Poster for 50th Anniversary observance of the Great Chicago Fire

The fiftieth anniversary commemoration was elaborately orchestrated by the businessmen who comprised the Chicago Association of Commerce. The Association designated October 3-9, 1921, as the dates for what they called the "Chicago Fire Semi-Centennial Observance." The publicity for the observance hardly mentioned the actual fire at all except as the moment the rebuilding began. "It is desirable," the Association explained, "that the coming anniversary shall be the starting point of a great civic awakening and definite program for the building of the 'Chicago of Tomorrow'--that the next fifty years--even greater in accomplishments than the past--shall round out a century of unparalleled achievement." The Association deemed it essential that all civic, commercial, educational, religious, social, and neighborhood organizations participate. To this end it engaged Chicagoans in a multitude of activities. These included an opening ceremony attended by the city's leaders and an audience of 5,000; an "Americanization Demonstration" in Grant Park at which 6,500 people "re-dedicated" Chicago and watched as 648 "newly made citizens" received their naturalization papers; special exercises, sermons, and speeches in schools, churches, motion picture theaters, and clubs; a semi-centennial song performed at observance exercises; an illustrated book on Chicago; and a festival play "vividly dramatized by a cast of 2,500 people, and augmented by a chorus of 500 voices with an orchestra of 100 pieces" that played all week in a 15,000-seat stadium in Grant Park.

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