By Robert Laurence
As the Great Fire swept north and south, east and west, the New
York Herald rushed out an extra carrying the following prediction: "NEW
YORK IS SET BACK TWENTY YEARS."
James Gordon Bennett reported in that edition of December 18, 1835:
"Philadelphia and Boston will surge ahead of us . . ."
Bennett, well on his way to making his penny newspaper fortune, was not
yet given to extreme pronouncements. He had revolutionized journalism with
his "news not views" formula, and the great editor-publisher needed only
to look out his window to believe that his statement was not an opinion
but a fact.
The fire, visible for a distance of one hundred miles, seemed destined to
destroy the entire city. It was America's first major disaster and even
before it reached its height, had proved the most devastating holocaust
since the Great London Fire of 1666. From its humble beginnings the blaze
had grown to a height and intensity capable of wiping out every building
in New York and reducing what had been America's center of trade since
1797 to no more than an island of ashes.
On the night before, long after downtown merchants closed their shops, the
fire has lashed out at New York's business district.
Today's
financial center, then a conglomeration of small buildings, was New York's
most densely populated area and nearly all of Gotham's 250,000 would be
affected by the Great Fire; but only one fire company responded to the
initial alarm from Merchant Street, now Hanover and Pearl, arriving at
Comstock-Andrew's drygoods store where a private watchman awaited them.
Approaching the scene, firemen griped about the wind, the 17 below zero
cold, the snow-laden streets, hardly realizing how insurmountable these
obstacles would be.
Soon the firemen became acutely aware of the problems facing them. They
got to Comstock-Andrews before the fire there had made much headway, but
the store, housed in a five-story building on a narrow inaccessible
street, proved difficult to reach. The firefighters could not even
maneuver their hand engines - which only amounted to small pumps and tanks
of water on wheels - and the fire was already conspiring with nature. What
little water the firemen did get on the flames was swept back in their
faces by gale-force winds. Engine hoses, frozen after two fires the
previous day, had to be smashed against concrete before they were cleared
of ice. Finally, the city water supply, derived mainly from cisterns,
proved insufficient.
It was as if the sun had risen at midnight. Firemen stood by helplessly,
up to their knees in snow, the fire growing so intense that they could do
nothing but sound a second alarm. Engines arrived at the scene from every
district and by the time a third and fourth alarm had been sounded, all 64
New York companies were present. Although expert firemen could work their
hand pumps 150 strokes a minute, no man could stay at the pumps much more
than 15 seconds at a time and soon well over a thousand men were fighting
the blaze. Church and fire bells roused the slumbering city. Throughout
New York, doors could be heard opening and banging shut as householders
rushed through the streets to help the red-shirted firemen.
There seemed to be only one hope now: get engines and bucket brigades down
to the Hudson River, chop through a foot of ice and establish a pumper
relay from the Hudson to Comstock-Andrews. Volunteer firemen, aided by
conscientious citizens, some attired in night-clothes or evening dress,
passed ice-filled buckets toward the sibilant flames.
But the fire and nature "derided the efforts of man," as one merchant put
it. The flames were too intense for water now and in less than an hour far
distant buildings were ablaze, the high northwest winds sowing sparks and
embers of destruction. The fire defied all reason, divisions making
progress into the wind and others charging against it, flaring out in all
directions. It seemed senseless to fight the blaze. Firemen arrived from
Jersey City, Newark, and word came in that five companies were on the way
from Philadelphia - by foot because the connecting railroad was
incomplete. But those at the scene realized the five-hundred companies
couldn"t put out the fire.
From Wall Street to the East River only solitary buildings were untouched.
The vertical construction of the city, the myriad flimsy warehouses, made
excellent fuel for the flames, but even stone structures like the
Merchants Exchange, which contained the Post Office, became seething
cauldrons. Most of the city banks, their reserves protected by no
fireproof vaults, were burning to the ground. One after another,
warehouses packed with costly merchandise went up like cellophane, their
skeletons writhing and crumbling in the wind. "I cannot now talk of
streets," Bennett wrote of the fire at this point, "for all sites are
buried in ruins and smoking bricks." Forty to fifty buildings went ablaze
at the same time and firemen gave up fighting the blaze, cast down their
hoses and entered stores trying to rescue valuable merchandise. Even here
they were largely unsuccessful, for they underestimated the fire's
strength and did not move goods far enough away.
