy occupies the site where Mrs. O'Leary's barn stood.

Also, if you'd like a souvenir from the Great Chicago Fire, head over the 12th Street beach any time there a big storm out of the north. The south corner will have an accumulation of stuff washed up from the lake (which is where they pushed all the debris). Terra cotta, bricks, glass, porcelain, etc.

I have an antique book printed just after the fire. It actually has a diagram of the barn showing the position of the lamp, the cow, and straw on the floor.
I'm not sure that's all being washed up there. I think that might be the core of Northerly Island being exposed by erosion.
Hmm, you may be somewhat more correct.

At lot (most?) of the fire debris went to fill in the space between the "lakefront" and the Illinois Central tracks.

Northerly Island was built in the early 1920s, supposedly with a lot of fill from the downtown, near west and near south - where the fire raged. But you know that Northerly Island has been expanded many times! If you look at a satellite photo, you see a north-south straight line "barrier" in the pond? That's the sea-wall of the original Northerly Island - far to the west of the beach.

So anyway, an awful lot of Grant Park - where the original fire landfill was dumped - is a green roof. Over the largest underground parking structure in North America... So when they excavated that, where did they dump it? Northerly Island was being expanded... Who knows?

Some of the things I've found there definitely date back to the 1800s.

In a later incident, because San Francisco had no cow to blame, they blamed their great fire on an Earthquake.
And Jacksonville on a mattress factory.
Has resilience changed over time?

The city recovered relatively quickly in 1871, but has still failed to completely recover from the 1968 riots:

Following the riots, Chicago experienced a food shortage, and the city's needs were barely met by volunteers bringing food to the area. Results of the riots include the increase in pace of the area's ongoing deindustrialization and public and private disinvestment. Bulldozers moved in to clean up after the rioters, leaving behind vacant lots, many of which remain today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Chicago_riots

This is a bit of overgeneralization. "The city" was not experiencing a food shortage; the riot areas may well have been.

As for the difference between 1871 and 1968: Chicago was a bit smaller back then.

Also, advances in rail, air travel, and shipping from Asia probably reduced the demand for rebuilding Chicago. And westward expansion of the US in general.
Thanks for posting this--a few weeks ago, I also read Robert Loerzel's article "The Great Chicago Fire, As Told By Those Who Lived Through It" in Chicago Magazine and found it riveting:

https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/october-2021/ins...

The "American History Tellers" podcast did a great series on the Great Chicago Fire.

https://wondery.com/shows/american-history-tellers/episode/5...

Somewhere or other Carl Sandburg repeats or invents a story of a Confederate general who happened to be in Chicago then, and telegraphed back to Atlanta "Chicago on fire, whole town burning, God be praised!"
I find that the piece is called "They Have Yarns", and the Confederate mentioned was Robert Toombs.

There is also a curious reference to the number 42 some paragraphs earlier.

This headline should be appreciated.