Every American city old enough seems to have a large fire incident, and life seemed to get changed a lot. In Chicago’s case, it became an opportunity of reborn, attracting architects to build something great from the ground up, which ends up creating an icon for this city. There is definitely a lot more to say on this on-fire topic.
Anyway, I want to talk about this exhibition at Chicago History Museum about the 1871 fire. It is kid-friendly. I like that all the texts are simple English. It has a few interactive sections about how people lived (doing the laundry by hand), why the old houses are inflammable, and how you put out a fire. It does have the artifacts survived from the fire.
But I feel something is missing. They did mention how different people get disproportional assistance after the fire, but they don’t touch a lot on how they replanned the city after fire. The screen you saw in the photo does have some fire rescue scenes, but it feels more like an atmosphere builder than information teller. Maybe the one in Seattle raises this bar a lot.
Maybe it’s just the depth. It does tell why and what around the fire, but the how after the fire seems a bit rush. I won’t go back for this myself, but great job on the child friendliness.