“Hey, Scott, come over here! There’s a building on fire! You can still see flames.”
The weekend crowd milled around the site of the fire—the block bounded by Superior, Huron, Orleans, and Sedgwick—staring at the smoldering ruins of the six-story walls of brick, which two days before had been the cornerstone of the River North gallery district. The devastation was complete. Everyone made the same analogy; the building looked like something out of World War II—the London blitz or the Dresden firebombing.
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We drove by to have a look. We watched the snorkel trucks still pouring water in the buildings, and wandered around among the other voyeurs, eavesdropping on their conversations.
“It’s still burning! Good God! Eighteen hours and it’s still burning.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
Artist: “I had four pieces in there.”
