Every Saturday featured work by C. G. Bush, Wilkie Collins, F. O. C. Darley, Charles Dickens, J.W. Ehninger, Sol Eytinge Jr., Harry Fenn, Alfred Fredericks, Thomas Hardy, J.J. Harley, W.J. Hennessy, Winslow Homer, Augustus Hoppin, Ralph Keeler, S.S. Kilburn, Granville Perkins, W.L. Sheppard, Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Waud and others.
Every Saturday, November 4, 1871
THE GREAT FIRE AT CHICAGO
By Ralph Keeler and A. R. Waud.
We rode as far as the morning train of the Alton and St. Louis Railway could take us into the burning city, and were straightway absorbed in the horror and panic of the great disaster. We made our way past piles of burning coal and the wrecks of hundreds of cars left from the fire of Saturday, through throngs of hurrying, terrified people, to the edges of the burnt and burning districts. As far as the eye could reach ahead of us the world seemed on fire. That is all can be said of the scene. The city was before us swept by the gale and the flames. Around us were people fleeing for their lives, often in wagons that had caught fire in escaping. We could do little but look out for our personal safety, making detours of miles to get across bridges and follow up at a distance the course of the flames. There was no chance to help any one or do any thing but share the general stupor of the stricken people. I have no idea where we went or what pictures of distress we did not see. And now with this excitement around me, I am in no plight to recall these terrible scenes. Our pictures must tell the story for themselves. Of this appalling catastrophe, as of a battle, generally speaking, an eye-witness is the least capable of giving an intelligent account. Terror and dismay spreading among three hundred thousands of people with accelerating and intensifying force has an effect that cannot be portrayed, and I cannot understand the constitution of the man who is not unnerved by it.
The Burning of Chicago—A View from the Lake on the North Side
Raw Sketch by Alfred R. Waud
The Burning of Chicago—A View from the Lake on the North Side
Every Saturday
November 4, 1871
Pages 452 and 453
Engraving as it appeared in print
When most of the city was gone, we could recognize the water-works themselves from the beautiful tower just over the reservoir, if I am not mistaken. The brick blocks appeared to melt away away into their own basements, and there stood the stone towers of the water-works sustaining the siege of fire. They are still standing, like the armor of good knights in the old collections, now that the awful battle is over which already seems so long ago, though it was but yesterday. In some places, as I have seen to-day, pieces of the stone have cracked and fallen off the shells, but the beautiful tower fronting the south has met with hardly any damage. It is, to say the least, very remarkable that the city authorities should have allowed this otherwise fire-proof building to be vulnerable only in its wooden roof. Many people think that the city would not have been left without water but for that mistake.
After walking miles we succeeded in getting upon one of the avenues above the region of the fire, and there we met the first familiar face since arriving in the city. There, too, we were fortunate to find food and shelter. It was a terrible night. Probably in the whole city there was not an eye closed in sleep. Not only the water-works but the gas-works are gone, and if it were not for the reflection from the clouds made by the smoldering ruins, and especially from the burning coal piles, what is left of Chicago would be in complete darkness. I am writing these hurried and incongruous lines by candle-light, on the third night after the disaster. I have heard three shots in these comparatively quiet streets since I have commenced this article. There are vague reports of lawlessness on the North Side, but troops are arriving and the citizens are patrolling the streets everywhere.
We spent the day among the ruins, a view of which we give, looking from the Lake, showing the old light-house and elevator A, the only elevator saved on the North Side. This elevator caught fire but was escued from the common fate in some miraculous way. A little to the right of the picture will be seen a block, which, with one other single house, the residence of Mr. William B. Ogden, was the only building saved for miles—in fact, on the whole North Side. This house was covered with wet blankets, yet when it is considered that the flames, driven by the gale, leaped over spaces of nearly a half-mile, and that the house and surrounding fences (also intact) are of wood, the escape seems marvelous. The fences around the neighboring Washington Park, which Mr. Ogden gave to the city, are untouched. It is most probable that the gift to the city and some freak of the gale, rather than the wet blankets, saved the donor’s house. Further along, at the entrance of Lincoln Park, the flames have leaped much broader spaces, and ruined the old German burying-ground, besides covering the first acres of the park with the wrecks of household goods, carried there for safety—all burned. On the corner between Washington Park and Mr. Ogden’s house, a cow, in some incomprehensible way, succeeded in getting into the mouth of the reservoir, which can be hardly three feet long by two feet wide, and thee lodged, with her horns and fore feet protruding. Some one has had the mercy to shoot the poor creature. As he is much larger than the aperture it is, as I have intimated, a wonder how she ever got in. On the coner of Clark and Harrison streets stood side by side a wooden and a brick schoolhouse, forming, I believe, one large school. Strangely enough, the brick house burned and the wooden one is left.
