Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
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In December 1958, a fire broke out at *Our Lady of the Angels School* in Chicago. Within minutes, the building was consumed, and 92 children along with 3 nuns tragically lost their lives. It remains one of the deadliest school fires in U.S. history. Yet, out of this disaster, came some of the most sweeping changes to building codes, fire safety standards, and school practices ever enacted.
This video uncovers what really happened that day: the overcrowded classrooms of the Baby Boom, the flammable stairwells that acted like chimneys, and the lack of alarms, sprinklers, and evacuation training that turned a small spark into a catastrophe. We’ll also trace how this event transformed school design across the country—introducing mandatory fire drills, teacher-led evacuations, and new safety codes that have saved countless lives ever since.
By revisiting this story, we explore bigger questions about how society responds to tragedy, why outdated buildings are often given dangerous “grandfather clauses,” and what this history means for school safety today.
If you want to understand why every student practices fire drills, why stairwells are enclosed, and why alarms are linked directly to the fire department, it all goes back to this moment in Chicago.
Special Thanks:
- Producer: Evan Montgomery
- 3D Modeling: Daniela Osorio Sanudo
- Filming Location: SOM (www.som.com)
Sources:
- Chicago Fire Department. *Official Investigation Report: Our Lady of the Angels School Fire.* Chicago Fire Department Archives, December 1958.
- Cook County Coroner’s Office. *Inquest Proceedings: Our Lady of the Angels School Fire Victims.* Cook County Archives, December 1958–January 1959.
- Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office. *Investigation Report: Fatal Fire at Our Lady of the Angels School.* Springfield, IL: State of Illinois, 1959.
- National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). “Report on the Fire at Our Lady of the Angels School, Chicago, Illinois, December 1, 1958.” *NFPA Quarterly* 52, no. 3 (1959): 210–258.
- *Chicago Tribune.* “92 Die in School Fire; Hundreds Flee Blazing Building.” December 2, 1958, pp. 1, 4–5.
- Chicago Sun-Times. “Children Die in School Fire Trap.” December 2, 1958, pp. 1–3.
- Life Magazine. “Tragedy in Chicago: The School Fire.” December 15, 1958, pp. 26–33.
- Time Magazine. “Death in Room 211.” December 15, 1958, pp. 18–19.
- Cowan, David, and John Kuenster. *To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire.* Updated edition. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.
- Raymond, Michele McBride. *We Remember: Survivors’ Stories of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire.* Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2003.
- Thompson, Richard A. “The Impact of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire on School Safety Codes.” *Building Research & Information* 28, no. 4 (2000): 251–263.
- Fitzgerald, Maurice P. “School Fire Safety: Lessons from Our Lady of the Angels.” *Fire Engineering* 112, no. 3 (March 1959): 184–187.
__Membership__
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__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
__Contact__
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/
__Attributions__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound and includes music from Chromatic by Tom Fox
youtube.com/@tomfoxcatalog"
#architecture #urbandesign
Watch my next video about old house plans buildings right now nebula.tv/videos/stewarthicks-old-house-plans-decoded
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription: go.nebula.tv/stewarthicks
In December 1958, a fire broke out at *Our Lady of the Angels School* in Chicago. Within minutes, the building was consumed, and 92 children along with 3 nuns tragically lost their lives. It remains one of the deadliest school fires in U.S. history. Yet, out of this disaster, came some of the most sweeping changes to building codes, fire safety standards, and school practices ever enacted.
This video uncovers what really happened that day: the overcrowded classrooms of the Baby Boom, the flammable stairwells that acted like chimneys, and the lack of alarms, sprinklers, and evacuation training that turned a small spark into a catastrophe. We’ll also trace how this event transformed school design across the country—introducing mandatory fire drills, teacher-led evacuations, and new safety codes that have saved countless lives ever since.
By revisiting this story, we explore bigger questions about how society responds to tragedy, why outdated buildings are often given dangerous “grandfather clauses,” and what this history means for school safety today.
If you want to understand why every student practices fire drills, why stairwells are enclosed, and why alarms are linked directly to the fire department, it all goes back to this moment in Chicago.
Special Thanks:
- Producer: Evan Montgomery
- 3D Modeling: Daniela Osorio Sanudo
- Filming Location: SOM (www.som.com)
Sources:
- Chicago Fire Department. *Official Investigation Report: Our Lady of the Angels School Fire.* Chicago Fire Department Archives, December 1958.
- Cook County Coroner’s Office. *Inquest Proceedings: Our Lady of the Angels School Fire Victims.* Cook County Archives, December 1958–January 1959.
- Illinois State Fire Marshal’s Office. *Investigation Report: Fatal Fire at Our Lady of the Angels School.* Springfield, IL: State of Illinois, 1959.
