Outlining Chicago's politics in the early 1900s is like trying to unsnarl a hair ball.  Wearying number of factions, fiefdoms and humans behaving badly.  No surprise that Chicago's municipal departments were a mess. In the Building Department (BD), specifications from blueprints and drawings submitted by contractors were culled by department inspectors, entered in a book and expunged after six months.  No process for even spot checks verifying that inspector's reports jived with the finished structure or that required alterations had been completed.   The absence of accountability could have been a consequence of all involved knowing that the city's ordinances were toothless (as Levy Mayer demonstrated in the final Iroquois Theater trial in 1907).
Or the accountability void could have been the result of apathy, laziness, graft or political allegiances.  Endless possibilities.

It is tempting to blame things on Carter Harrison Jr., who had been mayor for the prior six years, but it was a Harrison man who just two months before the Iroquois Theater fire spearheaded an investigation into the BD's problems, an investigation most certainly done with the mayor's blessings, that Harrison then turned over to the Chicago city council to be corrected via ordinance.
My sense is that Chicago's "system," whether labeled graft or incompetence, and including every department in the city, moved along to the satisfaction of most participants until the music was first paused by a graft investigation, then stopped abruptly with the Iroquois Theater fire.  At both cessations, anyone vulnerable became a target for scapegoating.
 Alderman Ernest F. Herrmann of the 21st ward (described in 1900 by the Inter Ocean newspaper as not republican, democrat or independent and the "mayor's pet")  and his committeemen began investigating complaints of graft in Chicago departments in mid October, 1903.  They reviewed overall procedures and invited public testimony about malfeasance.

A chief witness to go before the graft-investigation committee was Milton Bently Bushnell (1850-1916), a Minnesota native, who was a partner in the D. H. Hayes construction company, based in Adrian, Michigan.  According to Bushnell, his company put in the low bid ($25,500 versus $28,000) for a contract to convert a theater-turned armory back into a theater.  The Cleveland Theater at Wabash and Hubbard* was a project of lessee William S. "Billy" Cleveland (a legendary circus and theater man known as the "minstrel king" who had bankrupted in 1901 and was rebuilding his fortunes).  Cleveland and his architectural firm, Oscar Cobb and Son, designed plans for a theater with a capacity of fewer than 1,000 seats, allowing them to use wood construction rather than slow-burning construction that would have required more costly steel joists and lath.  One contracting firm, that in which alderman William Mavor was president, declined to bid on Cleveland's project, ostensibly because it did not meet code — then later accepted the contract though it still did not meet code.  Bushnell's contracting firm, by contrast, was happy to build whatever was approved by the BD.  Bushnell was unapologetic about his firm's willingness to build anything for which a permit had been granted.

His position was that he had to make a living and it wasn't his responsibility to determine if Chicago's BD did its job properly — though he added that he would not permit his wife or children to attend either the new Cleveland or another he'd built in 1902, the La Salle Theater at 137 East Madison (previously named Orpheon and in 1910 relocated to the other end of Madison street).

It should be noted that Bushnell's youngest child was thirty years old, however, so past the age of requiring paternal consent to frequent his choice of theaters. 

Bushnell said that in remodeling the La Salle Theater his company had been contractually protected from consequences of Chicago's graft by La Salle Theater owners, Sol L. Lowenthal, Abe and Harry J. Franks, who put it in writing that they would "handle" Chicago's building department.  Upon accepting the contract for the Cleveland Theater, Bushnell testified that he had expected owner Billy Cleveland to do the same. Other Bushnell theater projects: McVickers, Hooleys, the Grand and the Howard Theater at Lincoln and Belmont (closed in 1953).

Enter sixty-five year old Timothy John O'Shea (1837 Ireland - 1906), a ten-year deputy BD commissioner.  Seems like everybody in Chicago had a side business that was in conflict with their official job.  O'Shea's side business was selling a process of construction for theater prosceniums that was said to make them fireproof for up to 5,000 degrees.  He had recently patented the process after an investment of five years and $17,000.  O'Shea declared that Cleveland's blueprints did not meet code.  Not a problem.  Cleveland and his architect resubmitted the blueprints (later examined and found to be identical to the original submission) but this time awarding the project to a different construction company — that was the side business of Chicago alderman William Mavor — and incorporating Timothy O'Shea's fireproofing process.

