Personal Experiences
During the Chicago Fire
1871
by
FRANK J. LOESCH
of the
Chicago Bar
CHICAGO
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1925
Copyright, 1925
by
FRANK J. LOESCH
Printed in the United States of America
As this is a purely personal narrative, names of other personswith whom the author came in contact from time to time duringthese experiences have been omitted as of no historical value to readers.
Personal Experiences During the Chicago Fire[1]
On October 8th, 9th and 10th, 1871, a fire swept out of existence theentire business district of the City of Chicago, located mainly onthe South Side, virtually the entire residence and business districtsof the North Side, blocks of many handsome and comfortable residenceson the South Side and a goodly number of homes and business buildingson the near West Side. Over two hundred people lost their lives, andof its three hundred thousand inhabitants one hundred thousand wererendered homeless, of whom I was one. The money loss was over twohundred million dollars. The land devastated covered an area of overtwo thousand acres.
I had been a resident of Chicago for sixteen months and in that timehad made myself familiar with its business and residence districtsand its topography. I lived, at the time of the fire, in a boardinghouse at 110 North Dearborn Street, now 548 North Dearborn Street, onedoor south of Ohio Street. I was a bookkeeper for the Western UnionTelegraph Company at its main office which was located at the northwestcorner of Washington and La Salle Streets. The building now situatedthere, known as the Merchants’ Building, excepting some recent interiorimprovements, is a replica of the one which was destroyed by the fire.
The summer of 1871 was an intensely hot one. No rain had fallen in theLake region for about three months prior to October 8th. Great forestfires with large loss of life were taking place in the then heavilypine-forested regions of Central and Northern Michigan and Wisconsin.I recall our excitement on Saturday and Sunday, October 7th and 8th,on reading in the morning papers stories of the destruction of forestsand villages, with the loss of many lives, about Sturgeon Bay and otherplaces in Wisconsin and Michigan.
As is generally known, the residential portion of Chicago was almostwholly constructed of wood. Brick and limestone structures were largelyconfined to the South[Pg 6] Side business district. South of that were manyhandsome residences with Joliet limestone fronts and brick side walls.Such was not the case on the North and West Sides where the commonstructures, by the mile, were the one-story basement frame cottageswith outside front steps leading to the upper floor. It is needlessto state that there were many handsome homes in the district north ofIndiana Street (now Grand Avenue), east of Clark Street and south ofNorth Avenue.