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| City Gets Revenge on Mrs. O'Leary, 1955 (Universal International News) |  The Saga Continues |
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This newsreel clip from the Motion Picture Division of the National Archives records the burning of a stone and brick two-flat, which replaced the O'Leary cottage in the early 1880s, in order to clear the block for development. In 1928 the city had purchased the site for $36,000. At that time, the plan was to build a memorial fire house or park there, but the plan was later abandoned. The house was then rented. In 1954, the city sold the property to the Chicago Land Clearance Commission, which was acquiring property in the area for one of the first industrial redevelopment projects in the country. Mayor Daley encouraged the city to retain the O'Leary house site and to erect some type of monument there. The Commission reserved a piece of land on DeKoven between Clinton and Jefferson for the construction of the current fire academy. On November 23, 1955 the O'Leary house was used for a test blaze by the Chicago Plastering Institute, a promoter of fire safety in buildings. Miniature rooms were constructed in the house of various types of buildings materials to test them under fire conditions. The house was actually demolished sometime between that date and December 4, 1955. The film features brief shots of "The Rush for Life over the Randolph Street Bridge" and of Mrs. Julia Lemos's oil painting of the fire. Narrator Ed Herlihy's script contains a few small errors. The structure that was razed was not Mrs. O'Leary's cottage, though it was on the same site, and the fire department was no longer using hand-pumped engines by October of 1871. Note: While we have compressed the digital video as much as possible, modem users may require 20-30 minutes to download the ninety-second clip. |
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