Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1895 — WIPED OUT BY FLAME [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WIPED OUT BY FLAME

EXCELSIOR BLOCK, CHICAGO, TOTALLY DESTROYED. Aggregate Loaa Will Reach $621,000 —Plant* of Twenty Firms in Ashess3oo,ooo Blaze in W'oolen Exchange Block—Many Firemen Buried. Burned Like a Tinder-Box.

rIRE at Jackson and Canal streets, Chicago, destroyed two big blocks owned by Warren Springer,* ate up the plunts of *1 \ \ twenty linns, threw \ 700 persons out of V \1) employment and / caused a loss of S<JOO,OOO Thursday J afternoon. The fire . —burned forthree Jtours. Four huu- ' \ ■ dred women and girls on a sixth floor

were in danger at one time of being cut off by the flames, but they were saved by the presence of mind of u policeman. The firemen were threatened by the frequent falling of the tall walls and by explosions of oil. They had several runs for their lives, with narrow escapes, but they luckily came through unscathed. The Springer buildings were occupied by manufacturing concerns, and the flames spread so rapidly that the occupants had barely time to seize their books and a few personal belongings and escape with their lives. The buildings were equipped with automatic sprinklers, but these were as helpless as garden sprinkling pots to stay the fire. There were also two fire walls, but the flames passed these barriers as easily as though they were but lath. Feathers and oils and inks carried the fire from floor to floor and from end to end of the big, blocks with lightning speed, and in half an hour the whole Canal street front was ablaze. This front presented a surface 184 feet long by seven and eight stories in height. A halfhour later the Jackson street side, 164 feet deep and seven stories high, was

spitting lire from every window. So much valuable property adjoining was threatened that the tire department turned out with thirty-live engines, the largest number called into use at a single fire in five years. The fire broke out frbout 3 o’clock. Three hours later there was little left of the two Springer buildings but parts of their walls, and their contents were all burned or lay in hot heaps of debris in the basements. Less than SSOO worth of property was saved by the occupnnts. When it became known that hundreds of women were in danger in one of the tall buildings the crowd wanted to make a rush for it, but was kept back by a detail of police from the Desplaines street station. Officer Thomas Brennan had gone into the building und had prevented a fatal panic by barring the stairway with iRs stalwnrt figure until he could reassure he frightened women and send them down the stairs in platoons. Even then some of them fell and bruised themselves in their hurry to escape, but as they poured out of the doomed building the crowd sent up a shout for the women and the gallant oflicer who had saved them. Oil Explosions. It was reported that the basement under the rooms occupied by the Sliober & Carqueville Lithograph Company was filled with oils, and the firemen worked in constant fear of an explosion. Fortunately when the explosions came their force spent itself upward. The loud reports were followed by a cloud of timbers and debris flying toward the upper floors, which fell back into the seething pit without injury to firemen or spectators. Many of the floors were filled with printing presses and other heavy machinery. As the supports were weakened by the flames the machine’s broke through the floor and went down to the bottom with crash after crash as they struck each succeeding floor and landed in the basement iu jangled masses of rods and wheels. As the flames spread from onfc section of the buildings to another, and floor after floor gave way, the noise resembled a battery of artillery in action. Then falling walls added their thunders to the occasion. The first section to tumble was the sixth and seventh stories of the EXecisior Block on Canal street. A warning crack and a shout from the crowd sent the firemen flying for their lives. The wall fell half way across the street and sent bricks with sufficient force to have killed tbe firemen, who escaped the danger by barely a second. The next section to fall was on the north, but it struck the Wilson building and went through the roof without a rebound. A little later three upper

stories of the Jackson street wall toppled outward and across the street, but it had been expected, and the firemen were out of the line of danger. Edward B. Gallup, manager for Mr. Springer, put the loss on the seven-story Excelsior Block, 175 to 183 Canal street, at $225,(XX) to $250,000; that on the eightstory block at 171 to 173 Canal street at $75,000, and that on the No. 10 building on Clinton street at ,$25,000. He intimated the insurance would come near the value of the buildings. The property of the tenants in the buildings was all heavily insured. The origin of the fire is n mystery, although the supposition of employes about tho Emmerich feather renovating institution was that a gas jet by accident communicated its flame to some of the chemicals used in the denning of feathers r.nd that aa explosion followed which filled

that floor with flame. The blaze spread rapidly and caught the woodwork that surrounded an air shaft in the corner of the floor, and which ran from the basement clear to the roof. It served as a chimney for the flames to leap to the floors above. The burning wood fell to the floors below and started the blaze among the material stored on them. In-fifteen minutes after the first spark of tire was seen, the seven stories of the Excelsior Block were blazing like a furnace. Breaking out in the afternoon of a raw, snowy November day, just as the first travel from the Union station to suburban points was about to begin, the fire created a tremendous sensation among the dirty ways of Canal street, in the dark depths of the station, and in the Springer buildings themselves, where hundreds of men, women, girls and boys fled down the narrow stairways for their lives, and, finding themselves safely in the streets, laughed and clapped their hands for the joy of safety. Then they watched the shell pass more quickly than any building of its size in Chicago has ever burned before since 1871. The character of the interior construction of the Springer buildings has always been condemned by the wage earners of the West Side and feared by the firemen of the city department. SIX FIREMEN DEAD. Horrible Results of Another Fire In a Seven-Story Building. At 9:30 Friday morning fire which was the cause of death and the loss of property worth $500,000 broke out in the fourth story of Kuh. Nathan & Fischer’s new building, the Dry Goods and Woolen Exchange, at 215 and 217 Van Buren street and 270 and 278 Eranklin street, Chicago. The flames burst through the windows all along the front of the building, and in an instant the whole structure was a mass of curling fire. Jumping from the upper windows, a number of people were dashed"’upon the pavement and sustained fatal injuries. Hanging between life and death, a score or more of shrieking, screaming girla clung to the window casements of the building. With lightning-like rapidity engines and hose carts surrounded the blazing structure. In a twinkling every fire escape in the building was alive with helmeted firemen bent on saving the live*

imperiled above. Catching its breath, the spellbound crowd gazed upward as one of the girls, driven to frenzy by the choking, blinding smoke, leaped in midair to what appeared certain death. A fireman’s strong arm extended from the fire escape was almost wrenched from its socket as he caught the flying human figure. A second later another girl threw herself headlong. But no protecting arm saved her, and, turning over and over, she fell to the sidewalk below, a mangled, bleeding mass of humanity. After the fire was entirely under control and while the firemen were on the first floor of the structure, throwing water on some still smoldering flames, the second and third floors suddenly gave way and crashed on the first, covering the firemen. Captain Louis Feine, of fire company 2, and the lieutenant and four pipemen of the same company were buried beneath falling floors of the building.

EXCELSIOR BLOCK ON FIRE.

EXCELSIOR BLOCK BEFORE THE FIRE.