The second set of blueprints were approved.  Such a coincidence.  Upon learning the contract had been yanked, and hearing from Cleveland's architect that the reason for the reassignment was to reward two Chicago officials, Bushnell tried to recoup some of the money he had spent on the project before the contract was pulled.  Failing to recognize that Billy Cleveland was a man who would go to the matt over two cents, Bushnell sought $200 from Cleveland for services performed before he lost the contract.  Cleveland described it as attempted blackmail.

Bushnell may have been relieved at the opportunity to reveal the shoddy practices being allowed in Chicago's buildings.  For all his swagger about being willing to build any structure with a building permit tacked on the front door, the details he presented in his testimony before Herrmann's investigative committee revealed a man who would have preferred being forced by law to build something better.  Dreiser could have written the script.  Bushnell said Chicago's building ordinance prohibited construction of a theater with a seating capacity exceeding 500 if those seats were above the ground floor. The La Salle had 891 seats, the lowest of them fifteen feet above street level. The ten supporting wood timbers in the basement were 6.25" in diameter at the top and 7.25" at the bottom, with only four covered with the required fireproofing material and only two strengthened with channel irons.

At the Cleveland Theater, a wood basement floor was approved by O'Shea instead of the cement floor required by ordinance, along with a thinner-than-code proscenium wall. Bushnell said BD official O'Shea had visited the La Salle five times during its construction and the late BD commissioner William Billy Barry at least fifty times.  Construction at the La Salle proceeded.  Building Commissioner George Williams, O'Shea and Mavor piled on Bushnell (Williams unaware that in two months he would be the one at the bottom of the pile) but Bushnell's detail- and example-filled testimony was persuasive enough to win support from the graft-investigation committee and at least three Chicago newspapers.

When the shouting was over, O'Shea denied any wrong doing, insisting there was no conflict in his selling fireproofing products to builders on whose building permits he passed judgment.  After much muttering he resigned, making the favorite claim of officials since forever when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, that he'd been persecuted by his enemies, about whom he knew too much.  He also asserted that Bushnell's son had infringed on his patent and denied any role in the resignation of the former Building Commissioner, Peter Kiolbassa.†  O'Shea went on to form the O'Shea Fireproofing Construction Company at the back of 2430 Lowe Avenue.  He died in 1906 while traveling by a Union Pacific train from California back to Chicago.

Mavor denied having interceded or been asked to intercede with the building department but admitted to having "technically" violated building ordinances, and remained in office.  He cited his refusal to bid on the first Cleveland specifications as proof of his good intentions.  He said he'd then gone on a Colorado vacation and upon his return learned new specifications had earned BD approval and his firm had gotten the reassigned contract.

Another witness before Herrmann's committee, a plasterer, testified that building inspectors would approve anything for $5 to $10 but the only instances he presented as proof had happened three years earlier, under a different Building Commissioner.   Based on exclamations by some newspapers of Chicago graft, there should have been lines reaching to Indianapolis and Detroit of people ready to testify.  Either the newspapers were exaggerating, the witnesses didn't materialize or the committee declined to hear give them a hearing: only four hours of testimony were heard and three hours of that was devoted to Bushnell.

Herrmann's committee reported that everybody in the BD thought it was some other department's job to make sure buildings were constructed according to code, and that the BD's record keeping was a joke.  Herrmann reported to the mayor "that a wooden firetrap" built with the capacity to hold 500 people could be licensed, then thousands of seats added, because the BD never followed up to verify how many seats were actually installed versus what was claimed on plans used to acquire a building permit. The building commissioner passed the responsibility on to the License Department, who issued licenses on the bases of the theater's ticket prices, and denied any knowledge of responsibility to verify that the theater was built in accordance with ordinances on which the building permit was issued. The license department then passed the responsibility to the city clerk's office.

When it came to light that blueprints were sometimes railroaded through the system by aldermen,§ Herrmann, the alderman charged with ferreting out graft, concluded that the Building Department needed to apprise aldermen when the building did not meet Chicago ordinances.  Heads up, a stinker's headed your way.  Governance by nudges and whispers. Mayor Harrison got involved in the investigation, vowing to send out his own men, not involved in the Building Department, to inspect the Cleveland and LaSalle theaters to see if they merited the class of slow-burning structures they'd been granted.  Both theaters were still in operation years later.

Other discussions you might find interesting