The Lakeside Memorial of the Burning of Chicago, A. D. 1871 ...

The Lakeside Memorial of the Burning of Chicago, A. D. 1871 ... PDF Author: None
Publisher: University of Michigan Library
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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The Lakeside Memorial of the Burning of Chicago, A. D. 1871 ...

The Lakeside Memorial of the Burning of Chicago, A. D. 1871 ... PDF Author: None
Publisher: University of Michigan Library
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow

The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow PDF Author: Richard F. Bales
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604762
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 swallowed up more than three square miles in two days, leaving thousands homeless and 300 dead. Throughout history, the fire has been attributed to Mrs. O'Leary, an immigrant Irish milkmaid, and her cow. On one level, the tale of Mrs. O'Leary's cow is merely the quintessential urban legend. But the story also represents a means by which the upper classes of Chicago could blame the fire's chaos on a member of the working poor. Although that fire destroyed the official county documents, some land tract records were saved. Using this and other primary source information, Richard F. Bales created a scale drawing that reconstructed the O'Leary neighborhood. Next he turned to the transcripts--more than 1,100 handwritten pages--from an investigation conducted by the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners, which interviewed 50 people over the course of 12 days. The board's final report, published in the Chicago newspapers on December 12, 1871, indicates that commissioners were unable to determine the cause of the fire. And yet, by analyzing the 50 witnesses' testimonies, the author concludes that the commissioners could have determined the cause of the fire had they desired to do so. Being more concerned with saving their own reputation from post-fire reports of incompetence, drunkenness and bribery, the commissioners failed to press forward for an answer. The author has uncovered solid evidence as to what really caused the Great Chicago Fire.

Chicago's Great Fire

Chicago's Great Fire PDF Author: Carl Smith
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
ISBN: 0802148115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
A definitive chronicle of the 1871 Chicago Fire as remembered by those who experienced it—from the author of Chicago and the American Literary Imagination. Over three days in October, 1871, much of Chicago, Illinois, was destroyed by one of the most legendary urban fires in history. Incorporated as a city in 1837, Chicago had grown at a breathtaking pace in the intervening decades—and much of the hastily-built city was made of wood. Starting in Catherine and Patrick O’Leary’s barn, the Fire quickly grew out of control, twice jumping branches of the Chicago River on its relentless path through the city’s three divisions. While the death toll was miraculously low, nearly a third of Chicago residents were left homeless and more were instantly unemployed. This popular history of the Great Chicago Fire approaches the subject through the memories of those who experienced it. Chicago historian Carl Smith builds the story around memorable characters, both known to history and unknown, including the likes of General Philip Sheridan and Robert Todd Lincoln. Smith chronicles the city’s rapid growth and its place in America’s post-Civil War expansion. The dramatic story of the fire—revealing human nature in all its guises—became one of equally remarkable renewal, as Chicago quickly rose back up from the ashes thanks to local determination and the world’s generosity. As we approach the fire’s 150th anniversary, Carl Smith’s compelling narrative at last gives this epic event its full and proper place in our national chronicle. “The best book ever written about the fire, a work of deep scholarship by Carl Smith that reads with the forceful narrative of a fine novel. It puts the fire and its aftermath in historical, political and social context. It’s a revelatory pleasure to read.” —Chicago Tribune

The Great Chicago Fire

The Great Chicago Fire PDF Author: Ross Miller
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069147
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
A study of the great Chicago fire of 1871 and the rebuilding that followed, focusing on how the city manipulated the tragedy into a lasting myth about the modern struggle against adversity.

The Burning of the World

The Burning of the World PDF Author: Scott W. Berg
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0804197849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
The enthralling story of the Great Chicago Fire and the power struggle over the city’s reconstruction in the wake of the tragedy In October of 1871, Chicagoans knew they were due for the “big one”—a massive, uncontrollable fire that would decimate the city. There hadn’t been a meaningful rain since July, and several big blazes had nearly outstripped the fire department’s scant resources. On October 8, when Kate Leary’s barn caught fire, so began a catastrophe that would forever change the soul of the city. Leary was a diligent, hardworking Irish woman, no more responsible for the fire than anyone else in the city at that time. But the conflagration that spread from her property quickly overtook the neighborhood, and before too long the floating embers had spread to the far reaches of the city. Families took to the streets with everything they could carry. Grain towers threatened to blow. The Chicago River boiled. Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, Chicago saw the biggest and most destructive disaster the United States had ever endured, and Leary would be its scapegoat. Out of the ashes rose not just new skyscrapers, tenements, and homes, but also a new political order. The city’s elite saw an opportunity to rebuild on their terms, cracking down on crime and licentiousness and fortifying a business-friendly environment. But the city’s working class recognized a naked power grab that would challenge their traditions, hurt their chances of rebuilding, and move power out of elected officials’ hands and into private interests. As quickly as the firefight ended, another battle for the future of the city began between the town’s business elites and the poor and immigrant working class. An enrapturing account of the fire’s devastating path and an eye-opening look at its aftermath, The Burning of the World tells the story of one of the most infamous calamities in history and the powerful transformation that followed.

American Disasters

American Disasters PDF Author: Steven Biel
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814713459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Ranging widely, essayists here examine the 1900 storm that ravaged Galveston, Texas, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the Titanic sinking, the Northridge earthquake, the crash of Air Florida Flight 90, the 1977 Chicago El train crash, and many other devastating events. These catastrophes elicited vastly different responses, and thus raise a number of important questions. How, for example did African Americans, feminists, and labor activists respond to the Titanic disaster? Why did the El train crash take on such symbolic meaning for the citizens of Chicago? In what ways did the San Francisco earthquake reaffirm rather than challenge a predominant faith in progress?

The Inter-State Exposition Souvenir

The Inter-State Exposition Souvenir PDF Author: Anonymous
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3368198467
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.

The Inter-state Exposition Souvenir

The Inter-state Exposition Souvenir PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chicago (Ill.)
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Urban Formalism

Urban Formalism PDF Author: David Faflik
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823288595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Urban Formalism radically reimagines what it meant to “read” a brave new urban world during the transformative middle decades of the nineteenth century. At a time when contemporaries in the twin capitals of modernity in the West, New York and Paris, were learning to make sense of unfamiliar surroundings, city peoples increasingly looked to the experiential patterns, or forms, from their everyday lives in an attempt to translate urban experience into something they could more easily comprehend. Urban Formalism interrogates both the risks and rewards of an interpretive practice that depended on the mutual relation between urbanism and formalism, at a moment when the subjective experience of the city had reached unprecedented levels of complexity. This book not only provides an original cultural history of forms. It posits a new form of urban history, comprising the representative rituals of interpretation that have helped give meaningful shape to metropolitan life.

Finding List of the Chicago Public Library

Finding List of the Chicago Public Library PDF Author: Chicago Public Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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