A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Whether or not Mrs. O'Leary's cow was the culprit, the Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871 destroyed 17,450 buildings and left 98,500 people homeless.

This flaming view of the Chicago fire comes from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's folk art collection.

Artist Lawrence W. Ladd, known also as the Utica Master, … drew upon a wide range of sources for his diverse images, including illustrated histories of the United States, advertisements, Currier and Ives prints, illustrated Bibles, periodicals, and travel books.

You can see many other unusual depictions of life through the eyes of folk artists in our traveling exhibition Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on view through November 26, 2000 at the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Lawrence W. Ladd, active 1865–95, Chicago in Flames, about 1880, watercolor and pencil, 18 x 29 3/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Bates and Isabel Lowry.