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This tour includes Landmarks near the Main Branch of the Chicago River. Among them are two bridges that burned down in the fire, a tunnel that provided an important escape route from it, and the courthouse and prison erected early in the rebuilding that followed the catastrophe.
4 mar 2021 · Newspaper drawing of Chicago residents fleeing the city on the Randolph Street Bridge. One of the most popular theories regarding the origins of the Great Chicago Fire is that a woman named Catherine O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern in the family barn.
Great Chicago Fire, conflagration that began on October 8, 1871, and burned until early October 10, devastating an expansive swath of the city of Chicago. The fire, the most famous in American history, claimed about 300 lives, destroyed some 17,450 buildings, and caused $200 million in damage.
The Rush Street Bridge that was destroyed by the fire was succeeded by a final Rush Street swing bridge, which was completed in 1872 and is seen in this photograph. Time and progress, rather than ill fortune, did it in.
The only route into the burned center area is now the bridge at Twelfth Street, in Chicago's South Side. The South Loop is full of smoky rubble; the North Side is still burning.
It is not hard to understand why. Chapin effectively captures the frenzied crush of the crowd and wagons at this narrow point of passage to safety. The Randolph Street and Lake Street bridges were two major means of escape from the South Division to the West Division.
On October 8, 1871, Chicago was transformed into a hellish inferno. For two days the city burned as firefighters struggled to get control of the blaze. By the time a sudden rain helped extinguish...
