The Fire, the Bomb, and the Fair, 1871–1893

This chapter analyzes three events that served both to define Chicago and reveal the city to the nation during the years between 1871 and 1893. It discusses the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the Haymarket Bombing of 1886, and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It also emphasizes on the enthralling stories of the three events that provided windows through which the late 1800s Chicago can be viewed by the world. The chapter talks about the fire, the bomb, and the fair that occurred within the context of late nineteenth-century apprehensions regarding Chicago. It also highlights how urban leaders managed the three events in order to combat the perception that cities were dangerous, immoral, and unnatural.

Sensory Overload

This chapter examines the Chicago Fire of 1871 as a multisensory spectacle—an object of curiosity and marvel. More specifically, it considers how the fire destabilized sensory perception and threw up an array of strange sensations that mocked the civic elite's attempts to control Chicago's sensory landscape. After providing a background on the fire and describing its immediate experiential aspects, the chapter discusses the disaster's impact on survivors and how they represented that impact in terms of social difference. It also looks at the relief and rebuilding efforts that followed and suggests that the firestorm of 1871 called into question Chicago's future as a site of modern industrial capitalism. It explains how the fire tested the senses of victims to expose the connections that elites drew between sensory refinement and social distinction. Finally, it shows how the fire lent credence to the notion that social class expressed itself through the senses, a notion used by elites to promote their vision of civic order even while the city burned.