On a hot and dry October night in 1871, a cow kicked over a lantern in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn, starting a blaze that rose up from her modest Near Southwest Side home, leapt the Chicago River and burned down a large portion of the nascent prairie metropolis.
Or so goes the legend of the Great Chicago Fire, popularized in a version of the song, “A Hot Time in the Old Town.” The City Council officially exonerated Mrs. O’Leary and her cow in 1997, and the true cause may never be known. But the conflagration itself was far more devastating than the oft-sung camp ditty led generations of schoolchildren to believe.
The Great Chicago Fire wiped out a third of the bustling young city in two days of raging flames, destroying nearly every building in its downtown. Then, in a part of the story that never made it into song, Chicago immediately began rebuilding, laying the foundation for the great world city it would become.
“They rebuilt the downtown within two years, which is miraculous,” said Carl Smith, a Northwestern University professor and expert on the Great Chicago Fire.
The Great Rebuilding is often cited as a testament to the indomitable spirit of Chicago. It may also shed some light on the way forward, 150 years after the fire, as the city looks to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has left the future of its downtown in doubt once again.
Founded in 1833, Chicago rapidly evolved from a small frontier trading post along Lake Michigan into a growing center of agriculture, manufacturing and transportation, linking the East and West coasts by rail and creating the first quintessentially American-made city. By 1870, Chicago was the fifth-largest city in the U.S., with nearly 300,000 residents and a booming, diversified economy.
All of that would very nearly go up in smoke on Oct. 8, 1871.
The Chicago Fire started at about 9 p.m. on Sunday, in or near the barn behind Catherine O’Leary’s small wooden cottage at what was then 137 DeKoven St. It spread quickly on strong southwest winds through the densely packed neighborhood of Irish immigrants, overwhelming a late-responding fire department and engulfing wide swaths of the city in a relentless inferno.
It burned for two days, destroying 17,450 buildings, scorching more than three square miles and displacing 100,000 people — nearly a third of Chicago’s population — before it ran out of real estate and was finally extinguished by rain. About 300 people died in the Great Chicago Fire, which caused $200 million in property damage — billions in current dollars — reducing the city’s downtown and much of the North Side to ashes.
“Basically, it burned down a third of the built-up city,” Smith said. “We’re talking about all the newspapers, all the hotels, all the lawyers’ offices, all the theaters, all just gone in 30 hours, and in the most terrifying way.”
Smith, author of “Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City,” said a drought, an overtaxed fire department and a city built almost entirely out of wood made Chicago a “disaster waiting to happen.”
What happened next — Chicago’s so-called Great Rebuilding — was perhaps even more remarkable. Fueled by municipal, business and humanitarian aid from far and wide, the city bounced back quickly, and in a big way.
The scope of the Chicago Fire drew both international attention and financial contributions from cities such as New York, St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Getting the nation’s freight handler, tool maker, stacker of wheat and hog butcher for the world back up and running was an economic imperative, Smith said.
The initial rebuilding in the burnt district consisted of temporary wooden homes and storefronts. The rebuilding gained steam and by 1873, Chicago’s downtown was sprouting new and bigger stores, offices, hotels and entertainment venues spread out over an area twice the size of the original business district.
The Palmer House Hotel, which burned down in the Chicago Fire, was rebuilt at a cost of $2.25 million. The ornate seven-story, brick-and-iron Palmer House version 2.0 billed itself as “the only thoroughly fire-proof hotel in the United States” when it began welcoming guests in 1873. It would be replaced by the current 25-story Palmer House in 1925.
It took another major fire in 1874 before Chicago builders shifted en masse from wood to more expensive fireproof materials like terra cotta, mostly because insurers demanded it, Smith said.
As the central business district took shape, large manufacturers such as the McCormick Reaper Works, which was destroyed in the fire, migrated south and west of the expanding downtown.
Chicago’s rebuilding trajectory was dizzying. In 1885, the 10-story red brick and granite Home Insurance Building rose at the corner of LaSalle and Adams streets, creating the first modern skyscraper.
There were growing pains too, as the accelerated rebuilding “deepened divisions” between the wealthy and the working class in Chicago, leading to labor strife, Smith said.
The deadly Haymarket Riot in 1886 grew out of a strike at the McCormick Reaper Works, while the Pullman strike of 1894 shut down rail traffic across the Midwest as workers sought better wages for assembling the Chicago-built sleeper cars.
By 1893, Chicago’s population was 1.1 million, second only to New York, which it beat out to host the World’s Columbian Exposition held that year.
Neal Samors, a prolific author on the history of Chicago, said the fire was unquestionably a catalyst for the city’s rapid growth.
“I think the fire and the response — all the money that poured into Chicago to do this building — certainly helped the growth,” Samors said. “The city was growing, but if it had not burned down, I don’t see how it would have grown that quickly.”
The fast-growing city that emerged after the fire was built by momentum more than design, Smith said. Urban planning would come later.
