Today’s post was written by Addie Portela, an intern at the National Archives at Chicago.
On Sunday October 8th, 1871, fire raged across the city of Chicago. Not quelled until Tuesday morning, fires devastated Chicago’s central business district. The Crosby Opera House, a theater with an art gallery attachment, was not spared from the damage. The destruction itself was not unique, but a Circuit Court case from the Northern District of Illinois reveals details of a successful painting rescue mission involving the Opera House’s art gallery.
In 1880, case 17084 Henry Fuller vs. Albert Crosby, et al, Henry Fuller claimed Albert Crosby, owner of the Crosby Opera House, owed him $25,000 for an unpaid loan given to Crosby by Fuller’s father. Crosby claimed bankruptcy, but Fuller contested this claim, citing Crosby’s property, investments, and the paintings saved in the 1871 fire. Submitted into evidence was a catalog of 48 paintings and 2 statues “taken literally through the flames as they surged through the aisles, borne forward by the resistless power of the gale, before which it was next to impossible to stand” (Horticultural Hall catalog).
Testimony from Crosby, his wife Matilda Crosby, Opera House usher James Osgood, and painter John Phillips confirm the process of taking the paintings out of their frames and lowering them via rope before storing them at a Mr. Garrison’s house on South Wabash Street and eventually moving them to Edward Saunders’ home on 21st Street. Matilda Crosby detailed how paintings gifted to her for her marriage to Crosby were stored at a Henry Bemis’ home on Calumet Avenue before they eventually moved back to New York with the Crosby family when they left Chicago.
The Crosbys’ marriage–or more specifically Mr. Crosby’s alleged promise of assets for the marriage–is scrutinized throughout the case. Approximately 600 pages of testimony from Mr. Crosby and approximately 430 pages of testimony from Mrs. Crosby reveal the couple married in June of 1872, less than a year after the fire and shortly after each Crosby divorced their first spouse. Mr. Crosby had allegedly written a letter to the future Mrs. Crosby, outlining a sort of marriage contract which detailed property, stocks, paintings, and diamonds Mr. Crosby would provide upon marriage. Both the Crosbys claimed the letter had been misplaced, so it could not be submitted as evidence. Mrs. Crosby was forgetful of the letter’s details, but did confirm she was offered ownership of stock, diamonds, and paintings. One notable painting rescued from the fire that Mrs. Crosby claimed ownership over was Yosemite Valley, also called Valley of the Yosemite, by Albert Bierstadt.
Other rescued works listed in the catalog and described in testimony include Last Hours of Lincoln by Alonzo Chappel and John B. Bachelder now held by Chicago History Museum, Rio de Janeiro Bay by Martin Johnson Heade now held by the National Gallery of Art, and Still Hunting On the First Snow by Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait now held by Adirondack Experience (the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake).
Henry Fuller vs. Albert Crosby, et al is not yet available online, but is in the process of being digitized. You can read more about this case in Ann Patricia Duffy’s 2011 Prologue article, “While Chicago Burned“.
From Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern (Chicago) Division of the Northern District of Illinois. Civil Case 17084, National Archives Identifier 32624643.