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The afternoon of December 30, 1903 twenty-eight-year-old
mother of two, Rose Lubin Levenson* (b. 1875), went
to an afternoon matinee at Chicago's newest luxury playhouse,
the Iroquois Theater. On the stage was an extravagant Mr.
Bluebeard production from Klaw & Erlanger, purchased from
Drury Lane Theater in London. When a
fire broke out on the stage and spread to the auditorium,
Rose was one of nearly 600 who lost their life in America's
worst theater fire.
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Rose left behind two young daughters. They were four-year-old
Celia Levenson (1899–1971) and two-year-old Mildred
Levenson (1901–1987). Rose had married William
Levenson in 1898. They had each emigrated to America
from Russia. In 1903 the family lived at 268 Ogden
in Chicago. Three months before the fire Rose
accused a domestic servant, Elizabeth Hadricks, of
stealing $8 from their home.
Nothing was reported about Rose's theater companions or their
seating location in the Iroquois Theater. Her
husband found and identified her body at Rolston's
Funeral home, and is the most likely possibility to have been her theater companion.
A $1,000 ($29,000 today) New York Life insurance policy taken
out in 1901 helped defray burial expenses in an
unknown Cemetery.
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In the years after the fire
In May, 1905 William Levenson remarried. His second wife, probably a
relative of Rose's, though not a sister, was named
Katherine Lubin Levenson (1880–1939). She and
William had three sons — Harold, Charles and Leroy.
By the 1920s William worked as a stock broker in
Chicago and his wife and children shared their home
with his aged father. Mildred married Henry
Rosenberg and had two children, including a daughter
named Rose, after her mother. Celia did not marry.
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