Part 2

At the northwest corner of Ohio and Clark Streets there was a hat and cap store. Every time I passed there I heard the proprietor invite every passer-by to enter the store and fit himself with a hat or cap without charge. His reiterated invitation shouted to the moving mass was: “They’ll all burn up anyway. Make yourselves at home with a new hat free. No charge! Take what you want.” Not a man or boy accepted the invitation during the four times I passed there. It was acknowledged with humorous good nature by the men but time was too precious, the fire was too dangerously close; one could not afford to risk the loss of his place in the moving mass and separation from family or friends for a new hat.

At Ohio Street many people turned west so that with those coming up La Salle and Wells Streets the crowd seemed no less on Ohio Street west of Wells than it did on Clark Street. It was more dense then than I saw it anywhere else. It was the best-natured mass of people I ever was in the midst of. The women were more sober-minded than the men. Losing a home was more serious to them, but endless badinage passed back and forth between the men concerning the suddenness and inconvenience of the moving and the ignorance of a destination or abiding place. I never heard a crying child except in one instance. The children as a rule considered it all a wonderful lark. I occasionally saw old people or sick ones being led or almost carried. On Ohio Street west of Clark Street everybody was carrying something, including babies, but most did as I finally did--left everything to burn and walked on with the feeling that we were lucky to escape with our lives.

Two of us men were puzzled as to what we should do with a woman standing in a dazed condition with only a nightgown on. She could not answer a question. While we were puzzling, the husband, in a wild state of mind, rushed up, lifted her into a single buggy standing at the curb, placed himself between the thills and pulled away, not, however, with a trotting gait.

An Italian of middle age carrying a load of bedding on his back was crying lustily. On inquiry as to the cause he said brokenly, with great sobs, that he had lost his dog. Some one inquired if he had a wife and children. He replied that he had but had lost those too. To a jibe from someone as to his failure to cry over their loss, his answer was that they could take care of themselves but the dog couldn’t, and he knew he had lost him forever. The uncomplimentary remarks of the refugees manifested their radical dissent from such unnatural feelings.

I saw two boys carrying a showcase filled with candy. One walking in front carried the case with his hands behind him. Both were crying softly. They had lost their family. I saw them the next day on the prairie west of McCormick Seminary, playing marbles, the candy all gone. I have regretted since that I did not inquire whether they had lived on that in the meantime, for there was little opportunity to trade it for more substantial food.

By the process of slow walking to Erie Street bridge where a considerable number of people waited for an hour or two, thence by a ride with an express man, a part of our group found ourselves at the east abutment of Chicago Avenue bridge about 4 a. m. It had a slight grade above the street. From it for two hours we saw the flames everywhere leaping upward but ever steadily making their way toward us. At one time we witnessed six churches, some of them with spires, sending their flames high into the air, making the most spectacular exhibition of the fire on the North Side. They included St. James Church, Unity Church which had two spires, New England Congregational Church, as well as one or two others, the names of which I cannot now recall. None was burning fast, it seemed to us, but it was an awesome as well as a depressing sight. They were the outstanding feature of the fire from our viewpoint for over an hour.

About 6 a. m. a number of us succeeded in inducing an expressman who was driving north to carry us to Fullerton and Racine Avenues, where some of the party had friends who had a comfortable home. We were welcomed in spite of the fact that about thirty other friends had already taken refuge there, and so many more recalled that it might prove a place of safety that by Monday evening over seventy homeless people had gathered there.

As we drove up Larrabee Street and Lincoln Avenue, we found the residents out in force on the streets pitying us as we drove by with others in the same condition. In reply to questions we gave what information we could as to the extent of the fire. Not one person, to all appearances, was in the least personally concerned or seemed to have any idea of peril from the fire to _his_ home. Yet about 3 o’clock that afternoon I walked down to North Avenue and from there looking down Larrabee Street and later Sedgwick Street, a distance of a half mile, saw only deserted streets. Not a human being was visible in that distance with both sides of both streets on fire at about North Avenue, the fire having extended further north on Sedgwick Street than on Larrabee Street.

