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The man who would become Chicago's
preeminent warehouse architect might
have been a survivor of America's worst theater fire.
Maybe.
On a Wednesday afternoon
on December 30, 1903, a fire
broke out on the stage during a performance of Mr. Bluebeard at
the Chicago's luxurious new playhouse,
the Iroquois Theater on Randolph St..
In about twenty minutes it spread to the
auditorium and took nearly six hundred lives.
Seated in the audience of around seventeen
hundred people, was the Kingsley party,
George, Emma and Fred. They lived
at or were visiting at 2762
North Paulina in Chicago.▼1
Some newspapers in other
states reported those three but
others also reported that George
was fifteen years old
and crushed and burned.
In some reports Fred was reported to
have incurred near fatal burns on his
hands and face. Emma too was sometimes reported to
have been seriously burned.▼2
I've failed to find a family of
Kingsley with those surnames living on North Paulina, however,
or in Chicago in 1900-1903. Upon
finding an architect named George
Kingsley that had an office in Chicago
at the time of the Iroquois Theater
fire, in the Schiller Building on
Randolph Street, with a wife named Emma,
I thought for sure that must be my
George and that he must have had a
nephew or brother named Fred. He
would go on to on
earn a place in architectural history as
a designer of ornamental warehouses.
The architect's family is the best
possibility but despite much effort, I
can't find a Fred and cannot say he or
his wife and children were at the
Iroquois Theater.
The Kingsley's
did not speak publically of their
Iroquois Theater experience, not in
1903/4 or seemingly any time thereafter.
Architect Kingsley's family spoke little
about anything publically, however, so
silence about the Iroquois fire doesn't
mean much when considering them.
In 1903 architect George Kingsley's family was made up
of Ohio natives, thirty-four-year-old George
Smith Kingsley (1869–1956) and his thirty-one-year-old
wife, Emma Spothold Kingsley
(1872–1965), and their children, Anna
Marie Kingsley and three-year-old Donald
George Kingsley. No one named Fred
in the immediate family or in he or
Emma's siblings, nieces or nephews.
In 1900 they lived northwest of
Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois and
by 1904 had moved to Evanston.
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Discrepancies and addendum
1. Lists in a few newspapers outside
Chicago reported the address on North Paulina as 2752
rather 2762. 2752 North Paulina was
a 2-story brick with 7- and 8-room flats,
designated as address 2750-2752. It had
been involved in a 1900 bankruptcy of
International Building, Loan and Investment
Union. Receivers sold it to Ira M. Cobe at
a heavily discounted price. renters at 2750 North
Paulina. After Chicago's street
renumbering in 1909 it was designated as 4733 N.
Paulina.
In 1900 the George Anderson family lived at 2762 N
Paulina. I'm adding this information here
only as a check mark for administrative
purposes. The Anderson's consisted of George, Augusta, Francis
and Jennie Drake, Augusta's mother. The home was apparently
a duplex or apartment house with the Arthur Hay
family living on the other side or above.
They were Arthur P. Hay, his wife Nellie and
daughter Adelaide. Next door at 2752, the
address reported in some newspapers for the Kingsleys, were Nancy Pollock and her two grown
sons, William and Frank, and above,
Charles Williams with his wife, Carolina, and
son, toddler Charlie Jr. Also at 2752 was
the Simpson family, consisting of the widowed
mother (name illegible) and seven of her eight
children: Frank, Edwin, Alice, Harry, John,
Lucy, and William. No Emma's,
Donalds or George Jr.s, or Freds, and George Anderson was a
bookkeeper, not an architect. All that
said, in the early 1900s Chicago citizens
changed residences often, some scholars estimate
almost every year, so it probably matters little who
lived at the address in 1900.
2. Newspapers outside Chicago
sometimes reported Emma as Emmett and George as
Joe, discrepancies that may have originated with
errors in oral or telegraphic transmission.
There was a George E. Kingsley and his wife,
Mary Peet Kingsley and son, Fred Leon Kingsley
living in Allegan, Michigan in 1900. The
ages and location make them possibilities but
their circumstances makes it seem unlikely they
came into Chicago and went to the theater.
They lived on a farm in Valley township for
forty years, their only newspaper attention
coming in their obituaries. In an era when
small-town newspapers reported on every
incoming/outgoing train passenger, there wasn't
a word about the Kingsleys leaving the farm.
I also found a George Kingsley in
Peoria, IL, with sons named George and Joe, no
Fred's, and his wife's surname and middle names
were not Emma.
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