These are notes that I am writing to help me learn our industrial history. They are my best understanding, but that does not mean they are a correct understanding.
The third picture up from the bottom, the one you can see ship masts, I am pretty sure was known as South Water Street, which today is where Wacker Drive leaves off of Lake Street, at the Wolf Point area, the confluence of the North branch and South branch into the main channel of the Chicago River. Here is some interesting history. "Only" 200-odd people died in all the Chicago Fire. Almost all of them died in one location. A crowd ran down what amounted to a blind street that angled away from the line of vision from South Water. They veered right, into the end of the street they did not see until it was too late, and then they encountered a high wall at the end, by the river, and could not retreat back, since the fire advanced rapidly enough to trap them. They all died, in the very area shown in that picture! The majority of all the fire deaths that night!
The third picture up from the bottom, the one you can see ship masts, I am pretty sure was known as South Water Street, which today is where Wacker Drive leaves off of Lake Street, at the Wolf Point area, the confluence of the North branch and South branch into the main channel of the Chicago River. Here is some interesting history. "Only" 200-odd people died in all the Chicago Fire. Almost all of them died in one location. A crowd ran down what amounted to a blind street that angled away from the line of vision from South Water. They veered right, into the end of the street they did not see until it was too late, and then they encountered a high wall at the end, by the river, and could not retreat back, since the fire advanced rapidly enough to trap them. They all died, in the very area shown in that picture! The majority of all the fire deaths that night!
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