I spent most of Monday after 10 a. m. in wandering about the district between North and Fullerton Avenues, a distance of a mile. The houses were being rapidly vacated north of North Avenue. The people had a better opportunity to remove their belongings or bury them than had those who were caught unprepared during Sunday night in the district south of Division Street. Many could be seen burying furniture. One musician told me some months after that he had so buried a fine piano only to lose it, as thieves had gotten it before he could return to his devastated home lot some days after the fire.

The fire was burning steadily and rather rapidly northward without a hand anywhere attempting to stay its progress. It was plain to be seen and often commented on by the fire-dispossessed wanderers that three or four fire engines with hose connections and water could at any time after 10 or 11 on Monday morning, have prevented all progress of the flames north of Division Street or at least north of North Avenue. The engines could have been obtained. It only needed water but there was no water. The destruction of the Chicago Avenue pumping station early in the morning had ended all hope of ending the fire so long as there were houses, streets, sidewalks and fences to feed it and no rain to quench it. I saw the pavements burning with the same fury as houses and board walks.

The strongest impression made upon my mind next after the burning of those thousands of homes was the long lines of vehicles loaded with goods and human beings and accompanied by files of thousands of homeless ones walking alongside. There was not the humor that there was in the earlier dispossessed ones. They were mostly headed west for Webster Avenue bridge over the North Branch. Those of us who had lost all our personal belongings were curious to note the mental agony and nervousness under which these later refugees were suffering in the fear the fire would yet overtake them. There were delays and halts in the endless, slowly-moving procession of vehicles and people. Whenever one such occurred a stream of profanity and curses issued from the drivers and even from pedestrians of such volume, variety and blistering malediction on those causing the delay, that I hope the world will never again hear its equal. It was due, of course, to the overwrought nerves and minds of every one suffering under hours of agony from loss of homes and personal property and fear for the lives of wife, children or parents.

Before sunset I had returned to my place of refuge. Some thirty or forty men had gathered there. At a council it was decided that active measures must be taken to guard our lives. In front and to the south of us and west of McCormick Seminary were some sixty to eighty acres of prairie, thickly covered with very dry thistles and grass. If the fire swept across that all our lives would be put in jeopardy. It was decided to find a team and plow furrows across that field as at least a partial protection.

The second protection was the tearing down of fences and uprooting posts which fenced in part of the prairie and throwing them into ditches where we could handily find them. The final precaution was the filling of many open kettles and pans with water from a well, and placing them so that in the emergency feared each woman and child for herself or itself, or some man for them, could soak a wrap, place it about the woman or child, the man throwing what water he could over his legs and then with his charge run the gauntlet of the prairie fire. The captain in command told me off with another lively young fellow as one of several pairs to kick off fence boards and pull out posts. It was long after dark when we got to work but it was exhilarating work as the night chill came on, and kicking in unison we did great execution with the fences as well as to our legs and muscles. The hardest job was the pulling out of posts which caused lacerated hands, but no one murmured. We felt ourselves to be in a desperate situation. Our eyes were ever to the south, watching the steady coming on of the fire as it lapped up in flames street after street of houses.

About 1:30 o’clock on Tuesday morning when we had given up hope of any stay and when the last row of houses on Belden Avenue or the street south of it, next south of the prairie, was about being licked up, rain suddenly came down in such volume as to assure us safety and the extinguishment of the fire. Without more ado every man sought some place of refuge. I crept under an outside stairway to find just room enough to lie in amidst several other men who had forestalled me. I had not slept since early Sunday morning. I had had nothing to eat since Sunday noon, but I do not recall that I was either sleepy or hungry.

When I arose about daylight Tuesday morning I could scarcely believe the sight which met my eyes. The prairie which we had so worked over the evening before and which we had left tenantless was filled with a mass of refugees who had drifted there since 2 a. m. Some one of our crowd made a rough count and reported over three thousand men, women and children camped there. As I walked about I saw many whom I had earlier seen as refugees. Among others were the two boys and the janitor’s wife with her four children. Every group seemed to be engaged in cooking breakfast. Judging by smell and sight I was of the opinion that the three staples which had been forehandily saved from the devouring flames were coffee, rye bread and sauerkraut. At my refuge a cup of weak tea and one biscuit was served to each adult. Immediately after that hearty breaking of a two days’ fast, several of the men started for downtown to find out something of the conditions and what we could do about getting to work or leaving the city.

