Flashback: ‘More dead than alive:’ Chicago Tribune staffers recount how they labored to save their building — and get the paper out — during the Great Chicago Fire

The Chicago Tribune claimed its four-story building constructed of stone, brick and iron at the southeast corner of Dearborn and Madison streets was incombustible. Completed in 1869 at a estimated cost of $225,000, the Tribune advertised its headquarters as “FIREPROOF.”

Yet, it crumbled when confronted by the Great Chicago Fire early in the morning on Monday, Oct. 9, 1871, becoming one of 17,450 structures destroyed within a three-mile area.

What follows are the recollections of Tribune employees, published in the Feb. 1, 1891, edition of the paper, who worked relentlessly to save their building and produce an edition — only to abandon it in order to save their lives.

Tribune co-owner and editor Joseph Medill observed people fleeing the city’s courthouse with stacks of documents as the edifice was ablaze late Sunday, Oct. 8, 1871.

Medill: “I remained there in a crowd for a time, looking at the rush of the conflagration around the square. The road was terrific; the smoke drifted over me in huge volumes; sparks and pieces of burning wood were flying through the air by millions, and there was a strong wind blowing, apparently from every direction, into the fire; but the prevailing pressure was from the southwest. While standing there I became alarmed about THE TRIBUNE Building.”

When Medill arrived at the Tribune, he discovered his staff working quickly to get the next day’s paper ready.

Medill: “I found the printers at work setting up the report of the fire as far as it had been prepared, and learned that all the reporters were out getting more fire news, and that the pressmen were ready to start up as soon as the forms were sent down. Everybody was as busy as a bee, and all were hopeful that the fire would not take our ‘fire-proof’ building.”

Between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., however, Medill observed from atop the Tribune that the fire was encroaching. His primary concern was the roof, so he gathered men to stomp out embers and protect its integrity. The vantage point revealed to him the chaos on the ground below.

Medill: “I saw fire break out in the neighborhood of the Water-Works, and shortly afterward the news came that the water supply had been cut off; that there was no more pressure at the hydrants. ... I saw great crowds, the fire having passed northwest of them, run to the water along the lake shore. I could see people fleeing through the old cemetery northward. I saw the wooden pallings around the graves on fire and also masses of furniture, bedding, and other property burn up.

Over all this terrible scene was a sullen roar, much like that which one hears when close to Niagara Falls, but mixed with crackling sounds and constant reverberations loud as thunder from falling walls and explosions; and I could see the great brick buildings tumbling and masses of flames thrown high into the air. It was an awful sight.”

Still, the men labored to save the Tribune’s roof.

Medill: “The air was like that of a furnace — fearfully hot. With the hot air, the stifling smoke, and a perfect storm of sparks and blazing fragments falling on THE TRIBUNE’S ‘fire-proof’ roof, we had a trying time in our efforts to extinguish fires all about us. There were half a dozen chimneys, and we would run behind these and stand with our backs against the east side to get a little air and recover from the effects of breathing smoke.”

Tribune commercial editor Elias Colbert — called “Prof. Colbert” in the Feb. 1, 1891, story — described saving his own valuable items.

Colbert: “I had a little observatory on the roof, with a telescope of six feet in length and glass four and three-eighths inches diameter, which I had used all that summer for observing the sun spots a few minutes nearly every fine day. After assisting Mr. Joseph Medill and others in putting out small fires on the roof, caused by falling sparks, I carried that telescope on my shoulder, and with my scientific scrap-book under the other arm went down Madison street to Michigan avenue, thence west along Twelfth street, and south on Halsted home.”

Work inside the Tribune continued — though the conditions were precarious.

Medill: “I had men in every room with water pails and wet cloths. In some of the rooms the heat was so great that the glass in the windows was cracked in all directions and the varnish on the furniture smoked.”

Soon, however, it became apparent the Tribune would not publish a paper.

Medill: “About 7 o’clock a pressman told me that they had attempted to go to press, but the basement was so hot that the rollers had melted into a mass and nothing could be done with them; that there was so much smoke the men could not live in the basement, and there was only water enough in the tank for a short run, the supply having been cut off by the burning of the Water-Works. So the printing of any papers containing an account of the great fire had to be abandoned.”

Colbert, returned to the Tribune from safely depositing his telescope at home, managed to save the only known portion of that failed edition in existence.