“The fire spurred some what we might call urban renewal, in that it burned down a lot of bad buildings,” Smith said. “There’s basically no planning until the Plan of Chicago.”
Backed by a group of influential civic leaders, the 1909 Plan of Chicago was the “make no little plans” vision of architect Daniel Burnham, shaping the development of the city, its parks system and its open lakefront for more than a century.
Once again, Chicago may be ready for a new plan as the city seeks to navigate a pathway forward in the post-pandemic world.
“I think we have the same pivotal moment,” said Michael Fassnacht, president and CEO of World Business Chicago and the city’s chief marketing officer. “It’s not about, let’s go back to the old pre-COVID Chicago. We have to have the common will to create something new.”
While the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 seems a more apt precedent, there are parallels between the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Chicago Fire. The buildings are intact, but Chicago’s downtown has resembled a ghost town for much of the past 18 months.
The central business district in Chicago, which includes over 153.7 million square feet of inventory, is at a record 19% vacancy rate, up 5.2% since the pre-pandemic first quarter of 2020, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group. Add in another 6% of available space through sublease and new construction, and more than a quarter of Chicago’s downtown office space is on the market.
“We’re looking at a downtown office market that is substantially weaker today than it has been at any point in time, going back to 1996,” said Brandon Svec, director of market analytics at CoStar Group.
Chicago has fared better than many of its counterparts during the new millennium, luring the headquarters for major employers such as McDonald’s and Conagra, reshaping the cityscape with bold new developments and reinventing the formerly industrial Fulton Market district as a trendy corporate and retail mecca.
The conversion of the long-vacant Old Post Office into modern offices has attracted diverse tenants such as Uber, Walgreens, PepsiCo, Ferrara Candy, Cisco Systems and CoinFlip to the massive Chicago redevelopment.
Chicago drew 58,000 more jobs to its central business district between 2010 and 2018, the third-largest increase of any city behind New York and San Francisco, according to the Brookings Institution.
The Chicago area was hard-hit by the pandemic, with unemployment spiking to a non-seasonally adjusted high of 16.4% in April 2020, as employers laid off and furloughed workers during statewide stay-at-home orders for nonessential businesses. The city’s workforce is slowly recovering, with the unemployment rate declining to 8% in July 2021.
But the pandemic has ground most development to a halt and driven down lease rates with a surplus of office space that may take years to absorb, Svec said. It has also raised larger questions about the viability of densely built downtowns like Chicago in the post-pandemic world.
Amy Liu, vice president and director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, said the pandemic has created an opportunity for Chicago to spread development investment across more neighborhoods, and more equitably.
“The community needs to invest in a series of commercial districts in ways that are inclusive, wealth creating, and with mobility options for residents,” Liu said. “We may be in a future of hybrid work … and that means that there is more opportunity to create nodes of economic activity across the city.”
Liu said Chicago will need to develop flexible, collaborative environments that blend residential and office spaces under one roof, which could entail converting existing office buildings into such multiuse.
For years, Chicago focused economic development efforts on its downtown, but beyond the gleaming office towers, poverty and neglect has dominated the landscape in neighborhoods on the South and West sides.
That dichotomy was thrown into sharp relief during the looting and violence that followed the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer. More than 2,100 businesses were damaged across Chicago over a week, according to a Tribune investigation.
While even Water Tower Place, the mecca of high-end shopping on North Michigan Avenue, suffered looting, the hardest-hit businesses were on the South and West sides, which have been slow to rebuild. Some residents accused the city of prioritizing the protection of downtown at the expense of disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Chicago needs to be “even more intentional” about investing in disadvantaged neighborhoods, Liu said, building on initiatives such as Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/West, a three-year, $750 million program to spur development in 10 neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides.
“I think 2020 lit a fire across all cities to embrace racially inclusive growth,” Liu said. “And it isn’t just because of COVID, but also the criminal injustices of 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, that has accelerated public/private sector actions towards inclusive growth.”
World Business Chicago, the city’s public/private economic development agency, is getting similar feedback from business leaders on the need for more diversified investment across the city.
“They want to create a more equitable city,” Fassnacht said. “They want every neighborhood to thrive.”
With the pandemic accelerating the growth of online shopping, Chicago’s retail footprint may also be ripe for redevelopment. Fassnacht suggested the Magnificent Mile could evolve into an experiential retail destination, offering customers immersive activities, events and services to build brand loyalty.
A Tribune analysis of the Magnificent Mile in April found 28 vacant storefronts, or just over 25% of the 110 businesses on the avenue. In August, Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo became the latest major retailer to depart this year, following Gap and Macy’s.
As more traditional retailers vacate North Michigan Avenue, it creates “huge opportunities” to reinvent even Chicago’s premier shopping destination, Fassnacht said.
“Chicago is at its best when it reinvents itself, and doesn’t just stick to the past,” Fassnacht said.
