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North Division Improvements
At a meeting of residents of Chicago’s North Division and of the adjoining town of Lakeview, the Committee on Local Improvements and Abatement of Nuisances makes several recommendations to imrpove conditions. -
Board of Health Mortality Report
The Board of Health issues its weekly mortality report. Ninety-six Chicagoans died in the reporting period, which is 6 fewer than in the same week a year earlier, and 5 fewer than in the preceding week. The deceased included 52 males and 44 females. Of these, 23 were under the age of one, which reflects the high infant mortality rate at the time. The leading killer was pneumonia at 12. -
Snow Halts Streetcars
Local street car companies still struggle to recover from a heavy snow that fell five days earlier. -
Extending Fire Watch
The Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, gathered at a special meeting, orders that from nightfall until 9:30 pm firemen will keep a lookout for fires from the watch-towers at their stations. This will supplement the regular night watch, which begins at 9:30. -
Intracity Train Speed Limits
the Common Council adopts a resolution that asks the Board of Police to enforce the ordinance restricting the speed of trains traveling within the city to six miles per hour. -
Chicago Citizens root for France
At a rally in Crosby’s Opera House under the auspices of the French Producers’ Association, Chicagoans gather for the purpose of aiding the people of France suffering from the oppression of the Franco-Prussian War. -
Social Purity Movement
Some forty women gather at an afternoon meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Social Purity. The Society’s goals are “to extend to the fallen a true sympathy; to ascertain, as far as possible, their present condition, and the causes which led to their fall, as well as the sources from which their support is derived; to give to the public information respecting the present condition of the evil; to disseminate scientific knowledge in regard to the relations of the sexes..." -
Female Physicians
Three women in the graduating class of 1871 received their M.D. diplomas, and were refused by the Chicago Medical College because they were women. Trustee Erastus O. Haven said, “Any human being has a native right to all the pure knowledge that he or she may desire and is able to acquire. There are women who desire to study medicine. To forbid them would be an impertinence and a tyranny. To aid them would be reasonable and right.” -
Park Establishments
The Board of West Side Park Commissioners holds its second annual meeting. They call for an open-ended commitment to investment in the emerging park system. -
Great Day for The Irish
St. Patricks Day is celebrated. People wear green and watch the parade in support of the Irish. Fitzgibbon states the purpose of this day was “to declare our unchanging devotion to the principle of Irish nationality.” -
The Common Council Deals With Business
The Common Council deals with the opening of streets, enforce religious law, requests for public baths to be made, and for the replacement of fire alarms for working ones. -
Higher Education for Women
Evanston’s First Congregational Church is the site of a discussion of the establishment in Evanston of a new college for the education of women. -
Fire Figures
City Fire Marshal Robert A. Williams submits his annual report. The number of fires in the past year exceeds that of any previous year since the formation of the paid department in 1858. Well over 600 fires have destroyed almost $2,500,000 in property, an increase of more than $1,500,000 over the previous twelve months. -
Strawberry Festivals
They begin this evening with festivals hosted by the women of several churches. Tomorrow is the turn of the ladies of Trinity Episcopal Church, who will host their festival at Pennoyer & Company’s new carriage warehouse on the corner of Wabash Avenue and Congress Street. They hope to use the proceeds to fund a mission. -
Chicago Citizens root for Germany
Chicagoans celebrate their pride in the recent unification of the German nation and Germany's military victory over France. The official program begins with medley of patriotic melodies and other compositions by German composers, followed by speeches. -
The Great Unknown lights up the stage
In what the Chicago Tribune calls “the richest dramatic treat of this season, or of any season,” African American actor William M. Johnson, who is billed as “the Great Unknown,” gives his last performance of reading from Shakespeare at the St. James Hotel, under the auspices of the Dramatic Glee Club. -
Independence Day
Plans have been announced for today's Fourth of July observances. The feature horse race at the Dexter Park track, located in the southwest corner of Chicago, will match James Van Etta’s Lady Douglas against Henry Graves’s Chicago, for a purse of $5,000; Wright’s Grove will witness a sham fight, a baby show, fireworks, dancing, a torchlight procession, and a speech by attorney, politician, and former Lincoln adviser Norman P. Judd; the White Stockings baseball team vs the Rockford Forest Citys -
