FIRE AT THE IROQUOIS THEATER

12/30/1903 - For the third since it's incorporation in 1837, horrific, out-of-control fire brings tragedy to citizens of Chicago (the other two fires are the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, purportedly started by Mrs. O'Leary's cow, and The Little Big Fire of 1874) in a conflagration known as the Iroquois Theatre Fire, still the deadliest theater fire and deadliest single-building fire in United States history.

Inside, After The Fire

Located at 24-28 West Randolph Street, between Chicago's State Street and Dearborn Street, specifically at a site it is believed will attract women in the city on day trips because of it's proximity to the police-patrolled Loop shopping region (the syndicate that bankrolls the project gets the location absolutely right and after the fire the theater reopens as the Colonial Theatre in 1904, before being demolished and rebuilt as the Oriental Theatre in 1926, and in 2019, the Oriental Theatre morphs into its current entertainment venue, the James M. Neaderlander Theatre) the Iroquois Theater is one of the first commissions of 29-year-old architect Benjamin Henry Marshall and is meant to be a showpiece for the city, and opening on November 23, 1903, for just over a month, it is exactly that ... a structure that the drama critic of the New York Clipper (a predecessor of Variety magazine), Walter K. Hill, will describe as "most beautiful" and that "few theaters in America can rival its architectural.

Marshall

Marshall's design consists of a theater with a capacity for 1,602 theater-goers spread over three audience levels ... the Main Floor (the orchestra section) contained about 700 seats, along with two boxes on each side of the stage and was on the same level as the foyer and Grand Stair Hall, the second level contained over 400 seats, along with two more boxes and was known as the "dress circle" or "first balcony, while the third level of about 500 seats was called the "gallery."  For the public, there is only one entrance.  Off the foyer, a broad stairway allowing patrons to "see and be seen" led to the balcony section, and to the gallery section too, ignoring city fire ordinances requiring separate stairways and exits for each balcony ... a design made for tragedy in which the patrons exiting the gallery level will be blocked by the audience leaving the first balcony, and in turn, those folks will be blocked by orchestra level patrons making their way into the theater's foyer.  The backstage area of the theater was unusually large for the time and consisted of five levels of dressing rooms with an elevator available for transporting actors to the stage floor and a fly gallery where stage scenery was hung.  And of course the Fates are tempted by calling the theater "absolutely fireproof," though the location is lacking a stage draft shaft, wood trim is abundantly present on all levels, there are no sprinklers, no alarms or telephones linking the theater to any of the city's fire departments, and should they arrive, no water connections for the fire fighters to attach their hoses to, and on-site, there are only six "Kilfyre" fire extinguishers (2' by 24' tin tubes filled with three pounds of white powder, mostly sodium bicarbonate) meant to be hurled into the base of any conflagration ... deficiencies that are all duly noted by the Chicago Fire Department that expects the building's "fire warden" to rectify. 

The Iroquois Theater

Theater Layout

Main Foyer

Box office disappointing since its opening in November due to labor unrest, bad weather, and the busy of the holiday season, on a cold Wednesday afternoon, December 30, 1903, the theater presents a holiday matinee of the Drury Lane London hit musical, "Mr. Blue Beard," featuring actor Dan McAvoy as Bluebeard and comedian Eddie Foy in the role of Sister Anne.  Every seat and more sold out, about 2,200 patrons squeeze into the theater, occupying all the seats, the standing room only sections of the structure, and some even sitting in the aisles.  At about 3:15 in the afternoon, shortly after the second act of the musical begins, with a chorus line of eight men and eight women performing a number called "In The Pale Moonlight."  Blue-tinted spotlights illuminating the stage to suggest evening, in the flies above the stage, a spotlight short circuits, flinging sparks out into the air, several of which cause a muslin curtain to catch on fire.  Rushing to put out the conflagration, a stagehand tries to put out the fire with one of the Kilfyre cannisters, but fails as the flames jump to the fly gallery high above the stage, where it moves into an area containing several thousand square feet of highly flammable painted canvas scenery despite efforts to lower an asbestos curtain made of the fire retardant and wood pulp (rendering the safety feature worthless) ... but the curtain never gets it's chance to contain the fire when it can not be fully lowered and catches on light reflector sticking out from under the theater's proscenium arch.  About to go on stage, Foy realizes what is going on overhead, and as flaming debris starts to fall from above, the comedian puts his son in the hands of a stagehand and then tells the frightened audience not to panic, fruitlessly (the comedian stays on stage as long as is possible, and then, barely makes it through the dressing rooms and out a back door).

Foy - Normal And As Sister Anne

The Panic Begins

Seconds to minutes, total panic begins among the crowd as people discover escape after escape cut off ... fire exits hidden by drapes on the north side of the building can't be opened because they are kept closed by unfamiliar bascule locks (saving the lives of many, former Chicago Cubs player Frank Houseman ignores an usher and breaks open one of the locks and opens an exit, while nearby, his friend, outfielder Charlie Dexter, opens another), people a trapped in dead ends trying to open doors with windows in them that are actually just windows, trying to escape out the west stage door, people find their flight prevented by the door opening inward (a situation that a passing railroad agent rectifies by taking the door off its hinges with tools the man always carries), back door opened, the rush of oxygen sucked into the theater creates a giant fireball that heads for the open vents behind the dress circle and gallery 50 feet away (the vents above the stage are nailed or wired shut), incinerating anything flammable on the two levels, including patrons trapped there, and those that survive the fireball are prevented from using the foyer exits by the stairs being blocked by iron grates (closed during performances to prevent patrons from leaving their cheap seats for more expensive ones on levels below the areas will become death traps where hundreds of people pile up against the blockades and are trampled, crushed, or asphyxiated), and on the north side of the theater the flight of the patrons to safety forces them on to unfinished fire escapes over an alley known as Couch Place, that come off the walls or cause those fleeing to either fall from or jump (the bodies of the first jumpers will cushion the falls of some of the patrons that follow, and a few of the lucky are saved when a group of students from the Northwestern University building to the north of the theater, create a makeshift bridge of a ladder and several boards that crosses the the building gap to safety).

