(Left) Chicago in Flames – The Rush for Lives Over Randolph Street Bridge by 19th Century American artist John R. Chapin. The illustration, drawn at the scene, shows crowds escaping to Chicago’s West Division. It originally appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1871.

It had been a dry summer in Chicago in 1871. The year before, there was an average of two fires every day. During the first week of October, firefighters battled 20 fires. On Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, at around 8:30 p.m., fire started in a barn west of the Chicago River. It spread northeast, through what is now the Loop and into what is now River North.

Chicago burned for two days.

In an area about four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide, the fire destroyed 18,000 buildings, leaving 100,000 Chicagoans homeless. Property damage was estimated at $200 million – about one-third the total value of Chicago. Between 200 and 300 people were killed.

A blank slate was created, onto which new buildings would have to be created quickly and economically. A flood of speculators, developers, architects, and builders met the devastation of the fire. They would rebuild Chicago. They would do it fast and cheap, but they would unwittingly create the Chicago School, a style of architecture noted for its originality.

“They went out to put these things up quickly without carved stone and Renaissance palazzos,” says art historian David Jameson. “So it’s all very bare-bones to a European or New York eye. But the fact was that the people who were designing these things were very, very interesting artists. And they were able to quickly put up something that was not just utility – it was beautiful as well. Because they were too good not to make even their bare-bones, utility buildings beautiful.”

Jameson, whose collection includes the archives of Daniel Burnham, the architect whose 1909 “Plan of Chicago” influenced Chicago’s growth in the 20th Century, has closely studied the Chicago School. It is his contention that Marina City is “the culmination” of the Chicago School.

“The Chicago School of architecture can be boiled down into one fundamental truth, that is they regarded the structure alone to be beautiful.”

Before the fire, Jameson points out, Chicago architecture was not much different from architecture on the east coast. Older European designs were still a major influence. Hotels and railway stations looked like European palaces and villas. But carved stone and other elaborate ornamentation costs money, and when you need to quickly replace 18,000 buildings, it is a luxury you cannot afford.

The people designing the new buildings were young, usually in their 20s and 30s. They worked for firms that could triple in size in one day.

“They had to get a lot of activity [done] quickly, so they really got a lot of students from schools to work for them. It was so quick. It was like a pressure cooker. These things had to be put up quickly, cheaply, and then the speculators would get out of town.”

Fast-forward to Marina City. Architect Bertrand Goldberg, 46 years old when planning for Marina City started in 1959, is given the same opportunity to build big and economical, and to do it quickly.

“He was given the opportunity to build the biggest buildings he’d ever built,” says Jameson. “Quicker and more expeditiously and cheaper than he’d ever come across.”

Chicago was rebuilt. In 1870, one year before the fire, the population of Chicago was less than 300,000. Ten years later, the population had increased 68 percent. It was over one million in 1890, over two million in 1910, and over three million in 1930. From 1920 to 1930, Chicago’s population increased 25 percent, just the latest in a long series of growth spurts for the city.

And then things changed.