3-021-520 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Fire at Chicago: ruins on the south side of Lake-Street, 1868. Engraving of a photograph by Mr. George C. Pearson. '...it is stated in the local newspapers that there is some cause for suspecting the fire on the opposite side of the street, at half-past eight o'clock, to have been the work of a gang of incendiaries, who profited by the confusion to plunder the wholesale clothing warehouses, or "dry-goods stores," in that neighbourhood. The distance from the corner block, which was mentioned, to Messrs. Carson, Pirie, and Co.'s store, No. 29, Lake-street, in the basement of which the second outbreak of fire was discovered, is about 300 ft., and several of the intervening houses, one being a wholesale drug store, escaped damage. Most of the buildings at the lower end of Lake-street were of five or six stories, large and stately, fronted with marble, which peeled off in large flakes under the intense heat. The scene presented by the blaze, which rose to a great height from so many burning houses filled with vast quantities of combustible wares, is described as very sublime; especially the reflection of the flames upon the fields of ice which lay in the harbour'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.