Chicago 1871 framed bureaucrat It is less a map

It is less a map than an ephemeris of longing

its spires drawn with the same confidence the city used to announce that American wealth had finally learned to build in stone

Henry Clay Jr

a portrait of the New York Central's chief orator at the height of his Gilded Age influence

Free Soil Candidate for Vice President 1848

Chicago 1871 framed bureaucrat It is less a mapChicago 1871 a document of the year the city burned, when the lake wind carried embers across wooden boulevards and three hundred souls were lost to a fire that began, so legend insisted, in a barn on DeKoven Street. The image belongs to the smoldering ledger of an American metropolis learning to rebuild in brick and iron. About the Source Bella Frye sources artifacts from the great American historical archive the Library of Congress, the National