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Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903

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There has been a glut of books in recent years detailing historical diasters. Some have been very good, while others have been exploitative attempts to cash in on this particular publishing trend. Fortunately, author Nat Brandt's "Chicago Death Trap" falls squarely into the former catagory. Both well researched and well written, it tells the story of the deadliest fire in U.S. history. The disaster occurred in a brand new, supposedly "fireproof," theather, echoing the way a certain "unsinkable" ocean liner would go down a decade later.

Brandt appropriately tells the story in a straightforward manner. He describes the design and construction of the theather, introduces the major players in the tragedy and then recounts the disaster in an appropriately somber tone. Particularly gruesome is the account of the many who died after being forced to jump from the upper level of the theater, their bodies horribly filling an adjascent alleyway as helpless rescuers looked on.

Brandt also describes the aftermath of the fire, which saw an increase safety laws and an attempt to hold some of the theater officials responsible. Typically for the age, they ultimately managed to avoid formal punishment for the negligence that led to the disaster. The book is a fairly quick read at less than 150 pages of text, and there are a number of illustrations and pictures included to help the reader.

Overall, a decent historical account of an unfortunately preventable tragedy.

Chicago is certainly well known for the fire of 1871 but how many people have ever heard of the fire which swept through the Iroquois Theatre thirty-two years later, leaving six hundred people dead in its wake? I admit that I never had heard about it so with Nat Brandt's excellent new book, "Chicago Death Trap", the lives of those lost and the hundreds of families that the tragedy touched can now be told.

The author is direct and writes in a sparse, conservative tone that works well. Within the covers of this small book, Brandt, after some good preparation about the Iroquois Theatre itself and the men behind it, spells out the details of the fire....how it started, how it spread, how it affected the cast and stagehands, (the performers were giving a presentation of the comedy, "Mr. Bluebeard", starring Eddie Foy, Sr.) and finally how people in a sudden and severe panic tried to saved themselves. This is not an easy book to read but I give the author credit....it is also not an easy book to put down. Brandt gives human faces to those who escaped and those who did not. He tells of incredible rescues and how the city responded moments after the fire started and days and weeks after the finger of blame began to point in all directions. He describes makeshift morgues and those who came to identify loved ones...if they could at all. He recounts the ramifications faced by officials and the theatre owners after the tragedy. The horrors are so individualized...down to the items of clothing and personal items worn by those in the theatre that afternoon.

It is perhaps toward the very end of this book that Nat Brandt makes his most poignant point... that other than a cemetery monument and a City Hall bas-relief nothing else exists in commemoration of the Iroquois fire. The memory of the fire seems to have passed as quickly as the fire itself. Thanks to this book, we have a chance to learn about this horrible day in Chicago's history.

Since I work only about five minutes away from the site of the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick, R.I. where 100 people lost their lives in February 2003, I felt compelled to read "Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903". Relying heavily on newspaper accounts of the disaster, Nat Brandt does a masterful job of recreating the awful events of that frigid December afternoon in 1903 when 602 people, mostly women and children, lost their lives in the Iroquois Theatre fire in downtown Chicago. This was a brand new venue that had been opened for a bit more than a month. The parallels between this fire and what happened recently here in Rhode Island appear to be numerous. Brandt discusses all of the shortcomings at the theatre that resulted in such a heavy death toll. For example, many of the emergency exits were camouflaged in an attempt to improve the appearance of the theater. In addition, most of these exits were locked during the performance and there were no "EXIT" signs posted anywhere. Skylights were installed that would have allowed the fumes and flames to escape above the stage but because the opening of the theater was rushed to take advantage of the holiday season, the skylights were stuck shut. Other deficiencies, too numerous too mention here, also contributed to making this theater a death trap. Brandt also discusses the potential culpabilty of the owners of the building, the architect, the construction company, municipal inspectors and of course, the politicians. Finally, we learn about the ultimate result of years of litigation by family members of the victims. Hint: It is not a happy ending. My conclusion from reading this book is a simple one: "Laxity spells disaster." We never seem to learn, do we? This a well written book that deserves your time and attention.

