Last month televised news showed images of the devastating wildfires sweeping across the northern suburbs of Los Angeles County, California, leaving whole neighborhoods in ashes. My cousin’s home in Sunset Hollywood Hills was spared as flames raged ten minutes away. Some of his friends lost their homes and familiar streetscapes were laid waste by the conflagration. Fortunately, while Indianapolis has never experienced such widespread devastation from a firestorm, the city has had its share of great fires.
The first recorded fire in the fledgling village of Indianapolis occurred two hundred years ago on Monday evening, January 17, 1825, between seven and eight o’clock, at the Thomas Carter Hotel, located on the present site of the Julia Carson Transit Center. The blaze began in a storage building, adjoining the rear of the establishment, from a keg of ashes and quickly spread to the new two-story frame hotel. With no organized fire brigade, the citizenry did what they could and salvaged some furnishings, but the Carter Hotel was a loss. Eighteen months later, the Indianapolis Fire Company was organized with volunteers and no equipment except for buckets and ladders.
With the construction of the State House, the legislature authorized the city of Indianapolis in 1835 to acquire a hand pump fire engine, 25 buckets, and four ladders that could reach the top of the new structure. A building to house the engine was erected on the northwest side of the Circle and five public wells dug for fire protection. The volunteer company was reorganized as the Marion Fire Engine Company. Eventually, four other groups of volunteers were organized into the Independent Relief Company, Western Liberties Company, the Invincible Company, and the Northwestern Fire Company to handle other engines. The volunteer companies responded to numerous fires and, on occasion, buildings were “saved from destruction by hard work of the engine companies and hundreds of citizens who formed bucket lines.” The volunteer force was disbanded in 1859 when the city authorized a paid department that initially consisted of two hand engines hauled by horses and a hook and ladder company. The following year, three horse-drawn steam engines were added to the force and a watchtower was placed atop Glenn’s Block, southside of Washington St between Meridian and Pennsylvania.
“One of the most spectacular fires” the 28-man paid department battled in its early years was the Kingan & Co blaze. Of suspicious origins, the fire at the pork-packing house on West St. between Maryland and Georgia streets was discovered the evening of Monday, May 22, 1865 and flames, fed by the five-story building’s contents of pork and lard, soon “lighted up the country for miles” with flying embers threatening other nearby buildings including the Soldiers’ Home and military prison. The $200,000 (2023: $4,000,000) loss was mostly covered by insurance.
Nearly five years passed before on another Monday evening, January 17, 1870, a catastrophic fire occurred. Shortly after nine o’clock, the smell of burning wood and smoke began to fill the lecture hall of Morrison’s Opera House, northeast corner, South Meridian and Maryland streets. The crowd in attendance made an orderly evacuation from the building and firefighters thought they had the smoldering fire under control when it erupted and “enveloped the rear part in a sheet of flame,” spreading throughout the storefronts of the Morrison Block and the adjacent Mothershead Block. Showers of glowing embers carried by the wind fell in all directions threatening nearby buildings, sheds, and stables. The loss was $250,000 (2023: $6,123,000) with about 80% covered by insurance making the Morrison’s Opera House inferno the “most destructive fire known to date.” To better address future fires, Indianapolis began installing Holly fire plugs.
Shortly before eleven o’clock Tuesday evening, March 11, 1873, fire swept through the Woodburn “Sarven Wheel” Co, 230 S. Illinois St., one of the city’s largest manufactures. Fed by piles of wood shavings, spokes, and other flammable material, the flames ate through the three floors and roof of the brick building threatening an older adjacent structure. Because of the lack of water pressure, Chief Daniel Glazier took a squad of firefighters to the second floor of the older building to get water on the center of the blaze, and while pouring a deluge on the inferno an overhanging brick wall collapsed through the roof crushing Chief Glazier to death and injuring several other firefighters. By early the following morning the blaze was under control and by midday the wheel works was a smoking ruin. While the insured property loss was around $75,000 (2023: $1,940,000), the greatest loss was Chief Glazier, the first Indianapolis firefighter to die in the line of duty.
The following year Indianapolis experienced a conflagration dwarfing previous fires. On the evening of Sunday, March 22, 1874, a little after seven o’clock, flames were seen coming from the fourth floor of Wright’s Exchange Block, a building under construction on the north side of Market St. between North Pennsylvania and Delaware streets. Firefighters, struggling with low water pressure, could not contain the blaze and with a fierce wind blowing from the west the structure quickly became an inferno. “Burning brands were whirled up in the air and carried more than a block” falling on rooftops down to Washington St., and it was feared “the city would yet be frightfully damaged before the fire was conquered.” Blazing fragments ignited the roof of the neighboring Martindale Block containing law offices, insurance agencies, and retail store fronts, but as firefighters turned their attention to contain this fire their efforts were thwarted by a lack of water pressure and the blaze soon spread to the nearly completed Sheets Hotel which became fully engulfed in flames. A lull in the wind and the collapse of the outside walls of the buildings finally allowed firefighters to control the “fire fiend” and eventually extinguish it. The following day, the smoldering ruins stretching from Market to Ohio streets revealed a property loss of $228,400 (2023: $6,257,000) of which only $41,500 (2023: $1,137,000) was covered by insurance.
Late Friday night, January 13, 1888, the most destructive fire in the history of Indianapolis up to that time destroyed buildings and consumed goods as it swept along both sides of South Meridian St. between Georgia and Louisiana streets. The blaze began a few minutes after eleven o’clock in the basement of D. P. Erwin’s Dry Goods Store, 109 S. Meridian St., and had quickly spread next door to Geo W. Stout wholesale grocery, 107 S. Meridian St., by the time firefighters arrived. As the inferno consumed these buildings, a fire wall saved wholesale dry goods dealer Byram, Cornelius & Co, southeast corner of Meridian and Georgia streets, as a strong east gale carried heat and flaming embers across the street igniting the building housing tinware supplier Tanner & Sullivan, 114 S. Meridian St. Firefighters directed streams of water on the fire, but the conflagration soon spread north engulfing the buildings of overall manufacturer C. B. Cones, Son & Co, 112 S. Meridian St., and boot shoe wholesaler McKee & Branham, 108 S. Meridian St., before a shifting wind from the north drove the flames south consuming the buildings housing chinaware wholesaler Pearson & Wetzell, 116 S. Meridian St., and wholesale clothier Lewis Dessar, 120 S. Meridian St. It was not until 3:00 a.m. that the great wholesale district fire was brought under control. The loss in buildings and stock was valued at $900,000 (2023: $31,000,000) with $503,000 (2023: $17,327,000) insured. While this conflagration was unprecedented, Indianapolis firefighters and citizens would face greater incendiary challenges in the future.
