Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1897 — FIERCE FLAMES IN DETROIT. [ARTICLE]

FIERCE FLAMES IN DETROIT.

Opera House and Two Business Houses ; Arc in Utter Ruins. The center of Detroit was the scene at 1 o’clock Wednesday morning of a conflagration which totally destroyed three large buildings and contents, damaged several others and threatened the destruction of at least an entire block of the most valuable property in the city. • The blaze originated on the stage of the Detroit opera house. Simultaneously with the breaking out of the fire there were several loud explosions, presumably the bursting of the stage lighting apparatus. The flames quickly enveloped the rear of the theater and made a furnace of the interior. The opera house, with all its contents, wns destroyed in 6hort order. The rear of the ten-story building occupied by the H. Leonard Furniture Company caught fire and nothing of the structure or contents remains but the steel frame. The four-story building of the Michel Tabic Supply Company east of the theater was gutted and'partially destroyed, and eeveral other buildings were slightly damnged. The losses, it is believed, will reach the vicinity of $250,000. A block of tenement houses at the foot of Hastings street caught fire from sparks from the opera bouse fire and were destroyed.