Chapter IV: Beyond Control

Every one seemed to feel sure that the fire would be stopped at Broadway, as the buildings on this street were substantial structures built of stone and brick, and no one even then judged rightly the havoc which must ensue before the fury would abate.

The local militia (the Fifth Company, Coast Artillery Corps) had been summoned, and the militiamen had donned their service uniforms and overcoats, leaving in their lockers, in security as they supposed, their civilian clothes, their watches, and pocket money. Hardly had they been assigned to their posts before Broadway was threatened, and soon their new $100,000 Armory became a volcano of flame as the element of destruction spread on.

It first reached Broadway between Third and Fourth streets. Here a heavy battery of engines was assembled to prevent its crossing, but the efforts of man and the floods of water were of no avail; the fire was beyond human control.

Up to now the flames had rushed through the foreign tenement district, but when it passed Chestnut Street it entered the business center. Before the fire had even reached Chestnut and Fifth streets awnings in Bassett Square, two and three blocks away, caught fire. The fire reached Bellingham Station about two o’clock. The sight from here, looking down Broadway and Hawthorne Street, was beyond description. The fire fairly lay across the streets in a cyclonic whirl of flame.

All at once out of Hawthorne Street shot an engine, as if coming out of a cannon. The driver was almost doubled up and the horses were going at a two-twenty clip; where they came from or how they ever got out of that furnace alive is a mystery.

The new six story brick Young Men’s Christian Association building caught first in the upper story and then all over; hose was burned at this point as fast as it was laid. An electric car of the Boston and Northern Railroad which had been stopped on Broadway, just below Bellingham, by the shutting off of the power, was pushed up the street and over the bridge to safety by fully a hundred men.

Beyond Broadway lay blocks of substantial residences. The flames were gnawing up the structures on Hawthorne Street, and the Unitarian Church and Newspaper Row on Fourth Street were quickly burned. The fury of the spreading flames was indescribable. There would be no sign of fire in a building, when all at once it would seem to fairly burst into flames and simply melt away. One large double house, which was timed, took just eight minutes to burn from the moment the flames were first seen until the building was a mass of ruins in the cellar.

All this time people were fleeing from the fire, many moving things to what they considered a place of safety, only to be obliged to move them again and eventually have them burned. Many people who lived east of Broadway went out to see the fire before it had crossed that thoroughfare, only to return and find their homes either on fire or already destroyed. No one seemed to realize how fast the fire was traveling, except those who fought it. If people had heeded the first warnings of the soldiers and the police, many could have saved something, but they waited, not wishing to appear timid, and afraid of ridicule if they started to move too soon. In the face of the great battle they had to fight, firemen and police officers could not give heed to the frantic appeals of women to save furniture.

Many people, when they realized that they had lost everything, threw themselves in the street and cried aloud in their suffering. It was no uncommon sight to see white-faced women walking aimlessly along the street, heedless of where they were going, yet carrying a frying pan or tin dipper. One man rushed into his house, at the risk of his own life, to save the family cat. After carrying it a block the cat scratched itself free and dashed back into its burning home. Hundreds of people saved canary birds, and one woman came along the street with a statue, which had no head or feet, under one arm, and a bird cage with a cat in it under the other. When asked why she was saving the broken statue she looked at it in a dazed sort of a way and threw it away in disgust, and then wonderingly inquired how her bird had got out of the cage, never realizing that the cat had eaten it. One woman, remembering that she had left a pocket-book containing $17 on her dining-room table, rushed back into her home and grabbed up what she thought was her pocket-book, but when she had gotten several blocks away she found that in her excitement she had taken a piece of cut glass instead, and it was then too late to return. Another woman was ordered out of her house by a militiaman, but would not go until she had first filled her teakettle with water. Afterward she couldn’t explain why herself. Many people went temporarily insane. On the Washington Avenue bridge one man stood for hours making appeals for volunteers to fight the fire; his coat was off and his hair was mussed. People paid no heed to his frantic gestures, but he probably imagined he was saving the city. Another man committed suicide by shooting himself near Union Park. Some lost the power of speech, but under the circumstances the number of minds affected was small.

COPYRIGHT, JUDGE CO., 1908

BROWN STONE HOUSES FARED NO BETTER THAN WOODEN TENEMENTS]

One woman lugged a great marble clock under one arm and a dog under the other for three quarters of a mile. The dog couldn’t lay down for three days, she had held him so tight. Many people saved things of little value and left things impossible to replace. One man carried twenty-two pieces of cut glass loose and unpacked, tied up in a sheet and thrown over his shoulder, for over a mile, through all the excitement, and not one piece was smashed.

A fireman entered Freeman’s drug store while it was burning and taking the reflection of himself in the long mirror at the end of the store for another fireman walked through the glass.

Two men trying to save an upright piano gave it up when the cloth in the back caught fire. One opened the lid and played “There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night,” while the buildings all about him burned.