The Deep Cut
The ringing of the bell in the cupola of the Court House proclaims that the gates have been opened and that the putrid waters of the South Branch of the Chicago River will now, it is hoped, flow south into the newly deepened Illinois and Michigan Canal, rather than north and east into Lake Michigan, the source of the city's drinking water. -
Picnics
Many organizations embrace the summer with picnics. The Nineteenth Illinois Volunteer Infantry Association, whose members have a record of distinguished service during the Civil War, pitches its picnic tents in Des Plaines. -
Better with Bessemer
A group of about forty businessmen visit the Union Rolling Mill Company works on the South Branch of the Chicago River. Their purpose is to witness the new Bessemer process of making steel, which promises expanded production capacity. Result? Bessemer Process approved. -
Circuses
Thousands of residents flock to the lakefront at Randolph Street to enjoy the famed Old John Robinson’s Circus, Menagerie, Museum, and Caravan, which fills three large tents. A fifty-cent ticket (half price for children) gains admission to the menagerie (whose animals are displayed in twenty-five gold and crimson cages), the museum, and circus. -
School Faculty Jobs
The Chicago Board of Education meets. After paying tribute to a recently deceased member, calling for a monthly report on the amount and quality of the coal purchased by each school, tabling a request from singing teachers that they receive the same pay as the principals of the grammar schools, deciding on the evaluation of the qualifications of janitors, granting certificates, and other business, the board tries to choose a teacher of French for the high school. -
Fall Fashion Colors
A long article on fashion in the daily press announces that dark colors are the dominant hue of the current season, the favorites being shades of gray and violet, while those aspiring to sophistication will be dressed in black. -
Burning Whiskey
A large fire that consumes the Burlington Warehouse near the corner of State and Sixteenth streets, destroying an estimated $650,000 worth of property in about ninety minutes. Inventory included whiskey, syrups, barrels, and machinery. -
The Foreshadowing Set of Flames
A week of several small fires appears to climax with what would become known as the Saturday Night Fire. It begins late in the evening and soon devastates twenty buildings on the city’s Near West Side, leveling the area bounded by the South Branch of the Chicago River and Van Buren, Clinton, and Adams streets. Damage is estimated at a million dollars. -
The Flame that ignitited disaster
At 9 PM, the Great Chicago Fire begins in or near the barn behind the cottage of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, on the north side of DeKoven Street between Jefferson and Clinton streets. -
First Response
With the fire still blazing, Common Council President Charles C. P. Holden assembles what city leaders he can in the safety of the First Congregational Church in the West Division’s tenth ward. Mayor Roswell B. Mason arrives and issues a proclamation outlining numerous emergency measures. Other notices suspend the sale of alcohol and instruct the homeless that shelter can be found in schools and churches. -
Proclamations//The Fire Ends
The fire is now out and Mayor Mason issues a proclamation advising caution, calling for volunteers to serve as special police, asking citizens to organize local watches, indicating where food is available, closing saloons at 9 p.m. Most city records are now lost -
Calling in for Troop Aid
Mayor Roswell Mason states that the distribution of relief will be the responsibility of a Special Relief Committee, with headquarters in the temporary city hall that has been set up in the First Congregational Church. The city is basically under martial law. -
Assessing Recovery
The mayor, city comptroller, city treasurer, and other officials move into a building at the corner of Hubbard Court (now Balbo Street) and Wabash Avenue. General Sheridan reports that all is well, and that “the people of the city are calm, quiet, and well-disposed.” -
Relief And Aid
Mayor Mason places the Chicago Relief and Aid Society in charge of the relief efforts, and the Society issues its general plan of work. It sets up committees on shelter, employment, transportation, reception and correspondence, health and sanitation, and on receiving, administering, and distributing supplies -
Restoring Life as it was
Some three hundred machinists are working day and night to restore water to residents. The hope is to return the main engine to service by the middle of the week. In the meantime, railway locomotives and steam fire engines are pumping Chicago River water into mains. -
Things Start Flowing Again
The troops and the volunteers will continue to patrol Chicago for another week. The national banks in the city have now re-opened for business. Recent rains have lowered anxieties about additional fires. The Board of Health bans the use of water closets until water service is restored. -
Politics, Insurance, and Baseball! Oh my!
