![]() ![]() That doesn’t mean working class Chicagoans were spared the pitfalls of gentrification, though. ![]() It is popularly thought that the fire led Chicago to become a world leader in skyscrapers, but the truth is it took another decade for the skyscraper boom to begin. Flint, Library of Congress // Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons ![]() The Great Fire led to the gentrification of Chicago.Īn illustration of what the City of Chicago looked like before the Great Conflagration of 1871. Ogden, who also owned a lumber company in Peshtigo, lost the bulk of his personal possessions and most of his business holdings between the two fires. According to the Peshtigo Fire Museum, Ogden “established a barge line between Peshtigo Harbor and Chicago” before developing railroad lines to better transport his lumber. William Ogden, who served as Chicago’s first mayor from 1837 to 1838, was also largely responsible for developing the timber industry in the region at the time. Even its roads and sidewalks were built using planks, which became deadly infernos making escape difficult. While we think of cities as places of concrete and steel, in the 19th century, most of Chicago’s buildings were made of timber logged in the forests of Wisconsin. The reason Chicago burned so quickly was because it was mostly made of lumber. It was also more deadly approximately 1500 people lost their lives in the Peshtigo Fire. ![]() Born of the same conditions as the Chicago fire, the Peshtigo Fire was far larger, leaving a path of destruction that was 10 miles wide and 40 miles long. Tisdale, Peshtigo Fire Museum // Public Domain, Wikimedia CommonsĪt the same time as Chicago burned, the Peshtigo Fire was raging in Wisconsin, directly to the north along the shores of Lake Michigan. The Great Chicago Fire was not the worst fire in the Midwest that month.Īn illustration from an 1871 edition of Harper's Weekly shows the people of Peshtigo seeking refuge in the Peshtigo River. These flames could form walls of fire that reached up to 100 feet into the air, turning the city into a proverbial hell on earth. Known as fire whirls or convection whirls, the scorching hot air-upon coming into contact with cooler air-began spinning “like a hurricane, howling like myriads of evil spirits,” according to one eyewitness. O’Leary and her cow were officially exonerated in 1997. Another reporter from the time, Joseph Edgar Chamberlain of the Chicago Evening Post, was blunt in his assessment that “that neighborhood” where the fire began “had always been a terra incognita to respectable Chicagoans.” The truth is no one is sure how the fire began, and Mrs. Joseph Medill, who co-owned the Chicago Tribune at the time, often wrote anti-Irish screeds in the paper. O’Leary’s culpability resulted from a mix of xenophobia, misogyny, anti-Catholic sentiment, and classism. O’Leary’s cow knocked over a lantern, it is likely that the myth of Mrs. While it is widely believed that the fire began when Mrs. Harper's Magazine, Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons O'Leary and her cow for Harper's Magazine. ![]()
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