Fate was especially kind to Eli C. Bliss, who lived in what is called Chestnut Street Pocket,--a short blind end of Chestnut Street beyond Washington Avenue, ending in a steep embankment at the railroad tracks. The fire approached so rapidly that escape was impossible, except by way of the embankment. Just as Mr. Bliss was leaving his attractive home a passing freight train stopped directly at the end of the street, and the train crew rushed up the bank and announced that they had two empty box cars. Working like demons nearly everything in the house of any value, including a grand piano, a lot of old mahogany furniture, books, and paintings, was piled into the cars, until they were nearly full. The train then pulled out just as the house commenced to burn, none too soon, as the cars were smoking themselves. Mr. Bliss later located his furniture in Lynn, after it had landed in Portland and been shipped back.

The railroad tracks which passed through this part of the city have always been considered an eyesore and have been the cause of much regret to many residents. There is not a resident of Chelsea to-day, however, who is not glad of their presence, as they were the means of saving the northern part of the city, the best residential section. The fire burned only a single building north of the tracks.

Not far from the Bliss estate lived the Millers. Miss Edith Miller was to be married in a few days, but so hurriedly were they obliged to leave that not even her wedding dress was saved, and all her beautiful presents and trousseau were lost.

When the fire started up Mount Bellingham, hurried calls were made for ambulances to take the patients out of the Frost Hospital. There were twenty-five patients suffering from different injuries and diseases in the building, and the doctors and nurses showed great heroism. But for their running into the street and hailing all the automobiles and teams in the vicinity, and making them carry the patients to the other three hospitals in the city, none would have been saved. As it was, before the last patient was out the roof was blazing. Meanwhile the children at the day nursery had been taken care of and were nicely housed, thanks to Mr. Jesse Knowlton, at his home on Powderhorn Hill.

The City Hall did not last long after the flames took their first mouthful. The city treasurer, Thomas B. Frost, early recognized the peril and removed all the city funds, while the books were locked in the safes by the city clerk, Charles H. Reed, who stayed in the building so long, saving property, that he was obliged to make his escape through a second-story window. The beautiful Baptist Church across the street melted away before the flames in a few minutes.

Many people made a frightful mistake by thinking they were safe in fleeing to the Garden Cemetery. Those who did were surrounded on all sides by the flames, and for hours they crouched behind tombs, fighting the burning embers and gasping for breath.

The flames fairly shot up Bellingham Street, on which were many fine homes. Chief among them, on the very top of the hill, was the beautiful estate of Ex-Mayor Thomas Strahan, filled with valuable paintings, tapestries, and art treasures, collected from all parts of the world. The house was of brick and stone with a slate roof and plenty of land about it, and it seemed as if it could be saved. The view from the tower of the Strahan house can never be forgotten. As far as one could see, a seething mass of flame, like a tidal wave, was rolling up the hill. So fast had the fire approached that the Lynn engine, stationed halfway up Bellingham Street, was unable to get away. The firemen did not abandon it until their faces were burned and their hair singed. It was beyond human force to withstand the terrific heat and suffocating smoke, and it was with difficulty, when they finally abandoned it, that they were able to save their lives, as the fire completely surrounded them.

At this time the fire had already passed the Strahan house in the valley to the left, and the Highland School, halfway up the hill on that side, was in flames. Great pieces of burning wood came into the tower and the wind was so strong that it was hard to stand against it.

So fascinating was the sight that it was not until the Strahan barn, only a few feet away, burst into flames, as if it was made of celluloid, that the writer descended from the tower to help the Strahans to escape; but they, like too many others, had waited too long, in hopes their home would be saved. With the help of the servants we carried out several blankets filled with clothing, a chest of silver and some jewelry, leaving thousands of dollars’ worth of beautiful things to be devoured by the flames.

We fled down the hill in the direction of Orient Heights. Hundreds were going the same way; poor and rich were on equal terms. The wind blew with such force that women were blown into fences and trees or lost their balance and fell. Great pieces of furniture went bounding end over end down the hill, blown by the wind. Horses were running away, and the scene was one of terrifying confusion. Escape was possible only by enduring the hostile breath of the flames, running, tripping over abandoned furniture in the blinding, sickening smoke, towards the marshes to the northeast, where, although safe from the flames, the refugees suffered untold agony from the hail-storm of stones and showers of blazing embers that fell upon them, burning holes in their clothes and starting grass fires in every direction.

One old lady’s celluloid back comb caught fire and her white hair was burned down to the scalp in back before the flames could be smothered. The many horses set loose on the marsh also endangered lives. The wails of hundreds of frantic parents vainly searching for their children added to the excitement. One mother fell in a dead faint when her two-year-old child, whom she had given up as lost, was brought to her.

