The Morthouse

La Salle Hotel fire showing corpse spread on third floor hallway. Mark Kauffman, 1946. Source: LIFE Photo Archive, hosted by Google.

The La Salle Hotel was built in 1909 and was one of the grandest in Chicago for a time. It suffered a devastating fire in June 1946, which killed 61 people. From Wikipedia:

The fire began in the Silver Grill Cocktail Lounge on the lower floor on the La Salle Street side adjacent to the lobby before ascending stairwells and shafts. The fire started either in the walls or in the ceiling according to the Chicago Fire Department around 12:15 a.m. but they didn’t receive their first notification of the fire until 12:35 a.m. The fire quickly spread through the highly-varnished wood paneling in the lounge and the mezzanine balcony overlooking the lobby. While a significant number died from flames, a greater number of deaths were caused by suffocation from the thick, black smoke. Around 900 guests were able to leave the building but some 150 had to be rescued by the fire services and by heroic members of the public, including two sailors who were reported to have rescued 27 people between them. Two-thirds of hotel fire deaths in 1946 occurred in the La Salle and Winecoff (Atlanta) fires. The hotel fire was so devastating, it resulted in the Chicago city council enacting new hotel building codes and fire-fighting procedures, including the installation of automatic alarm systems and instructions of fire safety inside the hotel rooms.

As a Connecticut native, I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Great Circus Fire in Hartford for years. Oddities of American History has a great post summarizing the tragedy (check it out), but here’s where I’ll add my own (tenuous) personal take on the story.

My dad was born in Hartford in 1945, a year after the fire. He had two older sisters, and I vaguely remember either him or my older aunt mentioning that my grandmother was planning to take at least one of the girls to the circus that day, but that for some reason it didn’t happen. My dad and aunt are both gone now, so I wasn’t able to get any confirmation on this story. So I can’t really confidently be all: “omg wtf I might not be typing this right now had they gone.” 

My aunt’s widower, though, was a child living in Hartford in 1944, and he has an amazing memory. He clearly remembers standing in his backyard and seeing the smoke from the conflagration nearby, and the way that—whenever the circus came to town—the circus-workers would march all the elephants and other animals through the streets to get them from the train station to the circus site. And his stepmom was one of the nurses working the makeshift morgue at the armory pictured here.

Image: “Makeshift Morgue,” 1944. Source: Photographic Morgue of the New York Journal-American, Harry Ransom Center:

Awaiting viewing by victims’ family members, soldiers and sailors stand guard in the State Armory over cots containing the covered bodies of over 140 of the dead from the fire which destroyed the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.

[International News Photo], “Identifying the Dead,” 1911. Source: Photographic Morgue of the New York Journal-American, Harry Ransom Center:

Police, family and friends go about the grim task of identifying the dead victims of the Triangle Shirt Waist Company fire.