An acknowledged shortcoming of pre-fire Chicago was the lack of a free public library, and the loss to the flames of the nearest equivalent, the Chicago Library Association, spurred a movement to establish one. Following the conflagration, this movement found support in England, especially from Thomas Hughes, best known as the author of Tom Brown's School Days, who was at that time a member of Parliament. Soon a group of writers, publishers, and organizations collected some seven thousand books for Chicago, and in 1872 a public library was established in, of all places, a empty water reservoir next to the temporary city hall at Adams and LaSalle streets.
The library moved to a series of other places in the city, as different proposals for a permanent home were discussed. The idea of constructing a library building to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the fire gained much support, but it came to nothing. Among the locations of the library was the 1885 Chicago City Hall and Cook County Building. By 1897 it finally had a magnificent building of its own, now the Chicago Cultural Center, at Michigan and Randolph, on the site of what was known as Dearborn Park. Where the old library and the temporary city hall once stood at LaSalle and Adams has been occupied since 1886 by a Burnham & Root masterpiece, the Rookery Building.
