3-034-701 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Fire at Chicago: view from the dome of the City Hall, 1871. 'The fire which destroyed, last week, the best part of one of the greatest commercial cities in the world is still the most engrossing topic of news...[We present views] of Chicago as it was before the fire...the Illustrations engraved for this Number of our Journal will be viewed with a melancholy interest, as representing what has perished...The fire broke out on Sunday week, in the evening. It was caused by a boy taking a kerosene oil lamp into a stable, to milk a cow, and the cow kicking over the lamp, which set fire to her straw litter. The city was reported, by telegraph, before the fire was quite subdued, to have been "burnt from Lake to river on the north side, and nearly the same on the south side, but on the west side not much"...It is reckoned that 70,000 people are deprived of the shelter of their homes. At least 250 lives were lost in the fire. Several plunderers were seized and hanged'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.