This 1871 ad promotes the opening of the Highwood Hotel in Tanafly, New Jersey. However, it was to be short-lived, as the hotel was completely destroyed by fire the following year.
The following present-day view of Canal Street in New Orleans, between Magazine and Tchoupitoulas Streets, marks the general location in which the Planters Hotel once stood. A fire broke out around 2am on May 15, 1835, causing the hotel to collapse, killing 40 of the 50 people buried beneath the rubble. The artist who illustrated the collapse, which was printed in papers throughout the country, never attended the scene of the fire or obtained any details of what the location looked like. His depiction of the hotel collapse, the crowd, and surrounding buildings is entirely the artist guessing how the area and scene appeared.
On August 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire began, burning for two days, killing between 200 and 300 people, destroying 17,450 buildings, leaving 100,000 homeless, and causing an estimated $200 million in damages.
Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O’Leary barn, which started the fire. However, the reporter from the Chicago Tribune who first reported on the cow kicking over the lantern later admitted he made up that story in order to sell papers. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the fire is the story that is still widely believed today.
Even after the reporter’s admission of fabricating the cow story, new theories of the fire’s origin have surfaced, including a comet crashing to earth, which may have been responsible for the fire that left four square miles of Chicago, including its business district, in ruins. Dry weather and wooden buildings allowed the fire to easily spread throughout the city. Chicago averaged two fires per day in 1870. There were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire of 1871.
One of the most devastating fires in American history is also one of the most forgotten. What is known as the “Great Boston Fire of 1872” began at 7:20pm on November 9 in the basement of a commercial warehouse. As surrounding buildings and homes were made of wood, the fire spread quickly, burning for nearly 15 hours and engulfing much of Boston’s downtown, destroying 776 buildings and homes (including the financial district), causing $73.5 million in damage, and killing at least 30 people.
The Boston fire department arrived about 30 minutes late to the scene of the fire due to a horse flu epidemic which put their horses out of action. Therefore, fire engines had to be pulled on foot by the firefighters themselves. More firefighters arrived by train from every state in New England, except Vermont, to help fight the blaze. Spectators boarded trains heading to Boston to witness the fire for themselves. There were so many spectators in the streets and police going after looters that firefighters had difficulty doing their job. It didn’t help that there was low water pressure and that fire hoses were being cut open by falling bricks from crumbling buildings caught in the blaze.
As an interesting side note, one of the spectators on hand was Alexander Graham Bell, credited with patenting the first telephone. Bell wrote an eyewitness account of the fire and of the firefighters’ battle to stop it, which he then sent to The Boston Globe to be printed in the following day’s publication. However, editors were unimpressed by his letter and his account was never published.
In connection with the post above regarding “The Great Boston Fire of 1872”, this ad, published shortly after the disaster, offered people the chance to own a graphic account of the greatest fires of the world, including the recent Boston fire and the great Chicago fire the year prior.
The Boston fire had become somewhat of a spectator event. Riding on that fact, it appears publishers felt this book would be an exciting “souvenir”, most likely containing an entertainment aspect rather than actual journalism.
The Cliff House was once synonymous with San Francisco. Constructed as a home for San Francisco mayor Adolph Sutro in 1896, the seven-story home was built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was such a popular landmark that it was used on numerous postcards as well as for backdrops in photography studios. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, certain area newspapers featured headlines screaming that the Cliff House had toppled into the ocean, which of course was not true. On September 7, 1907, the home caught fire during a remodeling project, burning to its foundation. There is now a recreation facility built on the site, containing restaurants. The Cliff House still remains one of the most impressive architectural feats in American history and will likely always be a symbol of old San Francisco.
This beautiful home was built in Topeka, Kansas in 1887 by Erastus R. Stone, who envisioned his home being one of the finest mansions in the state. However, an economic depression hit and Stone no longer had the financial means to complete it. The mansion stood vacant for over ten years and became known as “Stone’s Folly”. After being sold and bought twice, first for use as a Bible college (in which construction was completed), and then converted into a roadhouse, a mysterious fire destroyed the mansion on December 6, 1901. There are no remnants of this magnificent home left today, only this photograph to remember it by, which was taken sometime between 1899 and 1901.
