Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903
By Nate Brandt
Southern Illinois University Press, 181 pages, $25
Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903
By Anthony P. Hatch
Academy Chicago, 274 pages, $25
“Absolutely fireproof.”
That’s how the Iroquois Theatre, Chicago’s newest and most beautiful show palace, was billed to the public when it debuted in November 1903. To the naked eye, the Iroquois was indeed a modern example of fire-resistant construction, a building the Chicago Tribune called a “virtual temple of beauty.” But just five weeks after opening, the Iroquois turned into a flaming death trap that killed 602 people, most of them women and children attending a sold-out matinee musical.
Now, on the eve of its centennial anniversary–and almost simultaneous with the recent tragic stampede deaths of 21 people at a South Side nightclub and more than four times that many in a fire at a Rhode Island nightspot–
he Iroquois catastrophe, America’s worst theater fire and deadliest-ever single-building fire, is revisited in two new books. “Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903,” by Nate Brandt, and “Tinder Box: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster 1903,” by Anthony P. Hatch, are equally compelling reads that keep alive an important and relevant story that had all but become a mere footnote in the annals of Chicago.
The authors approach their subject differently. Hatch, a former CBS reporter, began researching the fire in 1961, tracking down and interviewing survivors and witnesses. The last person Hatch interviewed died in 1970 (but that was not the last of all the people who survived or witnessed the fire to have died). Among those he spoke with was Michael J. Corrigan, one of the first firefighters to reach the scene and the man who later became Chicago’s longest serving fire commissioner. Brandt, a former editor of Publishers Weekly and the author of nine previous books, relied largely on historical documents, books and news reports to construct a detailed narrative of the fire and its aftermath. To their credit, both authors succeed in placing the reader back in time, exposing immense tragedy, blatant corruption and terrible irresponsibility. (This paragraph as published has been corrected in this text.)
The weather in Chicago on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 1903, was clear and cold, but the inclement temperatures did not keep a holiday crowd from venturing to the Iroquois to attend a sellout performance of the hit comedy “Mr. Bluebeard.” Officially, the Iroquois had seating for 1,724. But that afternoon’s matinee played to an overflow crowd of nearly 2,000 people. Patrons filled every seat and stood four abreast in aisles that stretched from the orchestra up through three balconies. In addition, crowded behind the stage were various members of the theater company: actors, dancers and stagehands.
The $1 million showpiece Iroquois, designed by 29-year-old architect Benjamin H. Marshall and patterned after the Opera Comique in Paris, had been much acclaimed. The six-story theater was on the north side of Randolph Street between State and Dearborn Streets, and its interior was magnificently plush, with much mahogany and stained glass throughout. The dazzling lobby, with its ornate, 60-foot-high ceiling, featured white marble walls fitted with large mirrors framed in gold leaf and stone, while two grand, uncarpeted marble staircases led to the upper balconies. Outside, the building’s front facade resembled a Greek temple, with a high stone archway supported by two massive Corinthian columns. This archway, counterpart to a monument that had been erected in Paris to commemorate the deaths of 150 people in an 1857 charity bazaar fire, would prove eerily prophetic.
The Iroquois had more than two-dozen exits that, Marshall claimed, could empty the building in less than five minutes. Also in place was an asbestos curtain that, in the event of a fire on stage or in the loft above it, could be quickly lowered to protect the audience. It all sounded good enough, but the true state of affairs was troubling. Seats in the supposedly fireproof theater were wooden and stuffed with hemp, and much of the advertised precautionary fire equipment to be employed “just in case” a fire should break out had not been installed–including an internal fire alarm. In the rush to open the theater on time, several other key safety factors had been either overlooked or ignored completely, leaving the Iroquois ripe for disaster. It was against this backdrop of greed and careless haste that tragedy struck.
