Successful applicants could obtain materials and plans for two different-sized cottages. The twelve-by-sixteen-foot model was for families of three people, the twenty-by-sixteen for more than three. In addition to the lumber framing and boards, the houses featured felt lining on the inside walls, a double iron chimney, two four-panelled doors, three windows, and a partition that could be put wherever the occupants chose. The total cost, without the furniture, was about one hundred dollars. In the month beginning October 18, over 5,200 houses were constructed.
John J. Healy was about eight when his mother woke him to tell him the city was on fire and that they had to evacuate their home on Oak Street, which they were leasing pending their move to a cottage his father had built on Hurlbut Street. "I slept that night on a pool table in somebody's saloon on Clybourne [sic]Avenue," according to Healy. "After the fire my father obtained lumber from the Relief Board with which he built a small two-room shack in the rear of the Hurlbut Street lot. I don't recall whether or not it had a wooden floor, but I do remember the stove was enclosed in a sanded wooden box." The family received other assistance: "For some weeks after the fire we got bread and meat from a Field Leiter & Co. wagon which came at stated times to the corner of Center [now Armitage] and Hurlbut Streets. South of that point there was so much debris on the street as to make it impossible for a team and wagon to use it."
