ERIE FIRE LEVELS 2 BUSINESS BLDGS. ON PUBLIC SQUARE
Flames Also Damage Hotel; Loss Placed at $25,000 to $30,000
(Pictures on page 6 are not available to us)
Fire of undetermined origin, but believed to have started in the basement of the R. L. McBride barber shop, destroyed the Breed Building containing four stores and an auditorium, the Mahana building occupied by a tavern, damaged the Robert Lee hotel building and caused an estimated loss between $25,000 to $30,000 in a business block facing Marguerite park at Erie late Wednesday afternoon. Fire departments from Sterling, Prophetstown, Port Byron, and Geneseo assisted the Erie departments in fighting the worst conflagration in that city since a business block near the scene of the fire was destroyed July 3, 1897. The fire broke out shortly after 4.
The Breed block, which was destroyed, was erected in 1900. It was a two-story brick veneered front building. There were four store rooms. It was occupied by the William Bleitz meat market, the R.L. McBride barber shop and the Raymond Waite shoe store. The fourth room was used for storage. Dr. L.E. Nash occupied a four-room office suite on the second floor, and Robert Hill and his aged sister, Sadie, Mrs. Ethel Schreiner and Mrs. Esther Jones occupied apartments in the building. There was also a large room formerly used as a lodge hall.
The Mahana building, adjoining the Breed Block, was a one-story brick veneer building occupied by Arthur Baxter as a tavern. It was owned by Mrs. Lillie Mahana of Davenport. The rear part of the Breed block served as an auditorium and was used extensively until the erection of the Erie Community high school. The high school basketball games were also played in the auditorium and it was used as a dance hall, skating rink, theater building and general meeting place.
Both of these buildings soon were smoldering ruins. Very little was saved from the stores or apartments. The Breed building was not insured.
Hotel Damage About $2,500
The roof of the hotel building owned by Paul Carlson caught fire and only a hard fight by the fireman saved this structure. The fact that the building was insulated kept the flames from spreading rapidly and made it possible for the fireman to check and extinguish the blaze. Damage to the roof and interior was estimated at $2,500. It was fully covered by insurance. There was considerable damage to the Orin Burns café, which is located in the hotel building. There was some damage to the apartments occupied by Miss Hazel Payne, Harold Wheelock, and George Pelletier and others in the hotel building.
At one time the water supply ran low and it was necessary to cut off all streams except those playing on the hotel building.
Casein Co. Loss Is $9,000
Arden Reisenbigler, operator of the Erie Casein company, stated the he had over 500 bags of casein, each bag contained between 80 and 100 pounds, stored in a room in the Breed Building. He had just returned from Chicago Tuesday where he had sold the casein and would have had it removed in another day or two. He estimates his loss at $9,000 with no insurance.
Five thousand dollars in improvements had been made in the Breed building in the past few years. The loss of this structure is estimated at around $10,000 with no insurance. The fixtures in the Bleitz market had recently been removed. Raymond Waite suffered a loss of around $2,000 to his stock and equipment, including a $500 stock of shoes. He was not insured. Some of the stock and fixtures in the Baxter tavern was removed. Baxter had a small amount of insurance. Most of the equipment of the McBride barber shop was removed. There was a loss of around $150, covered by insurance.
Extensive Losses to Tenants
Robert Hill and sister lost practically everything they owned, including their clothing. They were taken to the Ervin Denison home. Dr. Nash saved most of her equipment and furnishings. Her loss is around $500 and is covered by insurance. Mrs. Schreiner was out of town at the time of the fire. She lost everything in her apartment including a new bedroom suite. Mrs. Esther Jones suffered a total loss, including a room stored full of household goods.
Miss Hazel Payne, an instructor in Erie high school, had been ill. She was removed to the home of Mrs. R.E. La Rue. The furnishings in the hotel apartments of Orin Burns, Harold Wheelock, George Pelletier and others were removed.
It will be necessary to redecorate the hotel building. This building was new in 1897 and was threatened by the fire that destroyed a number of business houses across the street from it that year. Heat from the burning buildings broke all the windows on the east side of the building at that time. The fact that it was of brick construction saved it in the fire Wednesday.
A few years ago a couple of frame buildings beyond the Baxter tavern were razed and this prevented a spread of the fire to the casein plant. Burning embers set fire to the roof of the James and Denison building on the other corner of the block which is used as a cheese factory. Embers also set fire to grass near the Fred Fenton home, two blocks from the scene. A small garage at the rear of the hotel building was badly damaged.
Erie residents expressed gratitude to members of the visiting fire departments, who not only saved the hotel building, but doubtless prevented a much greater spread of the fire.
The 60th anniversary will come and go this year, like many years past.
Another tick in a timeline that marches on, for bad or good. But for those who were there, for
those who remember what it smelled and felt like, they will remember the day the little town of
Erie changed.