- National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). “Report on the Fire at Our Lady of the Angels School, Chicago, Illinois, December 1, 1958.” *NFPA Quarterly* 52, no. 3 (1959): 210–258.
- *Chicago Tribune.* “92 Die in School Fire; Hundreds Flee Blazing Building.” December 2, 1958, pp. 1, 4–5.
- Chicago Sun-Times. “Children Die in School Fire Trap.” December 2, 1958, pp. 1–3.
- Life Magazine. “Tragedy in Chicago: The School Fire.” December 15, 1958, pp. 26–33.
- Time Magazine. “Death in Room 211.” December 15, 1958, pp. 18–19.
- Cowan, David, and John Kuenster. *To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire.* Updated edition. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003.
- Raymond, Michele McBride. *We Remember: Survivors’ Stories of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire.* Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2003.
- Thompson, Richard A. “The Impact of the Our Lady of the Angels Fire on School Safety Codes.” *Building Research & Information* 28, no. 4 (2000): 251–263.
- Fitzgerald, Maurice P. “School Fire Safety: Lessons from Our Lady of the Angels.” *Fire Engineering* 112, no. 3 (March 1959): 184–187.
__Membership__
Join this channel to get access to perks:
youtube.com/channel/UCYAm24PkejQR2xMgJgn7xwg/join
__About Me__
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
__Contact__
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/
__Attributions__
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound and includes music from Chromatic by Tom Fox
youtube.com/@tomfoxcatalog"
#architecture #urbandesign
![This Incredible Megastructure Just Failed [Nakagin Capsule Tower]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vrwYUOg1bZQ/mqdefault.jpg "This Incredible Megastructure Just Failed [Nakagin Capsule Tower]
Get learning today at https://brilliant.org/stewarthicks and get 20% off your annual premium subscription!
The Nakagin Capsule Tower was one of the most prominent constructions from the Metabolist movement. It was designed in 1972 by Kisho Kurokawa to serve a growing population of mobile business person in Tokyo, Japan. It was composed of 140 capsules attached to concrete towers. These 100 sf units were designed to be removable and replaceable over time. However, the building stood for 50 years without a single unit being replaced. Finally, it fell into such disrepair that it needed to be demolished. This video tells the story of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, its design, construction, life, and ultimate demise.
Exhibition of photographs can be found here : https://mascontext.com/events/1972-accumulations
Membership
Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYAm24PkejQR2xMgJgn7xwg/join
About the Channel
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
About Me
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
Contact
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: https://designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/
#architecture #urbandesign")
![Exploring a LOST Geometric Wonder [One Half House by John Hejduk]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vxiyoC9qNjk/mqdefault.jpg "Exploring a LOST Geometric Wonder [One Half House by John Hejduk]
What if we could visit any building, regardless of whether it was ever built? Or, even after it has been demolished? This video and link below focuses on a single house — the One Half House — designed by architect John Hejduk, to resurrect and explore. It uses the program Enscape to walk through the building in order to preserve and distribute the experience of architecture that does not exist in built form. The video offers a timeline to contextualize the role of the house in the architect John Hejduk’s career and work, an analysis of the building, and initial reactions to walking through the building for the first time. In particular, the One Half House was pivotal for thinking about how architectural volumes might relate in space without the ordering device of a grid or a wall. What magic and other lessons are lurking in the design, hidden until we could experience it?
Link for exploring the One Half House: https://api2.enscape3d.com/v1/view/6043cd9a-68a5-4b15-a701-7b8f1fd1c587
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:36 Timeline
03:47 Digital Reconstruction
04:36 Analysis
07:37 Exploration
10:07 Takeaways
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.")
![Exploring Louis Kahns LOST Unbuilt Masterpiece [Goldenberg House]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/z6NPxfdYcbQ/mqdefault.jpg "Exploring Louis Kahns LOST Unbuilt Masterpiece [Goldenberg House]
The Goldenberg House was designed in 1959 by the architect Louis Kahn for Morgan and Mitzi Goldenberg. While the house was never constructed, it was cited by Kahn as holding important lessons for his design process that would be deployed in a number of later structures. These lessons are specifically related to how the outside of the house is irregular while the heart of it, the atrium is a perfect square. While we can see this discovery in the plan drawing for the house, there are likely nuances to its design that are more difficult to understand without being able to visit it in person. But, what if we can visit the Goldenberg House as if it had been built? This video explores the Goldenberg House, its history and design intentions, and uses the findings to construct a digital model of the house to explore in real-time.
Link for exploring the Goldenberg House: https://api2.enscape3d.com/v1/view/f392e2a5-0277-49d8-bc85-ee719694eb71
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:45 Timeline
03:38 Analysis
07:33 Digital Reconstruction
09:01 Walkthrough
11:30 Takeaways
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
FOLLOW me on instagram: @stewart_hicks & @designwithco
Design With Company: https://designwith.co
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: https://arch.uic.edu/")