The worst theater fire in American history occurred on December 30, 1903. Chicago’s Iroquois Theatre was deemed “absolutely fireproof” by its architect upon its opening just five weeks earlier, who stated he had carefully studied every major theater fire in history so as not to have a similar fate befall this new theater.
During the second act, an arc light on the left side of the stage sparked, igniting a flammable muslin drape. It was a very small flame at first, out of view of the audience. The flame then ran up the drape and into the fly space where scenery hung. A draft from an open stage door fanned the flame, sending a fireball across the stage, igniting a velvet curtain. The crowd began to panic. Actors ran off the stage.
Stagehands tried to lower curtains in order to keep the fire from spreading but the curtains got stuck. The fire spread to the seats. Part of the stage then collapsed, engulfed in flames. Then the lights went out. Plunged into darkness and the fire spreading rapidly throughout the theater, total panic ensued. The audience headed for the 27 exits but many were hidden by drapes while other exits couldn’t be opened, having been locked prior to the start of the play in order to keep out those trying to sneak in.
The theater had no fire alarm or telephone. A stagehand had been ordered to run to the nearest fire station to notify firefighters of the disaster taking place. On the way to the scene, firefighters activated an alarm box to call additional units. When they arrived at the theater, they witnessed people running out in a panic, some with their clothes on fire. Some who had gotten out through the unfinished fire escapes either jumped or fell from the narrow icy escape to their death.
Corpses were piled ten high around doors and windows, killed by the flames, smoke inhalation and gases. Many were also trampled and crushed, as they tried to push their way through exits in which the doors opened inward rather than outward. As bodies began piling up in front of doors, the doors were not able to be pulled open. Some exits were actually ornamental doors, their passageways not leading anywhere. Two hundred bodies were found in just one of these ornamental passageways. In all, at least 602 people were killed, but it is believed not all victims were accounted for. At least 572 people were killed on the day of the fire itself, while at least 30 more died of injuries over the following days and weeks. Five of the three hundred individuals making up the actors, dancers and stagehands were killed as well. Spectators outside were shocked at how many dead children were being carried out, some whose portraits can be seen below.
The theater’s manager, Will Davis, was arrested in January 1904 and charged with criminal neglect but was acquitted.
On February 7, 1904, a devastating fire ravaged Baltimore, Maryland. Known as the Great Baltimore Fire, it is considered the third worst fire in American history, behind the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the resulting fires from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Much of Baltimore’s downtown financial district was leveled. With winds fanning flames, 1,545 buildings spanning 70 city blocks were destroyed, leaving 35,000 people unemployed and causing over $150 million in damage (equivalent to over $5 billion today).
The fire started in the John E. Hurst Building (second photo below). How exactly the Great Baltimore Fire began was never confirmed, but police at the time believed it started with a pedestrian flicking a cigarette butt into an open grate in the side of the building as he passed by.
Firefighters from around Maryland, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Ohio, New York, Virginia, Delaware and Atlantic City made their way to Baltimore to assist in putting out the fire. In all, 1,231 firefighters arrived, but even the large number of them could not battle the flames being spread rapidly by the wind. With inadequate equipment and hose couplings which did not fit on Baltimore fire hydrants (each department had their own sized couplings for their own city’s hydrants), the firefighters were helpless and could only watch as the fire burned for over 30 hours.
City officials decided to use dynamite and destroy buildings in the area to prevent the fire from spreading any further. This, however, proved unsuccessful and only made the situation worse, as the explosions caused flaming pieces of wood to rain down, igniting fires in other areas.
McLane then refused assistance from anyone outside of Baltimore, telling the press, “As head of this municipality, I cannot help but feel gratified by the sympathy and the offers of practical assistance which have been tendered to us. To them I have in general terms replied, ‘Baltimore will take care of its own, thank you.’ ”
Two years later, Baltimore had completely rebuilt its financial district. Papers reported, “One of the great disasters of modern time had been converted into a blessing.” (See the last two photos in this post of the financial district, just after the fire, and then rebuilt two years later).
