The fire started on October 8, 1871, and burned for two days. By the time it died, the Great Chicago Fire had consumed over three square miles, destroyed 17,500 buildings, left 100,000 homeless, and killed approximately 300. Mrs. O'Leary's cow probably didn't kick over the lantern - a reporter later admitted inventing that detail - but something ignited in her DeKoven Street neighborhood and wouldn't stop. The city was wooden, the weather was dry, and the wind was fierce. Yet within a year, construction was booming; within two decades, Chicago had invented the skyscraper and become America's second city. The fire destroyed old Chicago and created conditions for new Chicago - a city that built higher, stronger, and meaner, determined never to burn again.
Chicago in 1871 was a fire waiting to happen. The boomtown had grown too fast, built mostly of wood, with wooden sidewalks over wooden streets. The summer had been dry; small fires had exhausted firefighters. When flames broke out on the evening of October 8, they spread before anyone could respond effectively. The fire jumped the Chicago River twice, consuming the business district, burning through wealthy neighborhoods, racing faster than people could flee. Survivors huddled on the prairie or waded into Lake Michigan. The flames finally died when rain came and the fuel ran out. The city center was ash; the water tower stood nearly alone among the ruins, its limestone walls one of the few structures to survive.
Chicago rebuilt faster than seemed possible. Within a week, construction began. Insurance money flowed in from around the world; the rail lines remained intact; the location commanding trade between East and West hadn't changed. But the new Chicago would be different. Fire codes mandated brick and stone in the city center. The burned district became laboratory for new building techniques. By 1885, William Le Baron Jenney had built the Home Insurance Building - the world's first skyscraper, its steel frame supporting walls instead of walls supporting themselves. The innovation transformed cities worldwide. Chicago's disaster became architecture's opportunity.
The Chicago School of architecture rose from the rubble. Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, John Root, and others developed the tall commercial building as art form. Sullivan's maxim - 'form follows function' - shaped modernism. Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago created the lakefront parks and grand boulevards that define the city today. The architecture kept rising: the Tribune Tower's Gothic spire, the Wrigley Building's terra cotta gleam, and eventually the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), which held the title of world's tallest building for 25 years. The city that burned because it was wooden rebuilt in steel and stone and glass, each generation reaching higher than the last.
The Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan, which provided the city's drinking water. The river also received the city's sewage. The result was periodic epidemics that killed thousands. In one of history's great engineering feats, Chicago reversed its river. The Sanitary and Ship Canal, completed in 1900, sent the Chicago River flowing backward - away from the lake, toward the Mississippi watershed. The project required excavating more earth than the Panama Canal. Downstream cities, particularly St. Louis, objected to receiving Chicago's waste; they were overruled. The reversal worked: epidemics ceased, and the river that had threatened became the river that served.
Chicago is located on Lake Michigan in northeastern Illinois, accessible via O'Hare and Midway airports. The architecture boat tour on the Chicago River is essential - the best introduction to the city's building history. Millennium Park's Cloud Gate ('The Bean') offers interactive art; the Art Institute houses world-class collections. The Willis Tower Skydeck and 360 Chicago (formerly Hancock Observatory) provide views. Deep-dish pizza is tradition; Italian beef divides loyalists. The 'L' transit system serves most attractions. Lake Michigan's beaches provide summer relief. Winter is brutal; spring and fall ideal. The experience rewards ambition - Chicago is big, brash, and built to impress, a city that took catastrophe as opportunity and never looked back.
Located at 41.88°N, 87.63°W on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan in northeastern Illinois. From altitude, Chicago's skyline rises dramatically from the lakefront - a concentration of towers that demonstrate the skyscraper's evolution from the Home Insurance Building to the Willis Tower. The Chicago River cuts through downtown, its reversal invisible from above. The grid streets extend in all directions; the lakefront parks form a green band between city and water. O'Hare Airport spreads to the northwest, one of the world's busiest. The scale is apparent from altitude: this is the third-largest American city, built by will and ambition from prairie and ash. What appears from altitude as archetypal American metropolis was once a ruin - the city that burned and rebuilt and became the model for modern urban life.