I have been a loyal fan of Nat Brandt for many years. I am fascinated by his ability to find little-known historical events and bring them to life with style and urgency. I was particularly drawn to this book because I love Chicago and I love the theater. The book unwinds like a novel -- the hope, the horror, the dirty dealing -- the utterly human story. What a good read.

Remember the victims of this tragedy the next time you're in a public building and see an outward-opening exit door marked by a lighted sign. It took a tragedy of this scope to make these fire codes require these simple but incredibly important safety measures. I have a copy of the 1924 National Electrical Code, and several of its provisions can be directly attributed to the Iroquois fire.

This book is largely a more-coherent retelling of the information that was published shortly after the tragedy in a now extremely-rare book titled Chicago's Awful Theatre Horror. A great deal of inaccurate/incomplete information about this incident has been published; for example one book I own states that people found fire escapes to be uncompleted once they finally made it through the exit doors. A photograph of the alley behind the theater shows all fire escapes complete all the way to the ground. Fire from open doors farther down is actually what made some fire escapes unusable.

The infuriating thing about this story is that those responsible for the tragedy went completely unpunished. The theater's architect in particular was especially unrepentant.

Contrasting with their reprehensible actions were those of bystanders, police officers, firemen, newspaper reporters, neighbors, doctors, nurses, and medical students who all responded the moment they heard of the disaster. Many of them must have suffered longterm psychological effects of their experiences, but such conditions weren't even recognized, let alone treated in the early 1900's.

The Oriental Theatre sits on the exact site of the Iroquois; you can see a show there, you can walk or drive through the small street (Couch Place, which is really an alleyway--and true to Chicago tradition, believed to be haunted) where patrons tried to escape the Iroquois fire--a little known tragedy of Chicago history that happened in 1903, eight years before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in NYC. Brandt gives a full picture of Chicago at the turn of the 20th century: famous people and ordinary people; businessmen and showmen; generosity of spirit and miserliness. A reader can feel him or herself at the scene, watching Eddie Foy risk his life pleading for calm as the fire sparked backstage began to singe him, yet not knowing that smoke had already overwhelmed most of the victims. A page-turner that will make you scout your exits the next time you see a show or film--and make you understand the impact of this tragedy on building codes everywhere.

In Chicago Death Trap, Nat Brandt presents a very human account of the fire that killed over 600 people in Chicago's newly-built Iroquois Theatre December 30, 1903. It remains the worst fire in United State's history (p. 86). Brandt's fast-moving 147-page account covers the rush to build the theatre for the holiday seasons, the play Mr. Bluebeard and its players that was showing that tragic afternoon as well as a brief look at the theatrical syndicate system, the horror that was unleashed during the December 30 matinee, the rescue efforts, the aftermath, the fate of the Iroquois building, and a brief chapter on memorials to the tragedy. Brandt, for the most part, is very thorough in his account, particularly the technical workings and structural makeup of the theatre and its equipment including a detailed description of how the light that caused the fire worked (p. 30). He also puts the event in context with other fires in Chicago's history, a fictitious story in a 1875 Chicago Tribune about a theatre fire, and concern the Mayor of Chicago had regarding fire safety in theatres just a month before (pp. 8-9, 101).

A lot of names are mentioned in this book, but not just those of famous people like the owners and architect of the theatre and Eddie Foy, the comedian who tried to calm the crowd during the early stages of the fire. Brandt also describes the many ordinary people who would be victims of the lack of safeguards in the new theatre. As is mentioned early in the book, the shopping district where the Iroquois resided was seen as a safe haven for women and children and, during the matinee presentation, most of the audience comprised of women and children (over 400 of the 600 deaths were female). Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of all of the names, but the point being made of how horrible the tragedy was (bodies stacked ten feet high in front of locked exit doors) is clear no matter the names. Thirteen pages of photos of fire victims taken from a 1904 book seemed a bit superfluous and only interesting to those related to a victim. The first section of photos and illustrations showing the theatre's design and how it looked just following the disaster are more useful.

