{"id":2639,"date":"2012-06-11T08:01:52","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T12:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=2639"},"modified":"2014-05-14T10:49:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T14:49:22","slug":"june-11-1923-fiery-destruction-at-broad-street-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2012\/06\/june-11-1923-fiery-destruction-at-broad-street-station\/","title":{"rendered":"June 11, 1923: Fiery Destruction at Broad Street Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The Conflagration at Broad Street Station, 15th and Market Streets, June 11, 1923.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Legend has it that a hapless Bulletin<\/em> reporter overslept the Monday morning of June 11, 1923 and telephoned his editor from home.\u00a0The conversation went something like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cJust got into Broad Street Station. The train was late. I\u2019ll be in as soon as I\u2019ve grabbed a cup of coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re in Broad Street Station, huh,\u201d said The Bulletin’s<\/em>\u00a0city editor as he glanced out of the newsroom window\u00a0at the smoky chaos across Penn Square. \u201cWell, I\u2019ll tell you something \u2013 you\u2019re going to have the hottest damn cup of coffee you\u2019ve ever tasted.<\/p>\n

The fire at Broad Street Station that started in the wee hours that morning would continue for nearly three days. It would interrupt the flow of more than half a million daily commuters destroy the icon of Philadelphia\u2019s Iron Age.<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Railroad\u2019s first, relatively modest, 160-foot-wide shed<\/a> had been surpassed in 1891 by the Reading Railroad\u2019s, 256-foot structure<\/a> at 12th<\/sup> and Market. Not to be outdone, and to meet the needs of their expanding ridership, the Pennsy hired the same engineers, Wilson Brothers & Co.<\/a>, to provide a new shed<\/a> as massive as their busy site would allow. This 300-foot-8-inch-wide, 589-foot-2-inch-long, 108-foot-tall, 7,000,000 pound structure (but who\u2019s counting<\/a>) earned the title of the world\u2019s largest single-span\u2014and held it for decades. Broad Street\u2019s shed rose<\/a>\u00a0as a symbol of the most extensive transportation infrastructure known\u2014until, and even beyond, the fire of June 11, 1923.<\/p>\n

Temples fall and icons fail, but they can then also thrive in the imagination. \u201cAmong the cloudy memories of early childhood it stands solidly, a home of thunders and shouting, of giant engines with the fiery droppings of coals and sudden jets of steam,\u201d wrote Christopher Morley. Broad Street Station \u201cwas a place in which a delighted sense of adventure was closely mixed with fear.\u201d Morley found Joseph Pennell\u2019s rendering<\/a>\u00a0from 1919 a \u201cperfect record of Broad Street\u2019s lights and tones that linger in the eye\u2014the hurling network of girders, the pattering of passengers, the upward eddies of smoke.\u201d The shed linked regional and national, suburban and urban power for Philadelphians and visitors who felt in it an excitement akin to that of a world\u2019s fair. In fact, the station, a symbol and anchor of the entire consolidated system, resonated with the worship of industry expressed at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876.<\/p>\n

Morley was completely serious in his Elegy in A Railroad Station<\/a> <\/em>of\u00a01952. \u201cI preserve in pure imagination my memory of Broad Street Station,\u201d\u00a0he wrote,\u00a0as the last of the place<\/a> was knocked down to make way for Penn Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legend has it that a hapless Bulletin reporter overslept the Monday morning of June 11, 1923 and telephoned his editor from home.\u00a0The conversation went something like this: \u201cJust got into Broad Street Station. The train was late. I\u2019ll be in as soon as I\u2019ve grabbed a cup of coffee.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re in Broad Street Station, huh,\u201d […]<\/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-2639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639","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=2639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}