Candidates representing the newly-created Union Fire Proof ticket, which comprises Republicans and Democrats dedicated to restoring Chicago’s economy and reforming its politics. A meeting is held to discuss receivership for insurance companies ruined by the fire. The previous day the Philadelphia Athletics defeat the Chicago White Stockings 4-1 in what proves to be the deciding game of the baseball championship of America. -
New Mayor
The Union Fire Proof ticket dominates the city election. Joseph Medill is elected mayor in a landslide, and other nominees on the ticket capture fourteen of the twenty seats on the Common Council. -
Shelter Housing and Fire Limits
The Relief and Aid Society’s Shelter Committee reports that it has received to date 6,259 applications for shelter houses and has approved the construction of 4,564 of them. There are many calls to make the limits broad and stringent, but meanwhile people are erecting wooden structures in the burnt district. -
Safety Costs
The Common Council’s special committee considering new fire safety regulations proposes a virtual ban on wooden houses, as well as very high standards for those made of brick. By the terms of this proposal, walls of one-story brick houses must be at least twelve inches thick, and taller homes must have even thicker walls in their lower stories. -
Loose Ends of Young Men
Members of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Trinity Church, which was destroyed by the fire, express their concern that one of the unfortunate results of the conflagration is that there are now many promising men of intelligence and respectability at loose ends in the city, with neither a home nor a job. -
Fire Inquiry
The Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, on the second day of its inquiry into the causes of the fire, hears testimony from Catherine O’Leary. -
Reviving Downtown
An account of the progress of the rebuilding of the commercial downtown lists the many brick and stone structures that are already built or in progress. -
Relief and Aid Society Interim Reports
The Relief and Aid Society releases more figures on its work. During the week ending November 25, it assisted 3,356 families, and the total number of families it has aided since the second week of October is 15,152. -
Amusement Seeking
Chicagoans, who at first stayed away from what theaters were open in the weeks after the fire, are now finding such amusements a welcome distraction. -
Church Revival
Grace Methodist Church, at Chicago Avenue and LaSalle Street, makes claim to being the first congregation in the burnt district to rebuild. -
Power Shift
The last meeting of the old Common Council and the first meeting of the recently elected new one are held. -
The Verdict
The Board of Police and Fire Commissioners makes public the results of its hearings on the fire. The board has concluded that the disaster started in the O’Leary barn and that it began shortly before 9:30, but also that there is no evidence anyone had been in the barn since nightfall. Result: No Verdict -
Rise Again, Chicago
Property owners from the North Division meet at the Metropolis Hotel at Fourteenth Street and Michigan Avenue in the South Division. They resolve unanimously to rebuild as soon as possible. -
Impromptu Christmas
Many stores remain open to serve last-minute Christmas shoppers, and those theaters that offer performances are rewarded with large audiences. It's a little bitter, however, due to the nature of the fire that happened two months ago. -
Royalty Comes To Town
Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, son of Czar Alexander II, arrives in the city. Mayor Medill apologizes for the lack of entertainment, however, the Grand Duke forgives him because the same situation happened 60 years ago in Russia and comforts the city, saying its energy will take them further and will be the reason why they'll be successful in rebuilding.