Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City

Historian Smith (City Water, City Life) exhaustively chronicles the 1871 fire that destroyed nearly three square miles of Chicago (out of 36 total square miles) and left approximately 90,000 people homeless. In the two decades following the 1850 census, Smith notes, the city’s population grew from 30,000 to 330,000. Rapid development contributed to political division, economic stratification, and shoddy construction, he contends, as “greedy landlords who wanted to squeeze every penny they could out of their properties” wedged several wooden houses back to back on one city lot, with barely two feet between structures. Though nearly half of Chicagoans came from abroad, the city’s wealth and municipal government were controlled by native-born Protestants who were unwilling to raise taxes to expand the fire department. In the week before the fire broke out, the city’s 190 firefighters had battled “more than two dozen conflagrations,” Smith notes, and one-third had been “incapacitated” by an inferno at a mill. He details systems failures that gave the fire “a substantial head start”; reveals how political squabbling and class prejudices slowed aid distribution; and details reconstruction efforts. The level of detail astonishes, but grows ponderous at times. Still, this is a definitive retelling of one of America’s “most fabled disasters.” (Oct.)