Only two courses of action remained to the firefighters: wet down
buildings in the fire's path and create a firebank by blowing up other
structures. The former action was taken immediately but it was at best a
Fabian tactic. Gunpowder was needed to establish a permanent firebreak and
since none was to be had in the city, a group of volunteers, led by
Captain John Mix, went across the river to obtain a supply at the Brooklyn
Navy Yard. Captain Mix's party launched their open boat into the swift
East River tide. Heading into a heavy gale, they glanced back at the city
and tried to increase their speed.
By daybreak the volunteers had not yet returned. "There is no telling when
the fire will be stopped . . . The flames are extending . . .," proclaimed
the New York Courier in an early morning extra; and just as the edition
went on the streets, the Courier office itself was engulfed in flames.
The Courier issued another extra advising the public that they were not
moving out, initiating a series of strange occurrences. Panic seemed to
have driven people temporarily insane and some destroyed valuable
possessions, claiming that they were saving them from the fire. Ice-coated
citizens thawed out next to huge bonfires made with rich silks and
furniture. Author Asa Green later reported that "a military character, now
a hero in Texas, proposed to blow up the City Hall, standing alone in the
Park, to stop the flames below Wall Street, at half a mile distance." A
thousand firemen from Baltimore and Philadelphia got all the way to Perth
Amboy only to be stranded there in congested traffic. Vandals set more
fires and widespread looting did not cease until the constabulary was
ordered to shoot to kill - and then not before an irate crowd had lynched
one plunderer. Reports circulated throughout neighboring sta*****hat the
entire city and all its inhabitants had been destroyed.
The fire played strange tricks too. A much valued statue of Alexander
Hamilton, removed from its pedestal in the Merchant's Exchange, had been
carried all the way to the doorway when the roof fell in and destroyed it.
An old sycamore tree at the corner of Williams Street remained untouched
although the flames devoured all the buildings surrounding it.
Finally, at about the time of Bennett's dire prediction, the gunpowder
from the Brooklyn Navy Yard arrived. Huge smoke clouds hung over the city
and the fire was increasing in force as the demolition party prepared
their charges. Through the flames they went, advancing upon the buildings
to be destroyed, carrying kegs and barrels of gunpowder beneath blankets
and jackets. Fingers of fire reached toward them and sparks showered them.
Placing the gunpowder beneath a group of buildings directly ahead of the
flames, they turned and ran just as the charge was ready to go off.
The powder exploded, a great roar heard throughout the city. Buildings
broke apart and fell to the ground, leaving a great open space which was
too wide for the flames to leap across.
What remained of the city was saved. The fire was bounded now by the river
on the east and by firebreaks on all other sides, and for the first time
in two days New Yorkers had cause to rejoice. The city would burn and
smolder for another twenty hours, but they had halted its progress. The
fire would leave only charred ruins where old Dutch New York once stood,
but they had fought bravely and had saved much.
"It is not probable," the Courier stated a few days later in discussing
the Great Fire, "that the destruction of any city in the world of equal
extent would have involved a greater destruction of capital or ruined the
fortunes of a greater number of men."
A committee appointed to investigate the fire carefully estimated that
nearly 700 stores, homes and public buildings had been destroyed and fixed
damages at approximately twenty million dollars. Thirteen acres of
buildings had been destroyed and the loss amounted to perhaps one-tenth of
the city's real and personal property. Six hundred firms went out of
business. Almost every insurance company went bankrupt and few could think
of paying insurance, so many merchants ruined that Daniel Webster brought
out a bill before Congress for their relief.
And yet James Gordon Bennett's black-bordered prediction did not come
true. Rather than causing New York to fall twenty years behind the rest of
America,, the Great Fire proved a stimulus to progress. Commerce expanded
northward and ironically the speculation in real estate after the fire was
so lively that it was said to contribute to the Panic of 1837. The
Merchants Exchange was rebuilt. Soon new building codes were adopted,
stricter fire regulations were enforced, firemen were salaried instead of
serving for lifetime draft and jury exemptions. The disaster pointed the
way to better housing, running water from a newly-constructed Croton
Reservoir in 1842 and, eventually, improved firefighting equipment and
modern municipal service departments.
New York never again experienced a fire comparable to the Great Fire of
1835. Within seven years New York was a greater city than it had been and
soon became the financial capital of the world.