What were the major changes made after the Great Chicago Fire?

Answer 1

If you look at the building codes in Chicago before and after the fire, you'll notice a dramatic difference. Before the fire everything was wooden...even the streets were dry wooden planks. After the fire, double course clay bricks were used to construct new buildings. Streets were reconfigured into a pure grid to ensure ease of fire fighters getting to the scene. There's a maximum distance from any given point in an apartment to the exit doors so that no one can be too far from the exit. Tenements were torn down and replaced with 3 story flats...not so high that the ladders couldn't reach the upper floors nor that people couldn't escape. Fire escapes were required in apartment buildings so that in case the stairwells were involved, there was a secondary egress.

But the biggest irony of all is that on DeKoven Street, on the site of Mrs. O'Leary's house/barn stands the Chicago Fire Academy. The city did learn its lesson very well.

There were also changes to the water supply, underground pipes became large diameter water lines with significant pressure so that the fire trucks didn't have to carry their own back and forth from the river or the lake. Fire hoses were put into larger buildings. The skyscraper came about a few years later and fire safety was tantamount in their construction...and success. Even the development of the escalator to replace the enclosed elevator came at the Chicago World's Fair and was in the building that until recently was the home of the Chicago Park District and was attached to the north end of Soldier's Field.

BTW, the one plus that came out of the fire is that the mass of debris was taken to the north end of Grant Park...north Fullerton St...and became a massive landfill that's now the beautiful Lincoln Park, home of the largest free zoo in the world.