It is probable that no one will ever know the number of lives lost. I have seen the place where some eighty-six bodies have been brought and recognized. In one coffin were the charred remains of ten persons, of course unrecognizable.
Bridges were seen to go down with people on them. Many were driven into the lake and many more into the river. It is said, I know not how truly, that about thirty women fled to the vaults of the Historical Society, and perished in the ruin. Twenty-three bodies were found in a lumber-yard. One of the earliest issues of the Chicago Journal has three columns of solid agate containing single-line announcements of the missing. People are coming from other cities looking for their friends; and other people are hurrying from one church to another where the distressed are huddled together and fed, and inquiring for husbands, wives and children. Food is now arriving on every train, and the hundred thousand people who were driven into the open air are gradually fed and sheltered. I have seen eleemosynary bread and cheese going into the house of a man who last week was worth a million. The Mayor of Chicago himself, I have been told on good authority, has, with his family, been receiving aid in this way. In the first panic it was thought that all the banks and insurance offices could pay nothing. As will have been seen by the daily papers before this is printed, the banks have found, upon getting at their safes, that they can pay fifteen per cent on their deposits at once, and the rest in time. In the face of the additional fact that some of the insurance money will be forthcoming, it can be expected that a quieter state of feeling will obtain.
The Day After the Fire—Scene of River
Every Saturday
November 4, 1871
Pages 452-453
Engraving from a sketch by Alfred R. Waud
The fire has devastated about two thousand and six hundred acres in all, ranging three and a half miles north and south, and one mile east and west. The total losses are variously estimated from two to four hundred millions of dollars. Standing anywhere near the centre of what was the business portion of the city, nothing but shapeless ruin meets the eye in every direction. The smell of the smoldering debris must be perceptible miles away in the country. The Nicholson pavements are very little burned, and the streets are remarkably clean, the buildings seemingly all to have shrunk, as I have before said, into their own basements. In some places slender needles of wall stand three and four stories high, past which a crowd of dazed spectators is continually passing, notwithstanding the fact that three men have already been killed by falling walls. Posted up on the walls is the order if Pinkerton the detective, to the effect that the pillager shall not be arrested, but killed on the spot. Everywhere the enterprising business men are putting up board signs announcing their new head-quarters. There is a grim sort of inadvertent humor in many of these signs; most of them say “REMOVED” to such and such place; one reads “Everything gone except wife, children and energy.” Opposite the Court House a fine Newfoundland dog, it is said, is watching the old premises of his master, and refuses to be driven or coaxed away. Everywhere people can be seen getting out safes, some in battered condition, and some with their paint uninjured. There have been instances of men so anxious to get at the contents, that they have opened them before they were cold. I was told by an eye-witness of a man who opened his safe thus prematurely and saw his whole fortune just as he left it, but as he reached forward to grasp it, it caught fire and burned to ashes before his eyes. Almost as dramatic a scene took place at the opening of the vault of Messrs. Root & Cady where their plates of music were stored. Their financial fate depended upon those plates alone. What was their surprise and exultation as the door flew back to see the candle which was used to light them in the vaults, and always extinguished and left just inside tyhe entrance—what was their surprise and exultation to find that candle unmelted and ready again to show the way through the uninjured vault.
The most impressive view of the ruins is at night when they are lit up by the distant piles of burning coal. The wreck of the Pacific Hotel and the wall of a certain other building with a beautiful archway still stand are then especially grand.
