English: A Harper's Weekly engraving, first appearing in the October 28, 1871, issue, of Crosby's Opera House succumbing to the flames of the Great Chicago Fire. Its first floor housed local publishing firm Root & Cady's music store. The damage wrought by the conflagration, extending to the entire city and costing over $5 billion (2024) in damages and 300 lives, wiped out most of the firm's material. Its unparalleled success in the Civil War and subsequent years was reversed; it sued for bankruptcy the following year. P. H. Carder's biography of George F. Root, who co-managed the firm, says this of the fire: "Root described the experience of seeing 'the costly and elegant opera house go.' He could not get close enough to see the 'rear building' where his workroom and library were. He remembered that 'the calamity was so general and overwhelming that individual losses seemed insignificant in comparison...' (p. 176).