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Nearly fifteen hundred people fled into the surrounding streets when a stage fire spread to the auditorium during a
performance at the Iroquois Theater the afternoon of December 30, 1903. Forced to leave their coats behind and facing temperatures
below twenty degrees, they hurriedly found their way to nearby stores,
restaurants, taverns and hotels in Chicago's theater district. The popular
Sherman House hotel a block west of the theater on
Clark and Randolph became one of the hubs for victims. Several playgoers were guests of the hotel, staying there
during a holiday visit to the city. Others were brought there with injuries for treatment by a quickly gathered handful of nurses and
doctors. As relatives arrived in the city by rail to search morgues and hospitals, the Sherman offered a centralized
headquarters for search parties. Those guests in turn drew newspaper reporters. The scene became so chaotic that
the hotel manager, Abe Frank, called the police department for help in controlling the crowd.
According to newspapers, thirteen injured audience members were cared for at the Sherman House, some prior to transport to the hospital.
Parents in two parties —
Henry and Emma Van
Ingen and
Emily and James Henning — had lost multiple children in the fire. The Hennings lost their four boys, age four
to twelve, then Emily herself died five weeks later. The large Van Ingen family from Kenosha, Wisconsin were staying at the
Wellington Hotel during their time in Chicago but were taken to the Sherman House for treatment because it was closer. Henry and Emma
survived their injuries but lost five grown children to the Iroquois.
Henry Hall Chester (1870-1932), his wife Laura Budlong Chester (1873-1922) and two of their daughters, seven-
and eight-year-old Grace and Ruth, were taken to the Sherman House after escaping from the second-floor balcony through a fire escape
exit into Couch Place. Their minor injuries were treated by the hotel physician and they were soon headed home to 17 W. Foster.
Henry was a co-founder with his father-in-law, Lyman Arnold Budlong in a pickle and onion farm, L. A. Budlong Company.†
With
Eddie Foy among the Sherman's guests, a Chicago favorite and fresh from the stage of the theater, the hotel
became a congregating point for the media. Foy conducted several interviews while there, in so doing
introducing minor discrepancies in his description of his experience at the Iroquois. (Minor but
sufficient to add more inconsistencies for the coroner to sort out.)
Discrepancies and addendum
Day-after newspapers reported that a Mrs. Pilset and her daughter survived the fire and were taken to the Sherman House. I found no evidence
in U.S. Census reports of a resident in the U.S. by that name until 1950 and none in Chicago City directories 1903-1904.
* The third of four structures in the hotel's one-hundred-thirty-six year history.
† Four months before the Iroquois Theater fire (Aug 30, 1903) the Chicago Tribune did
a feature page on the 700- to 900-acre farm at Foster and Lincoln avenues, describing it as "the largest pickle
farm in the world." The company reported that it picked 12,000 daily bushels of cucumbers. A blight in 1903 devastated Chicago
cucumber crops and by 1907 the farm's onions far outpaced cucumbers (though the company continued its pickling operation using cucumbers grown
in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa). Budlong boasted of 300 daily workers and gross annual onion sales of $45,000
($1.5 million today). Budlong's helped feed Chicago's one million dollar annual pickle appetite with pickle sales of $100,000 ($3.1 million)
in '07. The Budlong farm was eventually absorbed by Dean Foods.
Fire alarms at Iroquois Theater
Eddie Foy at the Iroquois
Theater
Indomitable Victoria Dray
Other discussions you might find interesting
Story 1213
A note about sourcing. When this
project began, I failed to anticipate the day might come when a
more scholarly approach would be called for. When my
mistake was recognized I faced a decision: go back and spend years creating source lists for every page, or go
forward and try to cover more of the people and circumstances
involved in the disaster. Were I twenty years younger, I'd
have gone back, but in recognition that this project will end when I do, I chose to go forward.
These pages will provide enough information, it is hoped, to
provide subsequent researchers with additional information.
I would like to
hear from you if you have additional info about an Iroquois victim, or find an error,
and you're invited to visit the
comments page to share stories and observations about the Iroquois Theater fire.
