Read more about the Iroquois Theater Fire

“The screams of the children for their mothers and mothers for their children I shall carry in my memory to my dying day.”

-Frank Slosson, Secretary-Treasurer of the Bain Wagon Works, survivor of the Iroquois Theater fire.

A shot of the outside of the Iroquois Theater in Chicago just before its Grand Opening in 1903.

The scene in front of the Iroquois Theater just an hour after fire broke out on December 30, 1903. Students residing in the Northwestern University building (pictured in the background) next door tried to rescue trapped theater patrons by extending ladders from dorm windows, across the alley to the theater's windows. Patrons crawled across the shaky "bridges" to safety, or died after plunging to the alley below.

Smoke billows from the doomed theater.

The cover of the Iroquois Theater’s first program leaflet.

For more information about the Iroquois Theater Fire, visit the Eastland Memorial Society website.  Or, get the full story by reading Chicago Death Trap: The Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903.