Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

by Frank J. Loesch

As churchgoers were coming out of their places of worship on Sunday evening, fire bells were ringing furiously and a rapidly increasing red glare towards the Southwest Side indicated that another fire had broken out. A strong hot wind had been blowing from the southwest during the day and it seemed to have gained in strength at this time.

Few of our fellows at the boarding house cared to see another fire after being up most of Saturday night at the one just referred to. Therefore only two of us started out for the scene of the new fire. My companion was young LeRow, somewhat undersized, but exceedingly active. His enthusiasm to see the new blaze carried me with him. We made our way speedily to about Franklin and Monroe Streets. The fire had just leaped across the South Branch at about Adams Street. In that vicinity was located the gas reservoir which supplied the South and North Sides with illuminating gas. All about that neighborhood were many small cottages inhabitated mostly by Irish people. The destruction of their homes was an immediate certainty. The possible explosion of the gas tank could not be long deferred. The frantic excitement among the people in their fear that they could not save their household goods was most moving. With a sympathy but a heedlessness which neither of us could afterwards account for, in the imminent dangers about us, we helped as we could to move their goods into the street. They had better have been left in the cottages for almost as they were being placed in the street some began to smoke from the heat of the air.

The panic which paralyzes human faculties under conditions like that is illustrated by one instance. From one of the cottages a mother had carried into the street, of all things, a bed tick filled with straw, where burning brands were everywhere falling in increasing numbers, and rushing back brought out and dumped a pair of twin infants upon the straw tick and hastened back into her home just as LeRow and I dropped some household articles and noticed a burning brand fall into the straw tick. He grabbed one infant and I the other. We gave the babes to their frantic mother, urging her to run with them for their lives. As we started to run we noticed the straw tick ablaze. No houses had then begun to burn but most of the people joined us in getting away.

We stopped a few moments at the northeast corner of Monroe and Wells Streets to watch a scene there. Barrels of whisky were being rolled on skids into Wells Street from several large stores of dealers in beverages, presumably awaiting immediate cartage, though no drays were visible. However, what we did see was a number of men, each two or three with a scantling or piece of board ramming some of the barrels, and as soon as part of the head had been driven in and the liquor was gushing out the men would throw themselves flat into the street to gulp the whisky as it poured over them. No one interfered with their amusement. It is very likely that some of those men were among those reported “missing” later on.

There was no time to lose. The streets were being littered with burning brands. We ran east on Monroe Street to La Salle and north towards Washington Street. North of Madison Street we were literally running over a coating of red and smoldering fire brands. We saw no other people in that block. About half way in the block LeRow cried out that he was smothering. I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him as fast as I could go to Washington Street where the air was free of smoke with few cinders on the street, but a strong hot wind was blowing eastward and carrying many burning brands high in the air. Here LeRow revived and we parted, he to go north, I to go into the Telegraph Company’s office to learn if I could be of service. Some three or four of my fellow clerks were there, besides the manager. Some one had opened the vault door, into which we put all the books of account that were about, the men having worked on them that day. Unfortunately the chief bookkeeper had been working all day in a private room on the fourth floor, on his September accounts and had left many of the books up there for the night. They were, of course, lost. I saw the manager place a lot of gold coins into a small portable office safe at his desk. It was suggested to him that we move the safe into the large vault but he declined to have it done as being unnecessary. After the fire the stack of vaults in that building was found upright amidst the debris of the rest of the building, the contents of each vault being intact, but the manager’s safe had been melted down and after diligent search amidst the ruins there was found only a little trickle of gold in the shape of a thin vein over some bricks.

All salvage work in our office was being done by the light of the flames. The building opposite on Washington Street was ablaze and the roof of our building was burning. The telegraph operators had abandoned their instruments on the upper floors and were running down the stairway as I hurried into La Salle Street and ran north to Randolph Street.

The tunnel at that time and until the late Eighties, when it was turned over for the exclusive use of North Side cable cars, had a foot passageway on the east of the teamway. The teamway entrance near Randolph Street was then where it is now, while the foot passage entrance was at Lake Street, the descent being by a stairway to a boardwalk.

I stopped for a few moments at the north corner of Randolph and La Salle Streets to look about me. All the buildings south on La Salle Street as far as I could see, south of Washington Street, were ablaze. So were some north of it. My particular attention was, however, called to the Court House and City Hall. The former had for its center building a brown stone structure surmounted by a cupola in which was hung a large bell. The interior of the building was burning and the flames being carried up through the open space had set the bell to ringing. Above all the sounds of the roaring fire, the wind and the excited shouts of a moving mass of people the bell whirled on its frame and over its stanchions, ringing out with a weirdness and a despairing clangorous volume, as though it were possessed of sense and were agonizing in its struggle against destruction. For many years thereafter the memory of its clangor often awoke me at night to recall the scene.

The east and west wings of the Court House were constructed of Joliet limestone—the west wing being the City Hall. I watched for some moments, with a fascination which only the growing danger to myself drew me away from, the effect of the fire upon the city hall. The strong southwest wind was driving the heat in sheets of flame from the hundreds of burning buildings to the west of it, upon the southwest corner of the building, with such terrific effect that the limestone was melting and was running down the face of the building with first a slow then an accelerating movement as if it were a thin white paste.

I stopped for a moment to give directions to the wife of the janitor of the Metropolitan Block, the building which was duplicated after the fire and recently wrecked to make room for the present Burnham Building. The woman had four small children and a well filled basket of food. She explained that as it was impossible to save any household goods and as children were always hungry she had decided to take only food.