People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1895 — BIG FIREAT BOSTON. [ARTICLE]

BIG FIREAT BOSTON.

DOCKS AND FREIGHT SH. . DESTROYED. The Cti. t—l l.’n r Ccphalonla I’ ' Scorch a Wl:i.i Carries Blazhi" her, !:;.<> th< Trnrment House L‘ . trift * T.-.e I.o;s. Boston. Mass.. Sept. 5. —One of most disastrous fires that has occur.-; ,i along Boston’s water front in started on the docks at East I yesterday, and before it con.a controlled, destroyed three piers, large storehouses, a freight shed. lift • loaded freight cars and a quantity of freight and slightly damage.’. . number of dwelling houses. The fire was discovered on the c:. 2 of the Boston & Albany railroad pier ii. the freight shed No. 1, known as "Ohl Round Top.’’ about 5 o’clock, but an alarm was not given until 5:30 and at that hour the structure, which was a one-story building several hundred feet in length, was a mass of flames. The steamer Burton was destroyed here. The fire spread to the adjoining docks, at one end of which the Cunard steamer Cephalonia was moored. Before the steamship could be towed out of danger her sides were ablaze, one of her lifeboats was partly destroyed and her rigging was on fire. The flames were extinguished, however, as soon as she was anchored and she was not badly damaged. The big three-story warehouses Nos. 4 and 5, owned by the Boston & Albany railroad were almost entirely destroyed, with their contents. The loss on the freight stored in them will be very heavy, but no accurate estimate of the damage on this score can yet be made. Fifteen freight cars, most of them loaded, were lying on the tracks. Almost all of them were totally destroyed with their contents. Piers Nos. 1, 4 and 5, on which the burned storehouses were built, were reduced to a mass of charred timbers sticking out of the water. A light wind carried the blazing embers from the conflagration into the tenement-house district near by, and three tenement houses were partly destroyed and damaged to the extent of about $5,000. Three smaller dwellings were also damaged. Shortly after 9 o’clock the big storehouse No. 8 was in flames and the fight of the firemen was directed to this point. At 10:30 the fire was under control. The smoke was unusually dense and suffocating, and many of the firemen were overcome, but not seriously injured. The cause of the fire is unknown. It was at first thought the loss would not exceed $150,000, but a careful estimate indicates that the loss will reach $300,000, and possibly more. In the sheds destroyed were stored 5,000 bales of sisal grass, twenty carloads of hay, nearly fifty carloads of flour in sacks, Sixteen carloads of merchandise and 7,000 bales of hemp and wool, all valued at over $170,000. The wharves and buildings destroyed were valued at $130,000.’