S3 Ep7: The "Fireproof" Theatre: Tragedy at the Iroquois

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chicago's state-of-the-art Iroquois Theatre was supposed to be a jewel in the rapidly expanding American arts scene of the early twentieth century. But in an emergency, a combination of disaster management, design flaws, and construction shortcuts proved to be a deadly combination.

Special thanks to Charlie McCarron for producing and performing the out-of-print song "Let Us Swear It By the Pale Moonlight" for this episode.

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from the Obsessed Network exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even
0:14.5	earn the label crime of the century.
0:18.5	But the stories that made headlines and decades passed aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:25.1	I remember hunt, a journalist, and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine
0:30.2	a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
0:36.7	This is crimes of the centuries.
0:51.1	This day before Chicago's old, dress-swingy state-of-the-art theater opened to the public,
0:57.1	Patrick Jennings took a tour and was appalled.
1:01.3	Jennings was a well-respected captain of engine company 13, a fire station housed in a
1:06.9	three-story building less than a block from the theater on West Randolph Street.
1:12.0	Like much of the town, and really the nation, he'd been eager to see the fancy new building
1:17.2	unveiled for the public.
1:19.1	But what he saw in November of 1903 certainly didn't look state-of-the-art to him.
1:25.0	For starters, there was no backstage phone.
1:28.2	By 1903, telephones weren't in every home yet, but they weren't novelties, either.
1:33.4	The number of phones nationwide was in the midst of exploding from nearly 600,000 phones
1:38.5	at the turn of the century to 2.2 million phones by 1905.
1:43.9	It was common for a phone to be in a public building, especially one touting itself as
1:48.5	high-tech, and yet Jennings noticed that this fancy, shmancy theater had none.
1:55.8	The firefighter in him noticed other shortcomings too, like none of the exits were labeled.
2:01.7	Many were, in fact, concealed by thick curtains.
2:04.8	There was no fire-larmed system, no sprinkler system, no fire buckets.
	...

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