Iroquois Theater Fire 1903 - Chicago, IL - Famous Fires on Waymarking.com

The theater had just opened on Nov 27 and was touted as being "absolutely fireproof."

The fire occurred during the Christmas holiday while schools were out. The matinee performance of Mr. Blue Beard drew a standing-room crowd of nearly two thousand people, mostly women and children. A spark from an arc light touched a drape on the stage right side. The fire quickly spread to the backdrops hanging above the stage, pieces of which then fell toward the performers. The actors fled; Eddie Foy soon returned and urged the audience to remain calm and in their seats. The crew tried to lower the asbestos curtain between the stage and the audience. Midway down, it stuck - the cheap wooden tracks had caused it to jam. As the stage collapsed, the audience panicked and ran for the twenty-seven exits, only to find most of them locked. Those in front were trampled and crushed against the doors, which opened inwards. By the time firefighters arrived, the auditorium was silent. The result seen that day by rescuers was the dead piled in heaps 10 high.

The theater's managers and several public officials were indicted in connection with the fire, but no one was ever punished. The tragedy spurred a drastic toughening of safety standards for theaters and other public buildings and inspired the passage of improved fire safety legislation throughout the United States. Henceforth, all theater exits had to be clearly marked and the doors rigged so that, even if they could not be pulled open from the outside, they could be pushed open from the inside.

In response to the tragedy, the Iroquois Emergency Hospital was built nearby in 1910. A memorial plaque designed by the famous Lorado Taft was installed there. When that hospital was demolished in 1951, the tablet sculpture was put in storage, only to be rediscovered in 1967 and installed in nearby City Hall at the LaSalle street entrance.

The dead are buried in a number of Chicago-area cemeteries (such as Montrose, Forest Home and Graceland), some graves marked with words of remembrance. Today, there is no memorial at the theater site and you wonder if anyone in the hustle and bustle of the passing daily crowd knows the extent of the tragedy of over 100 years ago.

The Iroquois was demolished and rebuilt as the Colonial Theater (torn down in 1925), then rebuilt in 1926 as the current Oriental Theater - Ford Center for the Performing Arts, located at 24 W. Randolph Street.