The Nixon Block, near the northeast corner of Monroe and LaSalle, was under construction at the time of the fire and was finished shortly after. Some of its woodwork was damaged, but the building-in-progress was largely unharmed. The extent to which its survival is attributable to a twist of fate or to its "fireproof" construction of iron, brick, marble, concrete, and plaster of Paris is hard to determine.
After the disaster the Nixon Block bore the inscription, "This fireproof building is the only one in the city that successfully stood the test of the Great Fire of October 9, 1871." This was not precisely true, even for the downtown area, since the Lind Block at Wacker (then Market) and Randolph also made it through the fire. The Nixon Building, to which two stories were subsequently added, stood until 1889.
