The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago on 30 December 1903 killed over 600 people — the deadliest single-building fire in American history — triggering new building codes and the growth of public liability insurance for places of public assembly.

The Iroquois Theatre disaster, occurring in the cultural heart of Chicago during its literary renaissance, was reported by journalists who would become central figures in American modernism; it intensified the period's preoccupation with urban danger, institutional negligence, and the human cost of progress.