Spectacular Chicago [antikvár]

MTKODUCIIONOF THE AshesAbout nine o'clock on the Sunday evening of October 8, 1871, a fire started not quite a mile from the center of Chicago. It was one of about 20 fires that had flared up during the past few days in that big city of wooden sidewalks and wooden buildings. Chicago firemen knew how to fight fires, and they got to this one fast enough to believe they would be able to tame it. But the fire quickly turned wild, roaring on strong winds that drove the flames toward the center of a city that had seen hardly more than an inch and a half of rain since the Fourth of July.By midnight one long swath of fire had leaped across the South Branch of the Chicago River. As the fire split into branches, streets turned into streams of flames. Around 1:30 in the morning the fire swept into the courthouse building. Jailers opened basement cells and prisoners joined the panicky mobs fleeing theinferno. Fire stations vanished in the flames, and long before dawn the fight was over. The fire had won and was consuming Chicago.America's great Empire Citythe city that linked the old-moneyed East with the farms of the Midwest and the ranches of the West seemed doomed. Seventeen grain elevators, more than a thousand factories, and the boxcars of 10 railroads were all ablaze.