At 3:20 p.m., during the beginning of the play’s second act, powerful spotlights bathed the stage in bluish-green hues as a bright harvest moon, projected by another spotlight, rose in the background. The audience applauded when the orchestra struck up the overture to “In the Pale Moonlight” and pretty ballerinas costumed in blue and gold pirouetted across the left side of the stage.
At that moment, a bright flash was seen near one of the electric floodlights above the right side of the stage. The flash produced a small flame that traveled across the edge of a drape and spread up to the oil-painted and highly flammable canvas, paper and wood backdrops hanging by oiled manila ropes in the loft above. Two stagehands noticed the flame and tried beating it out. When bits of flaming curtain and scenery started falling to the wooden floor, an off-duty firefighter and another stage worker emptied two small chemical extinguishers onto them. Other stagehands tried stomping the flames out with their hands and feet, but within seconds, the small fire in the loft spread rapidly, devouring the unprotected upper curtains and heavy combustible set materials hanging above the stage. From this point, conditions inside the theater deteriorated quickly.
Headliner Eddie Foy, who survived the fire, ran to center stage and raised his hands, imploring the startled audience to remain seated and calm. A stagehand tried to lower the asbestos curtain to separate the audience from the fire, but it snagged halfway down on an electric light reflector and became stuck, creating a 20-foot-high gap between the curtain’s suspended bottom and the wooden stage floor.
Rationality soon gave way to panic. The audience members spilled from their seats and scrambled for the exits, but immediately the aisles leading from the auditorium and balconies became clogged and impassable. Soon the lights went out, and the flood of screaming men, women and children began to trample each other in blind horror. With the theater filling with heat, smoke and poisonous gases that made normal breathing impossible, children and mothers screamed for one another and became separated in the crushing stampede. Together the adults and youngsters stumbled, turned unconscious, then piled on top of each other.
Behind the stage, employees and cast members opened a set of double doors at the rear of the building, causing a rush of fresh air to blow into the theater, sending huge sheets of fire underneath the open asbestos curtain and up into galleries and balconies. A second wind gust created a bright orange fireball that shot into the auditorium like a giant blowtorch, incinerating many. With a healthy supply of oxygen, the fire reached into every inch of the auditorium, devouring everything, including the 75,000 feet of oiled manila rope suspended above the loft. The supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain burned like a rag, then collapsed onto the stage in a shower of sparks.
As pandemonium and death reigned inside the Iroquois, the scene outside the theater’s front doors on Randolph Street remained ominously quiet. Most accounts say the fire in the theater had been burning for at least 15 minutes before a faint wisp of smoke was noticed by passersby. Because no fire alarm box was located outside the theater’s front doors, someone hastened around the corner to turn in an alarm at nearby Engine Co. 13 on Dearborn Street. Moments later, when the first firefighters pulled up in their horse-driven steamers and hose carts, smoke was pushing from the rear of the building. When they caught a whiff of what lie beyond the doorways, horror set in. “Pull a third alarm,” yelled Fire Marshal William Musham, who had responded from his nearby City Hall office.
Initially, firefighters had difficulty getting into the auditorium because so many bodies were stacked up in front of the doors. Once inside, it took them about 10 minutes to douse the remaining flames because intense heat had already consumed most of the combustibles, including velvet seat cushions that had burned right down to the frames. But as rescuers made their way farther into the darkness of the theater’s charred interior, they were chilled by the eerie silence and the stench of burned bodies. ” `Is there any living person here?’ ” one deputy fire chief shouted. ” `If anyone here is alive . . . groan or make some sound.’ “
No one did.
The greatest loss of life had come in the gallery and upper balconies, where the fleeing swarm had run up against locked doors that blocked access to the stairways. Where the stairways from the second- and third-floor balconies came together, firefighters found 200 bodies stacked 10 high and scores deep. At the top of the auditorium the crowds had fought so fiercely in their efforts to escape that they ripped the iron railings from the balconies. Death, mainly from asphyxiation, came quickly to those who made it into the hallways and back aisles. But those trapped in the auditorium had burned to death.
