Artist: George Grey Barnard
Date: 1871
Size: 22 x 155 cm
Technique: Photograph
Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871 killed 300 people, left 100,000 homeless, and leveled four square miles of the city. Yet as the flames died, resolve replaced despair. This photograph was made perhaps one month after the fire, and it shows the makeshift homes, businesses, telegraph poles, and streetcar tracks that were in place even before the rubble was pushed into the lake. Within three years, Chicago would regain its position as the premier city of the Midwest. This panorama was probably made by George N. Barnard, who documented the tremendous devastation of the South by the campaign of General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War. Barnard had a studio in downtown Chicago, but, forced into the lake to flee the fire, he lost everything except the equipment he held aloft in the water. Like Chicago itself, he quickly recovered and joined colleagues who documented the rebuilding of the city.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