I have no heart to write of the distress we have seen. One feeble old woman walked two miles barefooted before she found a place of safety. Women have been driven from luxurious homes to pass two nights in succession in the open air. We give you on the first page a picture taken on the prairie where thousands upon thousands fled for their lives (raw sketch below). On Monday night in the rain and in such a scene as that forty children are known to have been born into the world; man more died of croup, bought on by the exposure. There are terrible stories of extortion practiced in the first twenty-four hours of the disaster. Hundreds of dollars were charged for drays, express-wagons and wheelbarrows, and in some instances the things rescued from the flames at such prices were carried away by the extortionate wretches and never seen again by their owners. Coffee sold at five dollars a cup, it was reported, the first morning after the fire, but the prompt relief sent from other cities soon put a stop to that. The danger now undoubtedly will be lest the generous provisions of the outside world should be wasted. Money rather than food will be required hereafter, and a complete and honest organization to see that it is properly applied.
While the city was burning it was repeatedly said that Chicago was keeping up its reputation for great deeds by having the greatest fire of modern times. From the present appearances, even it can be expected that the enterprise which wrought the marvel of this beautiful city will restore it. While the debris in the basements of the demolished buildings is yet smoking, contracts are making to have them rebuilt. The proprietor of the Briggs House has nought the late Loclede Hotel, and Mr. Gage of the Sherman House has bought and re-christened a new hotel, vacant before the fire. A thousand deeds of noblest charity can be set against extortion and lawlessness which have more or less prevailed. Regular dealers in coal are advertising to sell to the distressed at less than usual rates. The omnibuses that used to charge ten cents have reduced their fare to five cents. Mr. Nixon has a fine new building on the corner of Lasalle and Monroe streets containing numerous offices to rent. Of course there is a great rush for them, and the kindly gentleman instead of taking advantage of the demand is leasing the whole building at ten per cent less than the ordinary rates. These are but few instances of the public spirit of the people who are to make Chicago rise again from its ashes. I can recall no case of complaint from even the heaviest losers; these stricken people bear the terrible affliction in a manner worthy of the generous sympathy of the world, and that certainly has been shown to them in aa way to give new confidence in collective human nature.
Chicago, October 10, 1871
Every Saturday
November 4, 1871
Pages 440 and 441
Drawing by Alfred Fredericks
Every Saturday, November 11, 1871
SUNDAY AFTER THE FIRE.
By Ralph Keeler and A. R. Waud.
Toward the close of the week people in Chicago began to sleep of nights and to realize, I think, for the first time, the extent of the great disaster. On Thursday, we were present at the burning of a brick barn, and the terror of the preceding days seemed to reach its climax in the crowd. Wherever there was a hurrying or hustling in the throng nearest the fire, “They have caught the incendiary!” someone would say, in a voice made wild by the weight of long days and nights of fear, and directly some imaginary wretch was caught, shot and hanged, according to the firm belief of people a rod away. There is nothing like the infinite faith of terror. On Friday, people had so collected themselves as to remember the ludicrous scenes which occurred around them in the awful hours of the burning. Then were called to mind the man who fled with a single joint of stove under his arm and left his papers to the flames; and the other man, who, abandoning his pictures escaped with a feather dusting broom; and that tenderer picture of the little girl who passed up Michigan Avenue, barefooted. struggling under the weight of a box containing four new-born puppies. An eye-witness told us of the attempt to blowup the building occupied by a clothing establishment, Brown & Hammond’s, if I am not mistaken. By some accident the fuse did not communicate with the powder intended to do the work. Just after the fuse had gone off, four thieves issued from the building and deliberately walked away with their arms full of clothing. Among the stories of extortion, we have heard this one: An undertaker with a hearse attempted to charge fifteen dollars for conveying a coffin from the burnt district over on to the West Side, and the corpse put his head out and remonstrated. An enterprising Chicagoan, it appears, had formed a plan of getting across the river at a reasonable rate; and so terrified was the undertaker that the ruse succeeded beyond expectation. The coffin was “dumped out” at its destination, and the driver of the hearse never waited for any pay at all.
