A 1903 Fire at a Chicago Theater Killed 602 People, Prompting Enduring Safety Reforms

It was Wednesday, December 30, 1903, and Chicago’s sparkling Iroquois Theater on Randolph Street in the Loop was packed for an afternoon showing of Mr. Bluebeard, a comedic pantomime featuring hundreds of performers in colorful costumes.

The Iroquois had opened just a month earlier. The Oshkosh Northwestern called it the “newest and altogether largest, handsomest and most complete theater in Chicago, if not in America.” It was opulent and magnificent, a marvel of architecture and design. “Superlatives will give but the slightest conception of the elegance and grandeur of the new house,” the Northwestern wrote.

The 1,700 guests in attendance that day, however, were destined to fall victim to a new set of superlatives. As the show began, a vicious fire spread when a sparking stage light ignited nearby curtains. The lead actor, Chicagoan Eddie Foy, tried to calm the audience, and the pit orchestra kept playing. But the elaborate backdrops went up in flames, and the fire spread.

“It was soon apparent that the fire could not be contained,” Smithsonian magazine wrote in 2018. The audience, many of whom were women, children and teachers on their holiday break, made for the exits in a panic, but the aisles and doors were narrow and obstructed by curtains and locked metal gates to prevent sneaking between seats.

More than 600 people died, many due to the stampede toward the ineffective exit doors.

On paper, the Iroquois was designed precisely to prevent a tragedy like this. But it quickly became clear that the safety regulations for the theater had been profoundly inadequate.

The day after the fire, the Inter Ocean published a story condemning lapses in safety inspections. “Officials of the building department assert that the building was fireproof in construction and, except the auditorium, had more exits than any other theater in Chicago, if not in the country,” the newspaper reported.

Chicago’s deputy building commissioner, Leon E. Stanhope, explained to the Inter Ocean that the building was constructed with “steel, brick and cement,” except for the seats and the floor. He noted that an asbestos curtain was supposed to fall in case of a fire to protect the audience and enumerated the many exit routes and doors.

In the end, though, none of the safety measures worked. Stanhope was left just as baffled as anyone. “I cannot understand how enough fire could come from the building to do the destructive work it did,” he said.

The human tragedies were even more shocking. The Chicago Tribune told the story of Clinton G. Meeker, a postal clerk who returned home to find his wife, two daughters and two sons gone. “Where are Mabel and the children?” Meeker asked his mother-in-law. When she replied that they had gone to the theater, “I dropped right down on my knees,” Meeker said. He later identified the bodies of his wife and two daughters. He could not find his sons.

“The task of proving culpability … became hopelessly complex,” Smithsonian wrote. “So many had failed to carry out their duties that no one source could be concretely assigned sole responsibility.”

“Everybody afterward was washing their hands of responsibility,” Nat Brandt, author of Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903, told Smithsonian, noting Chicago’s history of municipal corruption. “It was such a total loss of life they didn’t want to be connected to it if possible.”

But the city did take decisive action. Within days, all theaters were shut down to undergo safety improvements. Chicago’s City Council voted to improve safety regulations, prioritizing visibility, exit doors and fireproofing. Other cities, like New York, followed suit.

“If any good whatever shall come from this second great fire-blast which has visited the Western Metropolis,” the publishers of Marshall Everett’s The Great Chicago Theater Disaster wrote in a preface, referencing the previous Great Chicago Fire of 1871, “… it will be the arousal of the world to a realization of the worthlessness of dead money as compared with quivering life.”

Eli Wizevich | | READ MORE

Eli Wizevich is a history correspondent for Smithsonian. He studied history at the University of Chicago and previously wrote for the El Paso Times.