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The large objects in the foreground appear to be safes that made it through the fire and now
await their owners' attempts to open them and claim their contents. In 1910, A.S.
Chapman, who was seven at the time of the fire recalled going along when his father
checked his office on Randolph Street: "Safe-breaking was a popular industry for a few
days, conducted with the full approval and in the presence of safe-owners by skilled men
who sprung into sudden demand. My mind yields another picture. Along Randolph street
safes have been dragged into the street. Men grimed with soot and ashes work like fiends
with sledge hammers and steel wedges. It must have been the practice to keep money in
safes. Money--money; everybody looking for money in safes. I see men and women
standing round a safe as its door is forced open. The air rushes in and I see their hopes
turned to ashes as rolls of bills crumble at its touch. The books in my father's safe escaped
with no more than a scorching."
Barnard was one of the most talented of Civil War photographers, and he had grim
preparation for his Chicago images among the ruins of Charleston and Atlanta. He had
moved to Chicago and opened his studio on Washington Street between Wabash and State,
two blocks east of the Courthouse, in the late spring of 1871. The pictures here are from
stereographs distributed through the Chicago firm of Lovejoy & Foster.
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Among the Ruins 