Saturday after the fire a rain-storm set in, followed by a terrific gale at sunset. All night long the trees under our window rockedand wailed. There can have been little sleep in the city until toward morning, when the wind abated. Some of the most picturesque, and at the same time the most dangerous of the ruins were blown down. Sunday opened a bright, cool day. The burnt districts were early thronged with people in carriages, express-wagons, omni-buses, and on foot. Every one, with scarcely an exception that I can remember, had a clean, washed-up appearance. It must be that the poorer sufferers by the fire did not visit the ruins on Sunday, or else the charity of the outside world has been swift to clothe and cleanse them. So admirable, indeed, have been the arrangements of the relief committees, that one has to go to the churches or other place of refuge for the homeless, to come face to face with positive suffering.
The churches were thronged on this Sabbath morning. Denominations and creeds were forgotten. Societies whose regular places of worship had been burned met and were cordially received at the churches In some instances services were held in the open air, in front of the ruined sanctuaries. Just outside of what was once his church, Robert Collyer is said to have spoken as only he can speak. We could not get there until the afternoon, when the neighborhood was almost deserted. We were fortunate enough, however, to be present at the services in front of one of the Methodist churches. Nothing in modern times, I think, has come so near to primitive Christianity in circumstance and spirit, as this preaching of universal loss and in that desert of ruins.
General View, Looking North, Michigan Avenue Hotel
Every Saturday
November 11, 1871
Pages 476 and 477 (Upper)
Engraving from a sketch by Alfred R. Waud
Our careful two-page picture of the ruins, made from the upper window of the Michigan Avenue Hotel, the largest building of any kind left to the devastated city,—will give the best idea of the wreck of the business portion of Chicago. Of the whole North Side nearest Lincoln Park, there is not enough left where once were miles of streets to make a picture. Hardly any thing remains but the paved thoroughfares leading from desolation to desolation. In the lower half of the two-page view in question may be seen on the left the ruins of the First Presbyterian Church; back of that in the distance once stood the magnificent stone depot of the Michigan Southern and Rock-Island railways; just to the right of the ruined church, and a little back in the picture, stands the wreck of the new Pacific Hotel, which was one of the finest structures of the kind in this or any other country. Beyond it was the Briggs House. The next prominent ruin is that of the Bigelow House.
General View of the Business Part of the City.
Every Saturday
November 11, 1871
Pages 476 and 477 (Lower)
Engraving from a sketch by Alfred R. Waud
Back of the lower engraving, were the two Honoré blocks, the especial pride of the city. To the right are the ruins of the Post-office and Board of Trade building, near which one of the flag-staffs can be seen yet standing upon the shell of the Court House, but a firm by the name of Shorthall & Hoag saved complete indices of all city property, by the greatest presence of mind on the part of the senior partner. Mr. Shorthall offered five hundred dollars to a man with an express-wagon to his books to a place of safety. The man, frightened or insane, refused. Mr. Shorthall very promptly put a pistol to the expressman’s head and held it there till the books were loaded in. At that stage of the proceedings a dray, before chartered for the same purpose, arrived. Mr. Shorthall had the books put upon the dray, gave the expressman five dollars, and ordered him off.
Somewhere to the right of the Court House once stood the great hotels, the Sherman and Tremont. There is not enough left of them to be recognized. The shell of the Tribune building is still standing, but little or nothing of McVicker’s Theatre is visible. Looking south beyond the the ruined churches, on the left of the upper picture are the ruins of Field, Leiter & Co.’s vast dry good house. In the middle of the same picture is the encampment of the United States troops, upon the base-ball ground. In the foreground is seen what was once the Terrace Row, a block of residences occupied by Governor Bross, J. Y. Scammon, S. C. Greggs and others,—now an indistinguishable mass of ruin. To the right of the picture are the break-waters along the lake, the track and depot of the Illinois Central Railway, the saved elevator and the old lighthouse, as in the other engraving already described. Wabash avenue is the principal street seen in the picture looking north-west; is the one looking north, the street along the water is Michigan Avenue. The upper ends of these and all other avenues, which are long lines of private residences, are untouched by the flames, and the banks and business firms are already establishing themselves in the parlors and basements of their former homes.
