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Old 02-28-2013, 05:29 AM
 
Location: Cumberland County, NJ
8,631 posts, read 12,919,945 times
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This is sort of a spinoff to a similar thread I created in the San Francisco thread. How would modern Chicago be like today if "The Great Chicago Fire of 1871" never happened? How would things like infrastructure, culture, economy, protege, etc be different for the city?
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Old 02-28-2013, 10:16 AM
 
Location: Wheaton, Illinois
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No difference.
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Old 02-28-2013, 10:33 AM
 
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The Chicago Fire would probably have a different name.
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Old 02-28-2013, 10:57 AM
 
Location: Chicago
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The Water Tower would have been torn down.
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Old 02-28-2013, 11:20 AM
 
Location: IL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JBVirtuoso View Post
The Chicago Fire would probably have a different name.
FC Chicago. And we wouldn't have stories about Mrs. O'Leary's cow. Sad.
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Old 02-28-2013, 11:30 AM
 
Location: Chicago
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Actually, downtown Chicago would be similar to New York. At least in the sense that there would be no alleys and it would be dirty as h*ll. When the fire occurred, the city re-zoned to make way for allleys for our trash. The original network of blocks did not support such a thing.

Also, the fire affected more cities than just Chicago. Due to the Chicago fire a lot fewer buildings in urbanized locations were constructed of wood. After the fire most were made out of brick, especially in Chicago.
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Old 02-28-2013, 11:31 AM
 
Location: New York NY
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With all those wood buildings the likelihood is that a big fire would have come along anyway and burned the city down. Such huge fires happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries in New York, Boston and Balitimore as well, though Chicago's was the most prominent. Fires like that were more common becuase of a lot of wood construction and a lack of adequate firefighting equipment.

So to anwer the OPs question, Chicago would have burned no matter what, if not in 1871 then shortly therafter becuase no big city at the time was immune to these disasters.
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Old 02-28-2013, 11:39 AM
 
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We'd have a less cool name for the MLS team -- Chicago Fire
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Old 02-28-2013, 11:43 AM
 
Location: Portland, Oregon
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If the Chicago Fire never happened and no other big fire happened as well, Chicago would have a few more really old buildings. Also, the point about the alleys would definitely of changed the overall look of downtown and would of had more trash out on the sidewalks like NYC does.
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Old 02-28-2013, 12:02 PM
 
Location: Cumberland County, NJ
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Quote:
Originally Posted by citylove101 View Post
So to anwer the OPs question, Chicago would have burned no matter what, if not in 1871 then shortly therafter becuase no big city at the time was immune to these disasters.
Well lets just say hypothetically that no great fire accord. How would the city be like today?
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