The Rabbit Hole
All chronologies

01Chicago

Chicago, 1871

A lithograph of the city drawn as it was before 8–10 October 1871, a photograph of the burnt district, then a camera on rebuilt State Street in 1893. Three kinds of record. The fire is dated from documents.

Great Chicago Fire. 8–10 October 1871. Fire of 8–10 October 1871. Davis’s Harper’s wood engraving and Flint’s 1872 lithograph show the city as drawn before. Barnard’s plate is the camera on the burnt district. State Street 1893 is the rebuilt commercial street.

  1. Before1872

    Drawn as it was before the fire

    The City of Chicago as it was before the great conflagration, 1872. W. Flint. Bird's-eye illustration / lithograph.

    1872·Chicago

    The City of Chicago as it was before the great conflagration

    W. Flint

    Bird's-eye illustration / lithograph

    What this plate shows

    A lithographic bird’s-eye of Chicago drawn as it stood before 8–10 October 1871, issued the following year. River, rail, grain elevators, a dense grid to the lake. An imagined high viewpoint of a city already gone when the print was sold. Not a photograph.

    Image type
    Bird's-eye illustration / lithograph
    Source
    Library of Congress; Wikimedia scan of the 1872 lithograph.
    License
    Public domain.
    Open this plateBeside the next plate

  2. Event1871

    Photograph of the burnt district

    Chicago after the fire, 1871. Attributed to George N. Barnard. Photographic panorama.

    1871·Chicago

    Chicago after the fire

    Attributed to George N. Barnard

    Photographic panorama

    What this plate shows

    A wide photographic plate of the burnt district: chimneys, rubble, a horizon of ruin. This is a camera record after 8–10 October 1871. Set it beside Davis’s or Flint’s drawn ‘before’ views. One is an illustration of what was imagined as standing. This is what the lens found after.

    Image type
    Photographic panorama
    Source
    Google Art Project / Wikimedia; panoramic photograph of the burnt district.
    License
    Public domain.
    Open this plateBeside the next plate

  3. After1893

    Rebuilt State Street

    State Street, Chicago, 1893. Period photograph of the rebuilt commercial street. Underwood & Underwood / J. T. Jarvis issued a stereo of State Street in 1893 (LOC LCCN 96503107). This scan is a matching street view of that year.. Street photograph.

    1893·Chicago

    State Street, Chicago

    Period photograph of the rebuilt commercial street. Underwood & Underwood / J. T. Jarvis issued a stereo of State Street in 1893 (LOC LCCN 96503107). This scan is a matching street view of that year.

    Street photograph

    What this plate shows

    State Street photographed looking along the commercial canyon: cable cars, wagons, packed sidewalks, masonry blocks with iron fronts. Twenty-two years after the fire. A camera on the rebuilt street. Not Flint’s lithograph of the city as drawn before, and not Barnard’s plate of the burnt district. This is what occupied the street afterward, that year.

    Image type
    Street photograph
    Region
    North America
    Source
    Wikimedia Commons scan of an 1893 photograph of State Street, Chicago. Related: Library of Congress stereo 1s12691.
    License
    Public domain (U.S. publication, 1893).
    Open this plate

How to read this chain

Image type first. Then the date. Then what the plate actually shows. A later status — surviving, burned, demolished, replaced — is a documented fact about the structure, not a claim this photograph was asked to prove. The Living Realm sits downstream, in Synthesis.