Rebuilding Chicago: From Fire to Fair, 1871-1893

The fire was a catastrophe, but it was also an opportunity; a financial disaster, it became an engine for tremendous economic growth. New laws governing building materials, alleys and their sizes (big enough to fit fire-fighting equipment!) new water main systems, and of course new buildings everywhere: the city was a vast opportunity for speculators, builders, and contractors.

New developments were also more efficient, more rational, and more successful. Factories and office buildings, "sky-scrapers" and domestic palaces: all rose up from the ruins or from the opportunities and riches made possible by the dramatically rebuilding city.

A number of photographers worked for the master-builders, the entrepreneurs and the private individuals, making pictures of everything from the Pullman Building to the interior of a residence decorated in the most recent fashions.

Some of these have been preserved in the collection of George Kilburn, now held by the University of Melbourne in Australia. Among the principal photographers working in Chicago, J.W. Taylor is perhaps the most prolific, and his work is well-represented in the collection, but others worked in a similar fashion, providing pictures for architects, builders, patrons, and for a broader public that might have a real interest in the celebratedly modern city that Chicago was becoming.

With their help, we can see something of the way the city began to organize: not simply geographically, but functionally-- indeed, geography and function were often interwoven.

Downtown: Hotels

Taylor was commissioned to photograph the Palmer House, and the interior views give some sense of the attention lavished on the visitor. Completed in 1874 and 1875, the Palmer House was palatial.

J.W. Taylor, Interior of the Palmer House, ca. 1875, from the Kilburn Collection

J.W. Taylor, Palmer House Library or Writing Room, ca. 1875, from the Kilburn Collection.

The Palmer House was a business hotel; traveling salesmen like the infamous Drouet in Dreiser's novel, Sister Carrie "stopped" there, and they did their work in its public places-- meeting customers and prospects, writing letters, contracts and materials-lists in the writing rooms.

The Hotel Florence, located around 111th Street, was a countryside resort hotel in the early '90s. It catered, most likely, to Chicagoans seeking weekend retreats or vacation locales.

Photographer unknown, probably J.W. Taylor, Hotel Florence, from the Kilburn Collection.

Downtown: Office Buildings

The legendary tale of Chicago's architecture insists upon the rise of the "sky-scraper" or "tall office building" during the second and third eras of the post-Fire city.

The Rookery, built in the middle 1880s, showed something of the wealth of Chicago's entrepreneurs: the "waste space" of the public areas and the flaunting of new building technologies made a building like the Rookery exemplary.

Rookery Building, ca. 1885-1886, from the Kilburn Collection.

Restaurants

Businessmen and office workers, salesmen and visitors all needed places to eat, and the downtown restaurants offered everything from luxury to inexpensive efficiency.

Kinsley's Restaurant, Mantle in anteroom, from the Kilburn Collection.