ON OCTOBER eighth 1871 Catherine O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern and sparked the hearth that incinerated one-third of Chicago—or so legend has it. The story of the blaze and Chicago’s triumphant rebuilding is usually retold with greater than a splash of Whiggish inevitability: the hearth was the catalyst by which Chicago turned America’s commodity capital. But this yr, on the a hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the nice hearth, Chicagoans are trying anew at their metropolis’s creation delusion, and discovering the reality to be rather more compelling.
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The hearth was a catastrophe. Property data have been destroyed when the courthouse burned, however Carl Smith of Northwestern University estimates the injury executed in his ebook “Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City”. An space roughly three sq. miles was scorched, levelling almost 18,000 buildings and killing about 300 folks. About one in three Chicagoans was out of the blue homeless. The total enterprise district—now often known as the Loop—was torched, leading to about $200m in property injury (about $4.5bn at present).
It seems the favored historical past of the hearth is flawed. But its two central myths give some perception into the town then and now. First, think about poor Mrs O’Leary and her cow. Historians are positive the hearth originated close to the O’Learys’ barn, however have exonerated Catherine herself. Yet her supposed culpability persists, says Mr Smith, and divulges the prejudices that roiled America within the late nineteenth century. “Who could be a better scapegoat than an Irish-Catholic woman?”, he asks.
The second delusion is that the breakneck tempo at which the town rebuilt (the downtown was revived in two years) modified Chicago in a method that sparked the town’s fast progress. In actuality, the hearth accelerated shifts already underfoot. After the civil conflict Chicago turned an entrepot that was integral to the nationwide economic system, thanks largely to its location. About 30,000 folks lived in Chicago in 1850; that quantity ballooned to 300,000 by 1870 and reached 1m by 1890. “The fire is a speed bump on that upward trajectory,” says Julius Jones of the Chicago History Museum. “It doesn’t fundamentally alter the city.”
As Chicago displays on the anniversary, it’s tempting to check the tragedy to that of covid-19, which has killed greater than 12,000 Chicagoans. Both crises revealed inequality (some couldn’t afford to rebuild their charred properties) and supplied funds to rebuild. But drawing different parallels is hard. In 1871 “the lesson people took away from the destruction of Chicago was that it was indestructible,” says Mr Smith. Today Chicago’s trajectory is much less clear.
The metropolis’s inhabitants grew by 2% prior to now decade, a welcome change from the 7% decline seen between 2000 and 2010. But the pandemic has left Chicago’s unemployment price roughly twice as excessive because it was in 2019 and almost 17% of downtown workplaces are vacant, in line with Colliers, a property agency. After the hearth, says Mr Jones, Chicago’s residents likened their metropolis to a phoenix, “resurrected from its own ashes to be better than it was before.” Some of that very same spirit is required once more.
This article appeared within the United States part of the print version underneath the headline “From the ashes”