Flashback: From the Iroquois Theatre tragedy to the 1934 Stock Yards blaze, Chicago’s history is punctuated with devastating fires.
A fire doesn't have to be famous to be tragic.
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Across the city’s neighborhoods, Chicago Architecture Biennial settles in for a few months
One slogan of our city is "urbs in horto," a Latin phrase meaning "city in a garden." There it is on the official city seal, created a few months after...
Flashback: As the city still smoldered from the Great Fire, the Tribune boldly proclaimed Chicago would ‘rise again.’ It had already begun to rise.
The city still smoldered as the first post-fire edition of the Tribune was published on Wednesday, Oct. 11. It carried an editorial that advised, "CHEER UP" and optimistically went on...
Has this year’s anniversary sparked your interest in the Great Chicago Fire? Along with a new Tribune series, 10 books, exhibits and worthy resources
Once there was a cow standing on the sidewalk on Oak Street near Rush. The cow was hungry and was munching eagerly on a bale of hay. This was in...
Flashback: ‘All gone but wife, children and energy.’ Days after the Great Fire, the first building in Chicago’s devastated business district was up.
Mathias Schaffer was a night watchman. On the night of Sunday, Oct. 8, he was, as part of his duties, walking the catwalk in the tower of the Cook County...
A Chicago photographer reaches her late-in-life prime, even as her late husband Art Paul’s work gets a show in Evanston
Suzanne Seed was talking one recent sultry morning, sitting outside and contemplating life and loneliness and creativity. "I am doing amazingly well," she said. One of the many reasons for...
Flashback: 600 fires sprang up in Chicago the year before the Great Fire of 1871. On the night before, came this ‘terrible’ prediction.
There is no way of knowing what was on people's minds in the hot and arid weeks before a certain cow is said to have kicked over a lantern and...
Flashback: Chicago prepares to mark 150 years since the birth of its own urban fairy tale
Like something out of an urban fairy tale, once upon a time there was a cow, a woman named Catherine O'Leary and a fire. That time was 150 years ago,...
Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick will have final museum show in Glen Ellyn this fall. ‘It is time for me to get out of the way.’
Many people rejoiced at the news that the Cleve Carney Museum of Art in Glen Ellyn will be presenting a museum exhibition by Chicago multimedia artist Tony Fitzpatrick. The show...
Thirsty Ears and Poetry Slam this weekend shows Chicago creativity is back and ready for the stage
As far as I know, Marc Smith and Seth Boustead have never met, but they share this upcoming weekend with a couple of innovative creations, a pair of events that...