{"id":10430,"date":"2016-05-24T00:23:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T04:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=10430"},"modified":"2016-05-24T08:28:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T12:28:18","slug":"the-center-city-conflagration-of-1897","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2016\/05\/the-center-city-conflagration-of-1897\/","title":{"rendered":"The Center City Conflagration of 1897"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fire<\/a>
Fire – 13th and Market Street, January 1897 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Philadelphians couldn’t imagine their city in ruins. But the fire of January 26, 1897 provided a pretty good idea of how that looked and felt.<\/p>\n

That<\/em> Tuesday morning, a fire started in the basement bakery of Hanscom Brothers, 1309-1317 Market Street, at 6:45 am. A porter sweeping out an upper story room saw smoke and \u201cdashed into the street, calling \u2018Fire!\u2019” and a watchman at the corner \u201crung in an alarm.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the panic, \u201csomeone bethought himself of the two bakers,\u201d still inside and unconscious, and a pair of Hanscom employees \u201cdescended through the smoke and dragged the half-suffocated men out.\u201d<\/p>\n

What began as a \u201clittle tongue of flame\u201d was soon \u201ccaught\u2026by the winds that whirl about City Hall, and fanned\u2026into a pillar of fire\u201d destroying not only the 6-story building, the home of Hanscom, Dennett\u2019s Caf\u00e9 and Hirsh\u2019s Umbrella Factory, but also 59 other buildings between 13th<\/sup> and Juniper Streets, Market and Filbert Streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a fearful morning to fight a fire,\u201d reported the Inquirer<\/em>. \u201cThe thermometer was near zero, and the first line of hose, as it was unreeled, burst and covered everything surrounding with water that turned to ice the moment it struck. The flames gained on the firemen, and alarm after alarm was rung in, until every engine in the city was hurrying to the scene. Thousands of workers on their way to their places of business were attracted by the fire, and the streets in the vicinity speedily became impassable from the curious and surging throng.\u201d<\/p>\n

A conflagration of \u201cspectacular grandeur\u201d that \u201cdefied the resources of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFiremen worked under the most discouraging conditions, the hosemen and laddermen taking their lives into their hands as they crawled cautiously up the ice coated rungs of their ladders, dragging after them their lines of hose, which were encased in a solid covering of ice. The streets around the fire were coated with ice\u2026 The fronts of the surrounding buildings upon which the water had been played presented a beautiful spectacle as they flashed back from their icy walls<\/a> the rays of the morning sun.\u201d<\/p>\n

At time, the smoke \u201cwould descend to the street in almost [a] solid cloud, and the firemen were driven back, gasping for breath. \u2026 Building after building along Market Street crumbled beneath the touch of the fiery tongues of flame enwrapping them, and when the rear wall of the Hirsch Building fell into Silver Street, the fire leapt across and entered the seven-story double iron building fronting on Filbert Street.\u201d Soon the entire block was \u201choneycombed by fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fire<\/a>
Fire – 13th and Market Street, January 1897 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe firemen feared that the great Wanamaker establishment<\/a> would go\u2026 Mr. Wanamaker himself had arrived early, and, dismissing the greater number of his 3,500 employees, marshaled under his own direction the fire force of the store.\u201d At 8am, when \u201cthe Market Street front of the Hirsh building fell into the street\u2026a torrent of fire rolled out and flowed across\u2026 and broke against Wanamaker’s. The building shriveled and blistered beneath the fierce deluge, and a tongue of flame shot up from the high clock tower at the corner of Thirteenth and Market Streets.<\/p>\n

Much to the dismay of the firefighters\u2014and Wanamaker himself\u2014\u201cthe jets from the hose could not reach the flames in the tower and the entire building seemed threatened with destruction.\u201d Just as the chimes in the burning clock were striking 8:15, the \u201centire tower toppled over and fell with the great crash.\u201d This \u201cproved the salvation of the building, for the firemen were then able to fight the heart of the fire, and soon had it under control\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy 5 o’clock the carpenters had completed the temporary repairs, and then they raised large American flag on ruins of the clock tower\u201d which was quickly rebuilt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To the west, City Hall<\/a> survived, although the heat was so intense employees couldn\u2019t \u201cbear to stand within five feet of the windows, which, to a one, cracked or broke.<\/p>\n

In the days to follow, the ruins were compelling to visit and dangerous to navigate. And with each \u201csevere gust of wind\u201d the \u201cgreat bulging wall of the Hirsh building\u2026 was seen to be swaying dangerously. To all appearances it was on the point of crashing outward\u2026. \u00a0A shower of loose bricks was whirled off of the crumbling wall\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fire was the \u201cworst in a generation.\u201d But so long as there were no casualties due directly to the fire, the loss of buildings seemed welcomed by the Press. “Their destruction will probably be to the ultimate good, if newer and more modern buildings are erected on their sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, in a historical blink of an eye, new buildings<\/a> that addressed the needs of the burgeoning city in the new century appeared in their places.<\/p>\n

[Sources: \u201cBig Philadelphia Fire,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, January 27, 1897; and in The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>: \u201cMany Buildings A Prey to the Flames,\u201d January 27, 1897; \u201cThousands at the Scene of the Fire,\u201d January 28, 1897; \u201cTottering Walls Retard the Work,\u201d January 29, 1897; and \u201cNew Buildings Soon To Be Erected,\u201d March 12, 1897.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philadelphians couldn’t imagine their city in ruins. But the fire of January 26, 1897 provided a pretty good idea of how that looked and felt. That Tuesday morning, a fire started in the basement bakery of Hanscom Brothers, 1309-1317 Market Street, at 6:45 am. A porter sweeping out an upper story room saw smoke and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}