Our walk was down Lincoln Avenue to Clark Street, thence into Lincoln Park at Wisconsin Street to North Avenue. There were still many graves in the old cemetery south of Wisconsin Street which had been incorporated within the park limits. Not a wooden marker had escaped the flames while former granite and marble headstones were in evidence only by the chips left of them which littered the ground. Broken china was everywhere, plainly the remnants of household things which had been carried there for safety and then abandoned to the flames which swept the dry grass, shrubbery and trees out of existence.

We could note the line of trees along Clark Street abutting the walk, which had burned down to the soil. A former double row of Lombardy poplars which lined the roadway to the park from Clark Street and North Avenue northeasterly could only be traced by the blackened spots scarcely above the surface. There were only a few people about in the burned over district. There were no police, no militia and no soldiers. It was a desert--a universal ruin with here and there only showing a stone or brick remnant of the wall of a church or of some former substantial business building, where a big city of people had lived in general happiness only three days before.

In our walk south of North Avenue we were often non-plussed to identify the cross streets since former landmarks had been completely destroyed and where brick business buildings had existed they seemed to have fallen into the streets making piles of debris. The Ogden House occupying the present site of the Newberry Library stood out prominently wholly uninjured.

The rails of the street railway on Clark Street had almost without an exception been burned out of their ties and lay about the street and upon the former sidewalk space twisted and warped like dead black snakes in agonies of contortion. The paving blocks had been largely burned over and out and were often displaced, leaving holes in the street. The sidewalks and everything which was inflammable had been burned.

On Chicago Avenue a lot of water mains had been distributed before the fire. Sticking out of one of these we found the legs of a man who had been roasted to death in his place of refuge, probably blindly sought by him in a drunken stupor.

We were told that a few hours after we had left Chicago Avenue bridge and as refugees in vehicles and afoot were crowding over it in the face of advancing flames, a small oil refinery near there caught fire, exploded and caused the death of over a hundred people by burning or by drowning in being crowded off the bridge or jumping into the river in the frenzy and agony of the crowd following the explosion.

On Dearborn Street not more than two hundred feet north of my late boarding place, we saw a gruesome sight. Only a day or two before the fire the son of the owner of a residence had recovered from an attack of typhoid and the tan bark had been removed from the street. The body we saw, as we learned afterwards, was the father of the sick boy. With a blind fatalism which can not be explained, after the man had gotten his son and family to a place of safety he had returned to the house determined to save it. To that end he got out the garden hose, wound it about his body and turning on the water undertook to put out burning brands as they fell, until a whirlwind of fire burned him to death. His right hand held the nozzle. The marks of the hose burned off were plainly discernable over his back as he lay on his face burned to a crisp.

Of my former boarding place nothing was left, even the bricks having largely been pulverized by the heat, and buried treasure of silverware was afterwards found melted to a shapeless mass.

I met there our next door neighbor’s wife. They owned their home. She had lost eyebrows and eyelashes and her hair was singed. Her story was a strange one. Her husband was downtown trying to save what he could out of his Sherman House Barber Shop. With the fire drawing near, she felt that her canary bird would lose its life when exposed to the great heat, if she undertook to carry it with her. She therefore decided to remain in the house and be burned up with it and her canary. At the last moment as she saw the flames a few doors away, her courage failed and with a heavy wrap, without a hat, she dashed out, to find herself almost stifled by the intense heat, and could barely get around the corner without being suffocated. She was unaware of the loss of her hair until told of it by friends whom she found after hours of wandering northward.

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.

FRANK J. LOESCH

10 South La Salle Street, Chicago, October 12, 1925.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Read before The Chicago Literary Club, Oct. 12, 1925.