In the crowd racing down Mount Bellingham were many men, who had assumed the duties of clearing houses of inmates, lending a hand to all the weak and faltering, until they themselves were obliged to flee for their lives. Perhaps the most touching spectacle was the old people, forgotten by their relatives. In many cases these old women had to be carried bodily to safety, and it speaks well for the city that there were men doing this work amid the confusion and at the risk of their own lives. Men and boys, crazed by the thought of losing their homes, clambered to the roofs and tried to save them with puny buckets of water, replying to frantic warnings to escape while there was time, only with curses, until in many cases they had to be driven by blows to a place of safety.

The flames came down the hill like a forest fire. They were upon the people before they realized it, and when they attacked at the front door there was but one thing to do, and that was to make a rush for the rear door.

In the meanwhile, on the south side of the city the fire had burned from building to building. There was no stopping it, although the firemen worked desperately. It kept on towards the water front until it reached the buildings of the Tidewater Oil Company. Here five oil tanks caught fire and exploded and set fire to the docks along the water front, and then three barges loaded with oil a little farther on caught fire and spread to the Ellis yard, where more oil was stored. The fire boats came as near as they dared and poured streams of water on the flames, but it was like trying to check a volcanic eruption.

The two bridges to East Boston next fell and cut off this means of escape, and in this way a Boston engine was burned and a boy lost his life. Near the bridges were many fine yachts, that of Mr. Seaver being worth $50,000. This, and many other vessels, were burnt. One broke away from its moorings and drifted to the East Boston shore, setting fire to the Standard Oil Works. This was about four o’clock, but from the time the fire began to spread into the east side of Chelsea, East Boston was in peril from the shower of sparks and burning brands which the high wind swept over its roofs. More than half the residents packed their belongings and were ready to move at a moment’s notice. Despite the desperate efforts of the many engines the flames spread to a one-story brick building, containing three hundred barrels of oil, and soon four other buildings of the plant were burning. Next the great oil tanks went up, the flames shooting several hundred feet into the air and sending skyward great clouds of flame and thick, black smoke. This swept down the harbor, across the bay, and out to sea, continuing to do so for two days and two nights. Reports from Scituate, Cohasset, and other places showed that showers of embers dropped from the clouds, and in places good-sized pieces of burnt shingles were picked up. Grass fires were started in Nantasket and Winthrop. The glare from the fire in the evening was seen from Portland, Me. The natives at first believed it to be York Beach, it was so bright.

Meanwhile about fifty houses in East Boston had their roofs badly damaged. These fires, however, mark the extreme limit of the flames in this direction and were soon extinguished.

Although much credit is due the firemen, they were greatly helped by the fact that the velocity of the wind began to decrease about the time the oil works caught fire.

While this contest was being waged, another army of firemen was struggling on the north. About two o’clock the Armory burned; and when it was all ablaze, a large quantity of ammunition which was stored in the building exploded with a tremendous report, while tons of burning wood were shot across the street and into the adjoining buildings.

COPYRIGHT, JUDGE CO., 1908

BOSTON AND ALBANY RAILROAD BRIDGE, WITH WRECKED EAST BOSTON BRIDGE AND BURNING OIL TANKS]

The Public Library directly across the street, a gift to the city from the Hon. Eustis C. Fitz, containing over eighty thousand volumes and many historical records and relics, caught and burned without an attempt being made to save it or its contents.

One of the best illustrations of the heat of the fire to those familiar with the burning of books, is the fact that after the fire not one scrap of paper was found. Granite will often crumble and iron melt before a book will be totally burned up.

The Convent and Parochial School also were among the buildings which caught from the Armory, and the twenty-eight sisters made a hasty departure. Next went Saint Rose Catholic Church, remodeled at an expense of $50,000 a short time before. Beyond this was the railroad track, and here a determined stand was made. Thousands of people lined the opposite side of the track, and water was played on most of the buildings. Soon after the Catholic Church commenced to burn the Melrose fire department crossed the track with a line of hose and climbed the steep bank just in the rear of the church, which was like a flaming furnace. Hardly had they got the water on when the roof fell. The heat was so terrific that the firemen who held the hose were obliged to drop flat on their faces with their hands under their bodies. Even then they were more or less burned about the neck and ears. One fireman, who was nearest the building, groaned in agony, “Give me hell in preference to this.”

On Washington Avenue there stand to-day three wooden houses. They are the only buildings, with the exception of part of Cobb’s stable on Broadway, which were saved on that side of the Boston and Maine tracks, and that they are still standing is due to two things:--

First, to the fact that Union Park and the park at the station are in the rear and the fire had to burn around them and then up into the wind.

Second, to Dr. Thomas Green and Robert Hamilton, who, after the others had deserted their homes, remained and helped the firemen.

On the south of the city firemen were stubbornly fighting to save Winnisimmet Square. The flames upon spreading along Everett Avenue had made away with the great Chelsea Trust Company building on the corner of Everett Avenue and Broadway. They then reached out to the other corner and caught on every floor of the building. Across the street was the Post-office and this was doomed, but at the Park Hotel the flames were checked.