Editing Marshall Field's (section)

===The Great Chicago Fire===
When the [[Great Chicago Fire]], one of the worst conflagrations to ever strike an American city, broke out on October 8, 1871, news reached company officials Henry Willing and Levi Leiter, who decided to load as much of their expensive merchandise as possible onto wagons and take it to Leiter's home, which was out of the path of the fire. The company's drivers and teams were ordered out of the barns. Horace B. Parker, a young salesman, rushed to the store's basement, broke up boxes, and built a fire in the furnace boiler so the steam-powered elevators could be operated. These employees worked feverishly through the night to move vital records and valuable goods to safety.

At one point, the gas tank exploded, which put out the store's gaslights. The men worked on by candlelight and the glow from the approaching flames. The employees got enough steam up to operate the store's powerful pumps in the basement, and volunteers went to the roof and used the store's fire hoses to wet down the roof and the wall on the side of the oncoming fire. Early the following morning, however, the city's waterworks burned, thus ending the water supply and making further efforts useless. The last employee had scarcely exited the building when it burst into flames, shooting fire from every window.<ref>Twyman, Robert W., ''"History of Marshall Field & Co. 1852–1906,"'' pp. 38–42, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1954.</ref>

The store burned to the ground, but so much merchandise was saved that the store was able to reopen in only a few weeks (first the wholesale department on October 28, then the retail department on November 6), albeit temporarily relocated to a horse-streetcar barn of the [[Chicago City Railway Co.]] at State & 20th Streets. In April 1872, Field & Leiter reopened at a building at Madison and Market Streets (the location of present-day West Wacker Drive). Salesman Parker stayed with the company for 45 more years, rising to the level of General Sales Manager.<ref>Brewer, Wilmon, ''"A Life of Maurice Parker,"'' pp. 11–12, Marshall Jones Company, Francestown, New Hampshire, 1954.</ref>