Surprisingly, the Great Baltimore Fire is not known to have caused any deaths. One positive takeaway from this disaster is fire hydrants were now required to use the same sized hose couplings across the country, so as to be interchangeable, city to city, should a fire of this magnitude occur again.
One of the worst disasters in America’s industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, occurred on March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory, in New York City, employed around 600 workers, many of them recent Italian and Jewish immigrants working for very little money and in cramped working conditions. The company manufactured shirtwaists similar to the one seen in the first photo below. The factory took up the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building on Washington Place in Manhattan. The building is now known as Brown Building and is a part of New York University.
Though smoking was not permitted within the factory due to flammable material being worked with, employees sometimes snuck a cigarette when management was not present. How the fire started is still not exactly known but it is believed one of these cigarettes may have been dropped or fallen into a scrap bin beneath a fabric cutter’s table on the eighth floor, igniting the material within it. The fire began at around 4:30pm.
The building contained four elevators, in which only one worked. There were two stairwells, though one was locked (it was common practice in factories at the time to have stairwells locked in order to prevent employee theft). The door to the other stairwell only opened inward, preventing anyone from exiting without someone opening it from the other side.
Due to the amount of flammable materials within the factory, the fire quickly spread in areas of the eighth and ninth floors. A manager arrived and grabbed a hose to extinguish the fire but quickly found that the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic on the floors ensued. Workers ran to the elevator and to the stairwell doors now open. The elevator could only hold twelve people at a time and broke down after four trips. With the fire raging around them, a number of those who had been waiting for the now broken-down elevator jumped down the elevator shaft to their death.
Those who escaped down the ninth-floor stairwell found the door to the eighth floor locked and were trapped, killed by a combination of smoke inhalation and being burned alive, as the fire eventually engulfed that stairwell.
Others attempted to use the fire escape, which was flimsy and likely already broken. Under the stress of the fire’s heat and workers’ weight, the fire escape twisted and collapsed, sending nearly 20 victims falling to their death to the pavement below.
Firefighters arrived at the scene but their ladders only reached the seventh floor. Unable to escape, workers began jumping from windows. One witness reported seeing a young couple kissing at a window before they both jumped.
William Gunn Shepard, a reporter at the scene, would later say, “I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture – the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk”.
Firefighters tried using trampolines, but they were not designed to absorb the impact of someone jumping from such a height. Those who jumped into a trampoline were killed, having broken right through it.
Despite how large the fire was, it was extinguished in 18 minutes, but not before many lives were lost. Though the number of the deceased vary, the most accurate count to date appears to be 145. Most fatalities were women. Less than 20 were men. Some children also perished as there were not yet child labor laws. Of the 145 deceased, 51 were burned to death or were suffocated by smoke, 36 were piled up in the elevator shaft, and 58 were killed from jumping out of windows or falling from the fire escape.
A makeshift morgue was set up close by for families to identify loved ones. Most who arrived to view the bodies were curious onlookers.
The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were tried for manslaughter, knowing well of the lack of fire prevention, such as the damaged hose and fire escape, and absence of a sprinkler system. One of the owners, Max Blanck, had a reputation of being crooked, paying off police and government officials to look the other way in fire insurance frauds. He had previously set fire to his own floors in the building a few times, though this deadly fire was an accident and not one of his insurance fraud scams. The owners were acquitted but continued receiving fines afterward for not putting safety precautions in place as instructed to do following the disaster. For example, Blanck was fined $20 for keeping all doors locked within a new factory after being ordered to keep at least one door unlocked at all times. The families of 23 victims tried the owners again in 1913 for wrongful death. This time, the owners were found guilty and each victim’s family was awarded $75.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire paved the way for stricter nationwide fire safety codes and fire prevention laws.
