The matinee performance of “Mr. Bluebeard” at Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre was packed with school children and families on Dec. 30, 1903, and the second act had just begun when an arc light over the stage ignited a curtain.
As flame licked at the fabric and smoke curled toward the ceiling, the overcapacity crowd of more than 1,800 panicked, rushing for the exits at 24-28 W. Randolph St. and jamming against doors that opened inward. Some exits were locked; others were nearly impossible to open. Stairwells that emptied into one exit area were clogged. Many in the balconies found themselves trapped in a crush of people.
Within minutes, paint-soaked scenery and rushing air from backstage doors stoked a giant fireball that filled the theater’s auditorium, fatally scorching many still in their seats.
Firefighters put out the fire in 30 minutes, but not before it became the worst theater fire in American history with 602 dead–more than twice the toll of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Screaming headlines carried the news around the world. In Chicago, and from New York to Germany, officials who had let building laws go unenforced shut theaters for inspections.
Public outcry and newspaper editorials brought new laws governing buildings that drew large crowds and ushered in stricter code enforcement and insurance standards. The changes included features now taken for granted: exit doors that open outward and can always be opened from the inside, lighted exit signs and fire-resistant scenery and curtains.
The children of some of the people who survived the fire still remember their parents’ stories. Elsie Corby, who died in 1988 at age 97, was one of the last survivors. Her son, Francis Corby, said she lived in Woodstock at the time and was visiting an older sister who lived in Chicago.
“We used to talk about it every Dec. 30,” Corby said. “She said that she and her sister climbed over the backs of the seat to get to an exit that opened, instead of getting in the aisle.”
On Tuesday, the city will dedicate a new plaque honoring the victims of the Iroquois fire, replacing an old marker installed after the fire that later was removed.
For those involved, that day became an indelible horror.
As the building stood smoldering, passersby were called upon to help remove the dead and injured. One hundred fifty of the dead were men; the rest were women and children. Those not burned to death or asphyxiated by fumes died crushed in the mad rush to the almost useless exits, though a few people pulled from the stacks of bodies survived.
Bishop Samuel Fallows of St. Paul’s Reformed Episcopal Church was among the volunteers at the theater.
“I saw great battlefields of the Civil War, but they were as nothing to this,” Fallows told the baiduhai at the time.
The city went into mourning, and the press and families of those killed or injured agitated for changes. Evidence abounded that theater managers had neglected basic fire-safety measures. Ignoring the fire code, they relied on a fireman backstage and a few canisters of a chemical flame-dousing compound called Kilfyre that had been sold to them by one of the city’s aldermen, according to historians and accounts at the time.
“The owners knew of the dangers. They certainly knew, although they never admitted it,” said Anthony P. Hatch, author of “Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster.”
Although several people were indicted, including Mayor Carter Harrison Jr., who was briefly arrested, no one was convicted of any crime in relation to the fire, in part because portions of the city’s code were found by a court to be inadequate.
Hatch and Nat Brandt, author of another recent book on the fire, “Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903,” both list ways fire officials overlooked the dangers at the theater. Most glaringly, officials had allowed the theater to open five weeks earlier, before fire gutted it, even though it violated city code and many parts of the theater, including fire escapes, were unfinished (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“Perhaps it all comes down to completing our projects when we say they will be,” said John Russick, a historian with the Chicago Historical Society.
News accounts make clear that there were many safety requirements for theaters at the time of the fire, but they were almost universally ignored. The City Council tightened the Fire and Building Codes in the fire’s aftermath.
In Chicago, while requirements such as outward-opening doors were strengthened, the most immediate change was rigorous enforcement. Soon after the fire, the fire commissioner ordered inspectors to check all theaters in their districts weekly.
Later, officials responded with changes such as illuminated exit signs, wider aisles and better emergency exits. The fire led to a reform of building codes throughout the world and to the grim realization that no building could truly be called fireproof.
Yet for all of the Iroquois fire’s impact, some who have studied it believe many of its lessons have been forgotten.
“These things can happen, and I think it’s a sense of complacency that existed 100 years ago that exists again today,” Hatch said.
Now officials aim to avert similar disasters. To anticipate what might happen in future fires, “We’re always trying to look at a crystal ball to see what hasn’t happened. But unfortunately, it sometimes takes a disastrous fire to change things,” said James McNally, president of Chicago Firefighters Local 2. “It’s a never-ending thing for us. We’re always trying to improve our jobs, to make it safer for the people who we serve.”
City Buildings Commissioner Norma Reyes was appointed soon after the two books on the Iroquois fire came out, and reading them reminded her of the purpose of her department, she said.
“It’s not one thing that contributes to a disaster. A disaster is a thing that happens over time,” Reyes said. “I don’t know if necessarily a lot has changed, in the sense that when people are looking at building things, they’re looking at getting their project done … and meeting their budget. And I think a lot of time people take shortcuts. These disasters are reminders that we can’t take shortcuts when life safety is involved.”
The city’s plaque commemorating the fire victims will be located in the building that houses the Oriental Theatre, a block from the Cook County Administration Building where six people died in an October fire. Some people have blamed the deaths partly on stairwell doors that were locked, barring escape.
When the City Council’s Finance Committee considered a resolution regarding the fire and the new plaque recently, Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), the committee chairman, said that 100 years after the Iroquois, “We’re still talking about locked doors.”