Colbert: “The TRIBUNE then consisted of four large pages when without supplement. Near the presses lay the piles of half-printed sheets, the second and third pages being printed, leaving the first and fourth to be printed by a second operation if it had been possible to perform it. I took from a pile one of the sheets, and George Woodwell, who was with me, took another. I preserved mine and know not what became of his. Both he and his wife died several years ago, and probably the sheet I have is the only remaining portion of the edition of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE of Oct. 9, 1871.”

Attempts to save the building were abandoned.

Medill: “I saw (the fire) was moving rapidly toward the lake and working northward, which would bring it out in a few minutes to the rear of McVicker’s Theater, then Mackin’s Building, and then to our building. So I went back to the roof and told the men the battle was lost; that we could not save THE TRIBUNE BLOCK. They were more dead than alive, and in one sense glad to get the order to retreat. Our faces were black. Our clothes had been on fire scores of times. Our hair and beards were singed. Our faces and hands were scorched and blistered. Even our shoes were burned from stamping on the spots of fire on the hot roof. We were a frightful looking set of fellows.”

The weary men fled.

Medill: “Going down-stairs we made a hasty search of the rooms and found some of the employees utterly exhausted lying in the eastern rooms, which were the coolest and least exposed. There was no time to coax a man to get up. He was violently ‘yanked,’ struck, and jerked on his feet, and told to run for his life, as he would be burned if he remained there ten minutes longer.”

Efforts to secure the Tribune’s archives were also deserted.

Medill: “When I got down-stairs I thought I would make an effort to save the earlier files of THE TRIBUNE, and told the men to take only those prior to 1860, as I had a complete set in my house after that date. Each one got two or three volumes out into the alley, but by that time the fire had so nearly surrounded us and the air was so full of sparks and flames that I saw if we carried the files they would catch fire and we would not be able to save them. So the books were dropped on the sidewalk and each of us started to get away as best he could.”

Their escape was just in time.

Medill: “They told me afterward that McVicker’s Theater burned about fifteen minutes after we left — that the west wall fell out against the east wall of THE TRIBUNE Building, breaking the iron shutters and letting the fire into the different floors and basement. In a short time, THE TRIBUNE Building resembled a volcano.”

George P. Upton, Tribune musical and dramatic critic, later lamented the structure’s fate.

Upton: “You see we had faith in the old building if it only had half a chance, and even now I believe it would have made a magnificent fight with the fire and escaped with small damage had not McVicker’s Theater lost its head late that night or early next morning ...”

Tribune staffers were not the only people confident in the soundness of their building’s design, according to the paper’s mailing department superintendent William L. Ogden.

Ogden: “Many persons who had rooms in the vicinity of THE TRIBUNE Building had pinned their faith in its fire-proof qualities, and our basement was packed with trunks, show-cases, and many articles of value which had been brought there and stored. Thousands of dollars’ worth of goods were placed there, and the people who had moved them in, tired out, fell upon them and went to sleep, while others huddled under the sidewalk that was used then as now to accommodate the newsboys and paper-carriers. How many perished there I do not know. The remains of but two or three were ever found.”

The financial consequences of the building’s loss was temporarily discouraging for Medill and his partners.

Medill: “That old building, which was supposed to be fire-proof, was not insured. It was about as much ‘proof’ as the others; but everything was combustible in that fire.”

Yet, it didn’t keep the Tribune down.

Post-fire

The next day, Medill secured a temporary home for the Tribune on Canal Street. Production rooms were cobbled together, a press was borrowed and the first post-fire edition of the paper was published on Oct. 11, 1871. Its two pages attempted to detail all that had been lost, what remained and offered a stirring prophecy that “CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.” Medill was elected mayor of Chicago on Nov. 7, 1871 — representing the “Fireproof Party.”

Medill: “From the day of the fire I worked sixteen to eighteen hours a day, and had things in pretty good shape when I was snatched away and thrust into the Mayor’s office, very much to my dislike and pecuniary loss.”

Exactly one year after the fire began, the Tribune returned to its reconstructed home. It was replaced with a 17-story stunner in 1902. The news operation moved into “the world’s most beautiful office building” — the iconic Tribune Tower — at 435 N. Michigan Ave. in 1925. Tribune’s operations are based today at its printing facility, Freedom Center, along the Chicago River north of downtown.

Check out the Tribune’s archives at your fingertips at Newspapers.com.

Sources: Chicago Tribune reporting and archives; “The Chicago Tribune, Vol. 2: Its First Hundred Years; 1865-1880″ by Philip Kinsley; “Chicago’s Great Fire: The Destruction and Resurrection of an Iconic American City” by Carl Smith