|
|
|
|
From Chapter Ten, Great Fires, the unfinished manuscript of Gary Cornell, retired East Liverpool Fire Department firefighter and Fire Department historian.
Picture from The City of Hills and Kilns: Life and Work in East Liverpool, Ohio, William C. Gates page 207
Market and Fifth looking east. Ikirt Building on left foreground. Picture taken before the fire which destroyed that area in 1905. Looking up 5th Street is the Brunt House where Post Office and now Museum of Ceramics is currently. Picture from Dr. Birkett Magic Lantern Glass Slides #62
At about 6:30 P.M. on February 28th [1905] Charles Grafton and John Reark noticed a small boy watching a faint column of smoke rising from the basement of the Gass Shoe Co. store. Grafton ran over to the nearest alarm box and turned in the alarm.
The fire department responded immediately and began to fight the blaze. Because there was no rear entrance to the basement, the fire had to be fought solely from the Market street side. As a result of this, the fire was pushed throughout the entire basement of the Thompson Building. There were no partitions in this basement, except for a makeshift wall of empty packing crates. . .
When the fire reached the second floor of the Thompson Building it jumped to the Porter Building next door. Soon the upper floors of both buildings were ablaze. The windows soon burst from the heat, and the flames were swept by the strong wind into adjoining buildings.
Now the buildings on Fifth street, next to the Thompson Building, began to burn. First the Wazbutzky Building and the residence of Theodore Burk located behind it were ablaze, followed by the Milligan Hardware Co. Building. . . .
When it was determined that the local department could not handle the huge blaze, Mayor William Weaver called on neighboring communities for help. The men from Chester, W. Virginia and Wellsville, Ohio were the first to arrive. . . .
Men and equipment from Steubenville, Ohio and Rochester, Pennsylvania arrived on special trains sent by the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad. . . .
Meanwhile, the flames had jumped Diamond Alley and soon the Smith Fowler Building was a raging inferno. Several other buildings along Diamond Alley received damage from fire and heat, or from falling walls. . .
The last building to burn was the Ikert Building at the corner of E. Fifth and Market. Because of the wind direction this building had been spared from the flames until now. The winds changed at about 2 A.M. and the flames began to eat their way through the structure. By morning only a blackened shell remained of the four story structure.
When daylight came the area was devastated. The area surrounded by Fifth Street, Market Street, Diamond Alley and Crook Alley was totally destroyed. The buildings along the north side of Diamond Alley were not in much better shape. Some had been damaged by the fire or falling debris, while others suffered from smoke and water damage.. . .
Picture from East Liverpool Fire Department Photo archives
. . . This fire, which resulted in losses exceeding a half million dollars, destroyed six of the city's finest commercial structures including the Ikirt, Thompson, and Milligan buildings. At the time it was the most devastating fire, excluding pottery fires, in the community's history. Twenty businesses and many organizations and professional men were left without offices and stores. [Source: The City of Hills and Kilns: Life and Work in East Liverpool, Ohio, William C. Gates. p. 217.
Picture from East Liverpool Fire Department Photo archives
Picture from East Liverpool Fire Department Photo archives
Picture from ORL
Picture from Dr. Birkett Magic Lantern Glass Slides #75
Picture from Dr. Birkett Magic Lantern Glass Slides #76
Picture from Dr. Birkett Magic Lantern Glass Slides #77
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
This site is the property of the East Liverpool Historical Society.
Regular linking, i.e. providing the URL of the East Liverpool Historical Society web site for viewers to click on and be taken to the East Liverpool Historical Society entry portal or to any specific article on the website is legally permitted.
Hyperlinking, or as it is also called framing, without permission is not permitted.
Legally speaking framing is still in a murky area of the law though there have been court cases in which framing has been seen as violation of copyright law. Many cases that were taken to court ended up settling out-of-court with the one doing the framing agreeing to cease framing and to just use a regular link to the other site.
The East Liverpool Historical Society pays fees to keep their site online. A person framing the Society site is effectively presenting the entire East Liverpool Historical Society web site as his own site and doing it at no cost to himself, i.e. stealing the site.
The East Liverpool Historical Society reserves the right to charge such an individual a fee for the use of the Society’s material.