Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1904 — FIRE IN MASONIC TEMPLE. [ARTICLE]

FIRE IN MASONIC TEMPLE.

Blaze in Chicago’s Big Sky-Scraper Causes n Commotion. A spectacfflnr fire in the Chicago Masonic Temple, famed as one of the larges) office buildings in the world, frightened tin- 5.0t)0 occupants scattered about the- nineteen floors of the structure Saturday afternoon and caused a property loss of .$20,000. A number of persons were slightly injured by the flames or in the rush for safety, the tenants fearing a calamity similar to the Iroquois horThe employes of the building retained llu'ir presence of mind, and while, the elevator operators were making trip after trip through the smoke-filled shafts the janitors, carrying out their fire drill in every ; TiefiiiT. were manning the liosehmd preparing to throw water on the flames. Although the city tire department was quick to respond, the janitors had eight streams playing on the fire when the first of the firemen arrived. _ - In 111<-_ evening the Temple-Association, through the executive committee of its board of directors, issued a statement to the public in which it was said there was cause for congratulation in the fact that the modern sky scraper had been found not only, fireproof but lifeproof. The daniage to the building was not estimated in the statement, but insurance experts said the amount would not exceed .SI,OOO. Th-e flames burst out of a suite occupied by R, Friedlander <fc Co., manufacturers of X-ray apparatus, on the fifth floor, in the southwest coiner of the building. Soon smoke was sweeping through the great building and pouring from the windows. Hundreds of tenants hurried from their offices, a policeman turned in an alarm, and a dozen engines, hook find ladder trueksOand hose carts responded. On. the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth stories the tenants and their clerks and stenographers closed the doors and opened the windows, watching the firemen belotV at work. The bitter wind blew with such force around the corner that the* firemen were almost taken off their feet. But despite the gale thousands of persons gathered on the corners. The Masonic Temple is one of the earliest of the sky-scrapers constructed in Chicago, and, supposedly, is fireproof. It is but half a block distant from the Iroquois theater.