Adding further restrictions to these buildings – such as using more expensive, less flammable materials – would have meant more money out of the owners’ pockets in the form of higher taxes. Smith said these buildings were profitable for the owners who rented them out.

Many of the buildings downtown were built haphazardly, giving the city a rickety appearance of densely packed slums and crowded pine buildings. Additionally, there were exceptions – such as allowing wooden buildings to be physically moved into the fire limits – that also rendered the codes useless. And so what limited value they had was undercut,” said Smith. “The larger problem was that they weren't enforced in any particular way. “Even stone and masonry buildings had a good deal of wood in them.” Gallery: Chicago's Wooden Buildings “The city was built in a tremendous hurry, almost entirely out of wood,” said Smith, who is also the curator and author of the Chicago History Museum’s exhibition on the Chicago Fire. Among the long-term factors was the very stuff that the city was made of. Smith, professor emeritus of English at Northwestern University and author of Chicago's Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City, said there factors – both long-term and short-term – that created the perfect storm for the devastation that followed. Prairies burn,” he said.īut the city itself was flammable, too. “The city is built without any concern for nature, without any concern for the realities of the prairie. Photo: Courtesy of the Chicago History MuseumĪs Dominic Pacyga told WTTW, Chicago’s first flaw was simply its location. Mason wrote this note ordering all prisoners to be released from the smoking courthouse building. He authorized buildings in the path of the fire to be blown up to prevent the spread – an effort that was often fruitless.īut the city that Mason tried to save that night was a tinderbox, in part because of poor structural, political, and institutional planning. He ordered the release of prisoners from the courthouse jail as the building caught fire and smoke filled the cells. According to a descendant of Mason, Caroline Thompson, the mayor rode his horse from his home south of the present-day Loop to downtown to send for help, sending a telegraph to Milwaukee and Detroit in search of aid. Mason in the early hours of October 9, 1871, the fire that ravaged his city of 300,000 people illuminated the faults that had been smoldering for decades. I think that’s a tale for everyone, young and old.When a messenger woke Mayor Roswell B. The message of the story is clear: no matter how humble someone is, they have something to offer the world and should not be left to perish. There are a number of versions of this story throughout the fairy tale universe–one is a very old Welsh tale that has the hero saving ants from a fire and they later play a part in helping him along. He’s somebody we feel sure will look after his princess. Yes, he does his fair share of manly-man swashbuckling, but it’s the fact that he’s a good guy that wins the day. The only reason he gets his hands on the box is because of his generous and helping spirit. It has all the great elements: a kidnapped princess, a clever but poor young man who saves her, and talking animals! The plot is simple–young man sets out to rescue the princess and ends up saving the day, but only through the help of three magical dogs summoned by the tinder box.

I don’t know why the story isn’t better known. The very best of course, was what happened when you combined fairy tales and comic books! And so my love affair with a ragged copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Tinder Box was born. I didn’t differentiate much between the old stories and the new. Then there were all the Marvel and DC comics about superheroes. Andrew Lang’s fairy books loomed large (The Red, Blue, Yellow etc Fairy Books) as well as the usual Grimm and other European trad stories. There is a lot to choose from–I read all of the fairy tale, ghost stories and myths I could get my hands on. Sometimes people ask me what my favourite fairy tale was growing up.

Tinderbox story