After passing the whole day in collecting these sketches of Chicago on its first Sabbath after its dreary week of disaster, we were hurrying through Madison Street to catch the nine-o’clock train for St. Louis. We had but a single suspiciously-meagre carpet-bag between us, in which we had carried our own provisions into the stricken city. We had little time to lose, and were walking as fast as we could through the burnt distinct, watching the grand effects upon the ruins of the distant coal piles towering and glaring upon the night, like volcanoes, when we heard a very loud and imperious “Halt! Who goes there?” Turning suddenly in the direction of the startling sound, we became unpleasantly awar of a bayonet gleaming right in front of us, and a soldier behind it. We explained our case to him, displaying the cadaverous insides of our empty carpet-bag, and finally reached the depot just in time for the train. (Raw sketch, below).
Our farewell sight of Chicago from the car window, as we rode away, was a solitary pinnacle of ruin standing far off against what seemed a burning cloud,—the reflection from wasting coal. There was a sense of relief in seeing the last of it. I can give no idea of the depression that haunts the stranger in the ill-starred city. The pluck and apparent cheerfulness of the citizens themselves somehow have a saddening effect. If they folded their hands or bewailed their fate, one might forget his sympathies for a while. It is owing greatly to his heroic stuff in them, I fancy, that the loss of their beautiful, wonderful city is so appalling to the visitor. Thus far the best accounts of the disaster have been written by those a distance from the scenes they describe. We might believe less in human nature if it were otherwise. I paid fifty cents for a copy of the Chicago Tribune that said “Chicago shall rise again!” It was cheap then at the price, and that one thought with the determination behind it, is now worth more to the world at large than reams of futile description. There is something grander, it seems to me, and—what is more to the point—more memorable than Marius’s tearful moping among the ashes of Carthage, in this western way of viewing and doing things, this looking at the greatest ruin of modern times and saying, backed by men with pluck make it truth, “CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.”
THE RAW SKETCHES OF ALFRED R. WAUD.
Trying to Save a Wagonload of Goods
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
October, 1871
Fleeing From the Burning City
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
October, 1871
Scene on the Prairie, Monday Night
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
October, 1871
West Side from Lake St. Bridge Chicago
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
October, 1871
Halt! Who Goes There?
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
Sunday, Oct 15, 1871
Preaching at the Methodist Church cor. of LaSalle St. and Chicago Avenue
Alfred R. Waud, Pencil, Chalk, and Paint Drawing
Sunday, Oct 15, 1871
Rebuilding Chicago
Every Saturday
December 23, 1871,
About the Authors.
Alfred R. Waud (1828-1891) was born in London, where his work as a theatrical scene painter prepared him for his career as one of the most productive illustrators of American life in the late nineteenth century for the new mass circulation magazines. Waud came to the United States while in his twenties, and, after a brief period with the New York Illustrated News, he spent most of his career working for Harper’s Weekly, in whose pages he established his reputation as the period’s most prolific Civil War illustrator. After the war his subjects included the South under Reconstruction and Native Americans in the West. He was on assignment with Ralph Keeler in St. Louis for Every Saturday magazine when they heard the news of the Chicago fire, and they quickly caught a train to the burning city. Several engravings based on Waud’s thirty-one drawings soon appeared in Every Saturday.
Ralph Keeler (1840-1874) was born near Toledo, Ohio. He became the most extraordinary American that you’ve never heard of—a performer, traveler and writer who blazed a trail through the heart of the literary scene on both sides of the continent in the decade after the Civil War. His astonishing adventures and, particularly, his equally enigmatic end, can be traced through the pages of America’s newspapers. In January, 1870, Every Saturday became an illustrated periodical, and Mr. Keeler started on a tour in search of the picturesque on the Mississippi. He was accompanied by Mr. A. R. Waud, and was remarkably successful. The first article of the series appeared in the issue for May 20 (1870), and the succeeding ones were published almost consecutively until Nov. 25, when every principal city had been described. He also wrote brilliant articles describing the Chicago fire.
In January, 1874, while on special assignment for the New York Tribune, he embarked on the steamship Cienfuegos at Santiago de Cuba. The Captain of the ship saw him on the deck at midnight, but by morning he disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again.
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