Walter Bruno Zeisler

Son of Dr. Joseph Zeisler, 3256 Lake Park Avenue. Identified by name on watch charm.

Walter Bruno Zeisler (b.1886) was a seventeen-year-old student at the University of Chicago. His parents, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Zeisler, were riding a train when they opened a newspaper and learned their son had died in a fire at Chicago's Iroquois Theater.  It was December 30, 1903 and Walter was one of nearly six hundred victims of America's worst theater disaster.  At that moment their son's body had not yet been located but later that night friends were able to make a preliminary identification based on a police description read aloud at the Chicago Avenue police station.   His body was then found at Gavin's Undertaking on the basis of his name on a watch charm.   That reveals that his body was either burned or badly trampled.  Nothing was reported about his theater companions.

At the University of Chicago Walter was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and said to be an excellent student.  He had already completed his undergraduate work and entered the law school. The university's flag was flown at half mast the day after the fire in remembrance of its students who were Iroquois Theater fire victims.  In addition to Walter Zeisler these included Reverend Henry Richardson, Fred Leaton, and two Chicago teachers who had graduated from the University's "College for Teachers" department. They were Daisy Livingstone at the Ray School and Gertrude Falkenstein of the Harrison School.

Walter's funeral was held at 2:00 pm at the Zeisler home on New Year's day, Monday, January 1, 1904, and he was buried at Oakwoods Cemetery in Chicago.  The service was conducted by Dr. Emil G. Hirsch — one of four he conducted that day.

Walter was the oldest of three children.  His father, Dr. Joseph Zeisler (1858–1919), had immigrated from Austria as a teenager in 1886. Walter's mother, Teresa "Relli" Feuchtman Zeisler  (1864–1945), also came as a teen, in 1885. The Zeisler family was prosperous enough to afford two domestic servants and owned their home at 3256 Lake Park, constructed in the fall of 1897.  It was a twelve-room three-story brick projected in the building permit application to cost $18,000 ($650,000 today).   By 1921 it was on the rental market for $125 per month ($2,000 today).

Dr. Zeisler was a professor of dermatology and syphilis at Northwestern, as well chief dermatologist at several Chicago hospitals. He was highly regarded but a product of his time.  One of his frequent lecture topics was about role of bad teeth and complexion in causing baldness. He opposed the then new Roentgen X-ray.