It was March 23, 1943, just a little after 3:30 p.m. Kathleen Ellis remembers because she was just finishing balancing her cash drawer at the Erie Bank Exchange, a cooperative formed by merchants after the Depression closed the town's bank.
``I was walking across the street,'' Mrs. Ellis said. ``People were standing around talking. It didn't seem like much at first, a little smoke coming out of what might have been the basement. Then it really got going.''
``I was down shooting baskets at the school,'' Don Ellis, now her husband, said. ``The season was over. We were just shooting around when the coach came in and said there was a fire downtown. I changed shoes, hopped on my bicycle and rode. It just seemed to get worse. The fire department was there but they couldn't do much with what they had. It still gives me goosebumps.''
By the time it was over, Erie had lost about a third of its business district, Mr. Ellis said. The Breed Block, built in 1900, was destroyed. It housed a community center, meat cutter, shoe store, store house, and adjourning tavern.
The community center was a large hall where, until the old Erie High School was built in 1931, the school played its basketball games and the community held Saturday night dances.
Mrs. Ellis sent her cousin on Mr. Ellis' bicycle to retrieve her Browning 616 camera from her mother's home.
``That was a good camera,'' she said. ``It had that accordion fold out on the front. I still have it, but you can't find film for them anymore.''
The old black and white pictures show a chronology of the downtown destruction. Fire departments from Prophetstown, Geneseo and Sterling were called to aid the outmanned Erie department.
``At one point, I think it was after the Sterling fire chief showed up, they just gave up on fighting the fire and concentrated their hoses on the neighboring hotel,'' Mr. Ellis said.
``I think all we had was a ground tank. They could only pour water on the flames as fast as they could pump it out of the ground. I was just a kid and ended up pulling hose for them.''
R.L. ``Shorty'' McBride's barbershop was lost in the flames. Residents dashed into buildings to recover barber chairs, cash register and whatever equipment they could before flames forced them back.
Mrs. Ellis' pictures show an ornate cash register sitting in a high-backed barber chair. In the distance, a thin stream of water is engulfed by gray-black smoke.
``Erie's a small town,'' Mrs. Ellis said while looking through the pictures. ``When something like this happens, I think just about the whole town turns out. Of course, there's not too many alive still.''
Pictures show a group of women hugging each other as the smoke and flames spread further. There were apartments above the business, but no one was inside when the fire started.
``People were upset,'' Mrs. Ellis said. ``Nobody was running around pulling their hair out. I don't think people got as emotional back then.''
George and Marie Pelletier were recently married and living in a small apartment in the Robert Lee Hotel, next to the Breed Block building. Mrs. Pelletier was home when the fire started and remembers firefighters coming to the door, telling her to grab what she wanted to save and get out.
``They carried what furniture we had out into the street,'' Mrs. Pelletier said. ``The windows burned, our drapes burned and whatever else we had left in there, but the building didn't burn.''
Mr. Pelletier, a young insurance agent, was out of town when the fire started. He remembers driving past charred and burning wood, blowing down the street six or seven blocks away from the fire.
``It was a pretty scary time,'' he said. ``That building went just like tinder. It had a brick veneer, but it was just a two-story wood frame. It was a large building, probably better than a half a block long.
``I remember I made a call on a farmhouse on the way out of town that afternoon and seeing smoke. But in those days, smoke could have been from any one of a number of sources. I didn't think about it until I got home.''
Mrs. Pelletier said their salvaged furniture was moved to her parents' home in Erie. Mr. Pelletier remembers searching for his young wife, but didn't recall where he found her.
``Everything was chaos,'' he said. ``This is a small town and that was a huge fire.''
Mrs. Ellis took what the family considers the ``famous'' picture of the fire, showing the upper-brick portion of the building peeling back onto itself. She sold 50 to 60 sets of the pictures, but the one everyone wanted and the one that appeared on a commemorative plate of the town's history was that ``famous'' picture.
``I was standing there with the camera in front of my face, and Don and my cousin were watching,'' she said. ``They yelled `now' as the building began to come down.''
The fire burned well into the afternoon, and pictures the next day show a hole, still smoldering. William Bleitz's meat market was a total loss and he never reopened it. Raymond Waite lost his shoe store and inventory in the blaze and never reopened.
A cause never was determined, as far as Mr. Ellis remembers, but they thought it started in a basement furnace.
Erie never quite bounced back. A movie theater has been built and since torn down in the same place where the Breed building stood.
``I remember that Sterling fire chief telling the guys to quit putting water on the flames and to concentrate their streams on the adjoining Robert Lee hotel,'' Mr. Ellis remembers. ``That building's still standing today.''
Small towns are odd. Their timelines stretch out, despite the bad or good. Usually, change comes slow and time melts the details. Occasionally, it comes fast, searing history in pictures and pages, and always memories. ``I think about that day,'' Mr. Ellis said. ``I still get the goosebumps.''