Although this book presents a very human account of the event, the most interesting aspect of the story, to me, were the scores of fire safety violations found at the Iroquois. "Sacrificing safety for beauty," exit doors were camouflaged by heavy drapes, buckets of water were not set near the stage, temporary exit signs were not up while the permanent signs were still being made, doors had confusing European style bolts that not even the staff knew how to work, and so on. The sky vents which would have caused the noxious fumes to lift out of the theatre were still bound and thus not operational. Witness saw the bindings to these vents being pulled after the fire (p. 117). Brandt should have explained the importance of the asbestos curtain better as "asbestos" is such an ugly word today. Asbestos was used for its fire proof properties and, only a few decades ago, projection booths in movie houses had an asbestos covering so that, if the highly flammable type film that was used at the time caught fire, only the projection booth would burn.

The Iroquois story proves very maddening as, though fire regulations changed in Chicago and throughout the nation because of the event, none of the people involved in the building of the play house and in its being cleared to open were punished. Aside from the initial shock, people like co-owners William Davis and Harry Powers and architect Benjamin Marshall were satisfied with the theatre's structure (it still stood) and, in the beginning, even blamed the victim's state of panic as the cause of so many lost lives (p. 97). Marshall went on to have a successful career and the Iroquois was not even mentioned in his obituary. What is even more disappointing is that so many memorials to the tragedy have been lost. Luckily, Brandt's book as well as several others are available so readers can learn about what happened on the current site of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre.

This book is a page turner. A tragic and cautionary tale of a Titanic-like disaster in which hubris and corruption resulted in a huge loss of life. What with the Rhode Island and Chicago fires this year, the book is particularly timely. I know that it has made me look for exit signs before I settle down in my theater seat.

Previously, I posted a review of another book on the same subject, Anthony Hatch's "The Tinder Box." While that book was not without merit, I am more favorably inclined to Nat Brandt's account of the Iroquois Theater Fire of December 30, 1903.

What is different about this retelling of the tragedy? Brandt personalizes the story somewhat more than did Hatch. There are many more first person statements from survivors in this book (gleaned from newspaper reports). Approximately, six hundred died in the fire. Many were asphyxiated or trampled to death in the panic. The Iroquois had been advertised as being fireproof.

Similarly, Brandt seems to have done a more effective job of providing the social context for the disaster and develops certain topics that were not addressed in "Tinder Box." For example, Brandt explains the circumstances related to the placement of the Iroquois Memorial Monument in Montrose Cemetery (the unclaimed corpse of an unidentified victim is interred beneath the monument) and the efforts of some civic minded Chicagoans to respond to the disaster by dedicating a hospital to the memory of the victims. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, Chicago did not celebrate New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. The start of 1904 was observed as a period of municipal mourning.

The key difference between the two books seems to be that Hatch emphasized the efforts of the fire department whereas Brandt concentrates upon the theater patrons and the bystanders who were witnesses to the tragedy. Both books cover the basics, but you may prefer this one more.

The greatest scandal associated with the fire was how no legal responsibility attached to the city inspectors or the theater owners who neglected public safety and violated the building code ordinances so flagrantly as to make the fire almost an inevitability: none of the theater staff had been trained in emergency evacuation procedures; no fire drill been conducted; the theater was not equipped with fire extinguishers or a sprinkler system; exits were not marked and the doors did not open outwards; the ventilation shafts on the roof, which might have directed fatal gases and smoke up and out of the auditorium were nailed shut. Almost every legal action against the theater owners was stymied. One construction firm settled legal claims against it for a paltry $750.00 per victim.

I could not put this book down, nor stop crying while I was reading it. Picture it - a beautiful, brand new 'state of the art' theatre, a children's pantomime full of thrilling set pieces, a jam-packed theatre - and all fire and building regulations flouted. The Iroquois disaster has the same hallmarks as the sinking of 'The Titanic'. A fireproof theatre with no exit signs and blind endings, no fire drills carried out, and an unsinkable ship with not enough life boats, no binoculars and panic striken passengers. These were not disasters caused by God, but man's greed and overweening pride. Don't be fooled - as 'Tinder Box' (which I also recommend - they are equally good, in different ways)makes crystal clear, such a theatre/cinema tragedy could happen again, and would probably be worse this time. There are generally fewer staff employed now, and they are equally under-rehearsed in evacuating a building. Please, please, always check where your nearest fire exit is!