Foy Tries To Keep Everyone Calm

Panic!

Up In Flames

Above Couch Place

Escape

With the new theater having no fire alarm box or telephones, a stagehand is ordered to run to the nearest fire station, CFD Engine 13, to get help.  On the way to the fire, a member of the crew activates a fire alarm at 3:33 in the afternoon, and soon fire units from throughout the city are headed for the Iroquois.  Upon arrival, most of the firefighters' efforts go into getting to the people trapped on the fire escapes over Couch Place, but not much is achieved in the dark, narrow icy alley filled by clouds of smoke; the department's aerial ladders can't be used, and the darkness makes it impossible for trapped patrons to see the black nets that are stretched out for jumpers.  At the same time, members of the Chicago police force beginning arriving, drawn by an officer calling in the fire from a police box on Randolph Street, and the cacophony of cop whistles that begin calling from the area (thirty police matrons are soon on the scene to deal with the huge amount of female victims).  But for most, the help is already too late.  Though many make it to safety, hundreds do not.  Crushed to death or killed by fire, smoke, and gases, the disaster kills over 600 individuals (by contrast, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 that lasted three days and burnt down 3.3 square miles of the city causes only 300 deaths) and injuries another 250 individuals; in front of some of the blocked exits, the crush of bodies reaches ten feet high (while their souls are seared forever from the experience, the employees of the Iroquois get off lucky ... of the over 300 actors, dancers, and stagehands at the theater on 12/30, only five perish, one actor with a bit part in the musical, two female attendants, an usher, and Nellie Reed, an aerialist about to fly out over the audience on trolley wire, showering the crowd with pink carnations ... trapped above the stage while awaiting her entrance, the 24-year-old falls to the stage and dies in a hospital three days later).  Normally a restaurant, on 12/30/1903, the diner next door to the Iroquois becomes a morgue and a hospital as bodies are taken out of the theater.     

Looking Down On The Destruction

Picking Through The Rubble

Death Seats

Nellie Reed

In the aftermath of the tragedy, the finger pointing, followed quickly by public outrage, begins almost immediately.  After the Chicago Tribune runs an article documenting safety regulations that had been flaunted by the theater (lack of adequate fire alarms, automatic sprinklers, marked exits, suitable fire extinguishers, and two large rooftop flues that could have vented heat and smoke being boarded over), the theater owners, the architect, and city officials all claim innocence as to what happened and claim other folks as the culprits in the disaster, with Will Davis & Harry Powers (the owners) and Benjamin Marshall (the architect) blaming the victims themselves for causing the horror with their own panic and not following directions.  As a result of no one accepting the blame, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., orders all of the city's theaters closed for six weeks while each establishment proves their fire prevention equipment and procedures are actually viable (and other theaters also take note of the holocaust, with many establishments in New York City and in Europe doing away with selling standing room only tickets) ... all theater exists must be clearly marked and access doors must be configured to open outward and inward.  Pound of flesh sought by politicians and the public, criminal charges are brought against the mayor himself, Chicago building commissioner George Williams, fire chief William H. Musham, building inspector Edward Loughlin, Iroquois fireman William Sallers, theater owner and manager Davis (co-owner Powers somehow escapes charges, as do usher supervisor George Dusenberry, and business manager Thomas Noonan), light operator William McMullen, and stage carpenter James Cummings.  Deep pockets used, the accused hire a cadre of highly successful attorneys, led by Levy Mayer, that use loopholes in the law, inadequacies in the city's building codes and safety ordinances, and three years of stall tactics to get numerous charges dropped, and when he actually is brought to trial, owner Davis' acquittal.  In the end, no one is ever found criminally liable for the fire and only a handful of payouts are ever made to the victim's families.

Light That Started The Fire

Next Day's Front Page Of The Dead

Mayor Harrison

Davis

As for the theater itself, work to restore the building begins before 1904 is more than a few days old, and nine months later the building opens up again as Hyde & Behman's Music Hall, a title it will enjoy for only a year, reopening as the Colonial Theater in October of 1905, with actress Fay Templeton is the George M. Cohan hit musical, "Forty-Five Minutes From Broadway."  The site will be The Colonial Theater for twenty more years.  Demolished in 1925, it is rebuilt and opens as a movie palace in 1926 and will screen movies, and the occasional play, for the Windy City for decades, finally closing in 1971.  While the theater goes dark, the structure's lobby is refitted as a retail television and radio store before the site gets another face lift in the 1990s, becoming a live theater venue again as the Oriental-Ford Center for the Arts, before being rechristened the James M. Nederlander Theatre on February 8, 2019.  Entertaining the citizens of Chicago for over a hundred years, among the actors and actresses to grace the boards at 24 West Randolph Street in the city's Loop District are The Gumm Sisters, featuring 12-year-old Frances (on her way to becoming the legendary Judy Garland), Duke Ellington and his orchestra, the Marx Brothers, Penn & Teller, the Three Stooges, Sophie Tucker, Henny Youngman, George Jessel, Ann-Margaret, Fanny Brice, George Benson, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Alice Faye, Ella Fitzgerald, Jean Harlow, Eddie Cantor, Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra.  And sadly, sometimes those performers and their audiences have been joined by the shades of those that died on the long ago, cold and fiery afternoon of 12/30/1903.     

The Colonial

Inside The Nederlander

Iroquois Fire Memorial

Some Of The Dead

 

     

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