Others who made it to the fire escape door behind the top balcony kicked open the door only to find the iron staircase missing. In its place was a railed platform that led to a deadly drop to the cobblestone alley below. Newspapers later dubbed this narrow area behind the theater “Death Alley” because of the 125 bodies found piled there–either from falling, or being stacked there by firefighters, or both.
Sheet-covered bodies were taken into nearby stores and shops, where temporary morgues were established, including Marshall Field’s on State Street. Most victims had succumbed to smoke inhalation. Some were trampled to death. Others had been cremated. Most of those who died were women and children. They came from 13 states and 86 cities. Chicago’s 300 dead included 102 schoolchildren and 39 teachers. Several families suffered more than one loss in the fire. Overall, the heart-breaking death toll included 212 children. All but one member of the “Bluebeard” company escaped: Nellie Reed, star of the show’s aerial ballet, became caught on a wire and was badly burned. She died in Cook County Hospital.
The subsequent investigation illuminated many troubling facts. To begin, because they had not been completed in time for the theater’s opening, smoke vents in the roof above the stage had been wired shut to keep out snow and burglars, leaving the products of combustion nowhere to go except back inside the theater. This fact alone contributed significantly to the high death toll by asphyxiation. Another finding showed the supposedly fireproof asbestos stage curtain was not fireproof at all; it was constructed of cotton and other combustible materials.
Because of a lack of planning, ushers had no idea what to do in case of fire. Not only was a fire-alarm system lacking, but exit lights and sprinklers were also missing, the latter considered too costly and too unsightly. What’s more, to keep balcony patrons from sneaking down to the more expensive floor seats, the Iroquois’ management had quietly bolted nine pairs of iron panels over the rear doors and installed illegal, padlocked, accordion-like gates at the top of the interior second- and third-floor stairway landings. And all those exits that were supposed to empty the theater in five minutes? Their doors opened in, not out, causing a massive logjam of bodies.
Following the tragedy, city and Fire Department officials denied any knowledge of fire-code violations and blamed bribed inspectors. A grand jury indicted several people for criminal negligence, including theater owners Will Davis and Harry Powers, Mayor Carter Harrison Jr., Musham, the city’s building commissioner and a city inspector. In the end, however, all were exonerated and not a soul was punished. Musham resigned the following October after being further criticized for failing to enforce fire laws at the theater. Following the fire, Iroquois Theatre Co. filed for bankruptcy, leaving victims and their families without any financial claim.
Contrary to Hatch’s title, the theater was not a tinderbox per se; its construction materials were, in fact, almost entirely noncombustible. But the building’s contents, including 602 human beings, were not. Compared to the human loss, structural damage from the fire was minimal. After repairs, the Iroquois reopened briefly in 1904 as Hyde and Behman’s Music Hall, and again in 1905 as the Colonial Theatre. In 1924 the building was razed to make way for a new theater, the Oriental, which occupies the site today as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts.
As with most catastrophes, some good did emerge from the ruins of the Iroquois Theatre fire. Among the benchmark laws enacted in its wake were those requiring theaters to have outward-opening exit doors that remained unlocked from the inside and that were to be fitted with push bars rather than doorknobs or handles. Other requirements included exit lights, automatic sprinklers, standpipes and fire-alarm systems and flame-resistant scenery, props and curtains.
Like the Titanic that could not sink, the “fireproof” Iroquois stands as yet another monument to people’s failure to anticipate the consequences of haste and greed. In Chicago, the lessons have not always been heeded: Overcrowding and inadequate exits were present here in 1946, when a fire at the La Salle Hotel killed 61, and again in 1958, when 95 died after flames swept Our Lady of the Angels School.
And on the morning of Feb. 17 and the evening of Feb. 20, the stampede deaths of 21 people at the E2 nightclub in Chicago and of scores in a fire at The Station in West Warwick, R.I., reinforced the fact that, in the field of life safety, history, kept alive in books like these, remains the best teacher.
