Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire, 1871

by Frank J. Loesch

As the bridges across the river had all been burned, I made for the La Salle Street tunnel, only to find that the foot passageway was impassable because the flaming brands which had been swept into the south entrance at Lake Street had set fire to the board walk which was wholly consumed.

The brick walls of business buildings on both sides of La Salle Street north of Kinzie Street had fallen outward into the open space of the tunnel driveway. I joined a number of men who were making their way slowly over the debris of still heated bricks into the unlit tunnel through the Cimmerian darkness to daylight at Randolph Street.

The South Side was a mass of smoking ruins. I can recall only one building the walls of which remained standing to about full height. That was the First National Bank Building then at the southwest corner of State and Washington Streets where the Reliance Building now stands. It stood out like a monument above all the devastated business district, except that here and there could be seen a stack of vaults. That was the case at the Merchants’ Building. After some difficulty I found only a few square feet of unbroken stone, and a warm stone at that, upon which I could sit amidst the ruins of my former business place and observe what was going on. I was there about an hour meditating on what course to pursue and what city I could go to. I had only two dollars in my pocket and had the impression that Chicago would, of course, disappear as a business place. I began to question my impression when I saw a score or more of men at work in the ruins of the Chamber of Commerce now replaced by the Chamber of Commerce Building at the southeast corner of La Salle and Washington Streets. They were actually removing debris smoking hot, preparatory to rebuilding. I was joined by two or three other of my fellow clerks, all of whom, however, were living out on the West Side. One of them had known nothing of the fire until late Monday morning.

While chatting over the supposed loss of our situations and considering what to do, a messenger sent to the ruins to look up any clerks who might gather there, informed us that the main telegraph office was at State and Sixteenth Streets where we were ordered to report at once as our services were urgently needed. The others decided not to go that day so I walked alone down South Clark Street to about Twelfth Street where I observed in a baker’s window only one eatable article—an apple pie. Fearing the price would be more than two dollars, I entered with some timidity to inquire. Finding the price to be only twenty cents, which I joyfully paid, my courage rose to the point of asking permission to eat the whole pie in the shop. This being courteously granted, I promptly disposed of said pie with no crumbs left and with remarkable mental results. I walked on with the most intense feeling of pride that Chicago would come back and I must stay right here.

On reaching State and Sixteenth Streets, a curious sight met my eyes. The telegraph headquarters were in a brick warehouse on the northeast corner of those streets. The sidewalks were nearly four feet above the street grade. There were no desks or counters in the temporary offices, only boards laid across barrels, behind which the clerks stood to receive telegrams. As telegrams could not be written there, senders of them were standing in the street and using the sidewalk as desks. From Fifteenth to Sixteenth Street and for a half block on Sixteenth, men were standing as close as they could and use elbow room, writing telegrams. I joined the company and wrote mine, then reported for duty. I was placed behind a couple of barrels with a board over them as a receiving clerk, with instructions to accept every telegram offered without exacting any toll, and to note thereon that it was sent free on account of fire.

So great was the necessity of getting information out to anxious relatives that no telegrams whatever were being taken from other places, all the operators, all wires and facilities being devoted to sending telegrams out of the city.

I sent a long telegram to my father in Buffalo, assuring him of my safety and that of more than a score of former Buffalonians whom I had met in my wanderings. For years after I was gratefully told of the relief which that telegram brought to many families besides my own, as my father and brother went from family to family with the good news of personal safety, at least, of the homeless people.

A hasty consignment of food had been rushed from St. Louis by the telegraph officials. So far as I shared in it that afternoon, it consisted of a liberal allowance of apples and cheese which, in the slang of one of our hungry crowd, was good enough such as it was, and plenty of it as far as it went. The next day rye bread was added to the menu. The only drinking water I had had in three days was from the well of our host. Water for ablution was out of the question. There was no water to drink at the telegraph headquarters until Wednesday and then it was unfit. It was turbid water bailed up from the lake shore. Our thirst was assuaged by beer and we could never get enough of that at five cents per glass. If it was abundant in the saloons across State Street immediately after a beer wagon had discharged its cargo, the price was five cents; as it became scarcer the price rose to ten cents, and then to the famine price of fifteen cents. As the price rose we endured parched throats as best we could until reports reached us of a renewed supply of the beverage when, regardless of the demands of business, there would be a rush of officials and clerks alike to take advantage of the abundance and normal price to quench our, by that time, consuming thirst.

Before dark I was excused from duty and walked through the five or more miles of ruins to my previous night’s refuge. Preparations to leave were being made by all the people who had not already gone. Two of us before midnight came down to the Chicago and North Western Railway station at Wells and Kinzie Streets. It was an eerie walk down Lincoln Avenue to Wells, thence south to the station, over three miles. The night was pitch dark. Most of the distance on Wells Street south of Wisconsin Street had been built up with frame cottages. The street was several feet above the natural surface of the lots. The owners had laid in their winter’s supply of anthracite, then substantially the only coal used for domestic heating and cooking. Each of those coal piles had taken fire and was burning. There were many hundreds of them. The intense blackness of the night, the heat from the burning coal, the blue flames now bursting into little spurts of red, the crackling of the coal as lumps were splitting up, the unexpected glare of a sudden high spurt of red fire, the complete silence except the noises referred to, the absence of any other human beings in the entire distance traversed, made a nearly speechless walk as well as a fearful one, and I, at least, had the feeling that the fires of hell were about us and the imps of Satan waiting amidst them for unwary victims. Could Dante have experienced such a night he might have added further terrors to his Inferno. Our relief was intense when we boarded the train for a nearby suburban town, and as fire sufferers were given a free ride.

The next morning found me back at my temporary desk with old Chicago only a memory, but with high hopes for the new and greater Chicago which every ambitious young man was already convinced would surely rise out of the ashes of the old one. Looking backward over the past half century, we see that those hopes have been more than justified, and that the city of today with its motto, “I Will,” exceeds in accomplishments the visions of its then most enthusiastic prophets of future greatness.