The Inter-State Exposition |
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The period of the Great Rebuilding came to a close with the Panic of 1873, which
proved to be a more serious deterrent to the local economy than the fire. By December of
that year the unemployed were chanting "Bread or death" outside the offices of the Relief
and Aid Society, which once again refused to accede to demands to turn the balance of its
funds over to the city. Not long after, in July of 1874, another fire struck the city. It
started in the 400 block of South Clark Street and advanced in the same northeasterly
direction as the 1871 conflagration, to Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street, destroying
about fifty acres and over eight hundred buildings. Following this disaster a threatened
boycott by insurers compelled the city to adopt stricter safety rules and improve the fire
department.
Some commentators who tried to take a broader view of the Great Fire and the
Great Rebuilding expressed concern that the losses were profounder and less easily
calculated than at first appeared. Impatient even before the fire with the slow development
of refinement in the "junior partner," they were discouraged by the prospect that the need to
rebuild would only delay this process further. Most of the population had little time for
such reflections. The population topped 500,000 by 1880, more than a million a decade
later. By the late spring of 1873, the city was ready to celebrate its recovery, hosting a jubilee week in
June. In the same year its business leaders, including several who
served on the board of the Relief and Aid Society, hosted the Inter-State Industrial
Exposition in a grand building on the lakefront. Chicago, as an inspirational post-fire song
went, was "Queen of the West once more."
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