“‘CHEER UP,’ the Chicago Tribune’s editorial began the next day, even though its building, too, had burned to the ground,” writes veteran Chicago observer Whet Moser in his book-length history. “Chicago had been a muddy little town of a few thousand in the lifetime of some of its greatest citizens. To become a city of 300,000 had already involved world-historical feats of building (and braggadocio). It still had its land, lake, and river; it still had its railroads; it still had, to an astonishing degree, its citizens. Chicago would simply have to build itself up again and better still, and it began almost immediately. The first building to go up among the ruins was, reportedly, a real estate office… The myth of a new, even greater Chicago rising out of the Great Fire began as the city was literally still smoldering. And it is not untrue.”
