New York's Twin Tenement Tragedies...The Tragedies That Gave Us Fire Escapes

New York's Twin Tenement Tragedies

Feb 2nd  /March 28th, 1860
The Tragedies That Gave Us Fire Escapes

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Normally, I don't kick a blog post off with any kind of 'Pre-note', but, as we all know, 2020 was anything but a normal year. The game plan was, originally, to have this one finished and posted around last April. Then we had a major personnel problem at work, and...well, lets just say  '2020 Happened'. For about 8 months or so I barely got to even look at my blog, much less actually work on it. So, as a result, this became the second blog post that took over a year to complete, and 2020 (Somehow unsurprisingly) became what, hopefully, will be the only year without a post.

But it's (Finally) finished now...hopefully. As always, I hope I made it enjoyable and informative. And now (FINALLY!!) on to how we got Fire Escapes.

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If you live or work in a city, and frequent an area with lots of older, multi-story buildings, how often do you notice...or even care...whether the buildings you are walking or driving past have fire escapes? They're there, we know that they're there, we see  them...but we just don't notice  them.  Like trees, telephone poles, and 7-11 Stores, they just kind of blend in with the scenery. 

They're there...but do we see them?

Unnoticed and ignored though they may be by the general public, fire escapes become a huge part of life to those who live in the buildings they're installed on. For well over a century they've been used as patios, romantic meeting places, outside storage, clothes lines, and a quick way for teenage couples and BFFs to get to and from each other's apartments. The building residents are, however,  far from the only people who've found uses for these iron stairways.

For well over a century the criminal element has made good use of them, both as a means to gain access to an apartment where an unsavory deed is to be committed as well as a quick egress route if their diabolical deed goes undiscovered, and a quick escape route if they're caught in the act.

Hollywood has also made good use of fire escapes, making them often iconic elements of both the big and small screen. Rear Window. West Side Story. Breakfast At Tiffany's, and a score or so more movies featured iconic scenes filmed on a fire escape. On the Small Screen, meanwhile, numerous sit-com episodes...from a hilarious episode or two of Friends to the opening sequences of both Boy Meets World and it's Disney reboot Girl Meets World...had that iconic iron exterior stairway as a key element. On the dramatic side of TV, there have been way more than a few well choreographed and drama-filled police procedural chase scenes and gun fights filmed on fire escapes.

Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in their iconic fire escape scene from the equally iconic film, West Side Story. Fire escapes have played key roles in hundreds of movies and TV shows, and this particular scene is very likely the most famous and best known of the bunch

Note that in none of these  examples...real-life or cinematic...were these fire escapes actually being used as, well, a fire escape. You know, to escape from a fire. Sometimes I think people have actually forgotten that their original and primary function was to allow the upper floor occupants of a multi-story building to exit quickly and safety in event of fire by allowing them to bypass the fire floor as well as the heat and smoke filled hallways and stairways above the fire. Once fire escapes became a legislated part of multi-story building construction and took on the form that became so familiar to everyone, they generally did exactly what they were designed to do, saving more than a few lives...
both civilians and firefighters...while they were at it. (Of course, they also had some drawbacks as well...we'll take a look at these, as well as some of the benefits when we discuss their history further along in this, er, 'learned tome')

While pretty much every three to ten or so story building built the late 19th and early 20th century had a fire escape, the building most often associated with them is the classic New York Tenement. Many people, in fact, think that the two were developed at about the same time, but that's not the way it happened. In fact, the multi-story tenement predated the fire escape by about 40 years, with the first few multistory tenements going up in the mid 1820s.

The first major tenement building boom hit in the 1840s and 1850s, a good decade or two before the first fire escapes appeared on buildings. And...spoiler alert...when fire escapes were finally installed on tenements, building owners didn't install them out of the goodness of their hearts and/or a desire to ensure the safety of their tenants. Surprising no one at all, 'cost' had everything to do with the lack of fire safety in these early apartment buildings, and as always when it became a question of cost versus safety, pulling a ticked off tiger's teeth would have been easier than getting building owners to spend the money to actually install fire escapes.

All but inevitably, it took a tragedy or two to cause those iron stairways to start growing on the walls of multi-story, multi-family dwellings, and then only after they were legislated into existence. Interestingly, it took far longer than you might think for a major loss of life fire to occur in one of these buildings, but when one did occur...well that's just it. There wasn't just one major loss of life fire, there were two, about three miles and just a few days shy of two months apart. And to understand those two fires, we first have to look at a quick pocket history of the New York tenement

The forerunners of those iconic tenements began popping up in the mid 1820s, but we can thank a potato famine and the people who would bring us green beer, pizza and, ultimately, Ferraris, for the huge influx of immigrants that occurred during the 1840s and 1850s. Many of them came from Ireland and Italy, and all of them had to be housed somewhere.

Know that old cartoon meme, where the pupils of a greedy character's eyes turn to dollar signs? This is pretty much what happened with a lot of New York City property owners as they watched this flood of immigrants fill New York City  (Which, By The Way, included only Manhattan back then) from the Hudson River to the East River and from Spuyten Duyvil Creek to The Battery.

So, they just built a bunch of big apartment buildings and rented apartments out to these new immigrants, right? Ahh, not so fast...see our budding landlords faced a problem. When the original New York City street grid was laid out, building lots were also laid out, with each lot measuring 100' long by 25 feet wide, severely limiting the square footage of these new buildings (And of the apartments there with-in). It quickly became obvious to land owners that, in order to maximize profits, they were going to have to build up rather than out...so that's exactly what they did.

The apartment buildings that resulted were among the first tenements...but they were nothing like the tenements we see in documentaries and movies set in the Big Apple. These first tenements were wooden, three or four stories tall, and generally nasty, They usually measured about fifteen by thirty or so feet, with windows only at front and rear and from two to four tiny apartments per floor. Sanitary facilities consisted of a multi-hole outhouse at the rear of the building. These very rudimentary toilet facilities, by the way, had a truly nasty tendency to overflow and send raw sewage streaming into the first floor of the building during heavy rains.  The odor wafting from the things on a hot, steamy summer day pretty much defies either description or imagination.

There was no heat, no insulation, no plumbing, and stairways were generally only three feet wide, feeding into hallways on each floor that were only only slightly wider. Those stairways, BTW, provided the only exit from the building.

Within a few years some improvements were made...but they were more to the building owner's benefit rather than the tenants' benefit. Brick exterior walls were substituted for wood, dimensions increased to 50 feet long by 25 feet wide, and a couple of stories were added to their height, with many of them reaching five and six stories.

The first floor of many of these buildings was often occupied by some type of store (Then as now, a commercial occupancy would bring far higher rents than an apartment, meaning even more profit for the landlord). Each floor above the first floor had four two room apartments. The main room of each apartment...a 12x12 or so multi-function room that served as living room, kitchen, and dining room...had a window or two, looking out on either the street or the rear yard (The rear apartments had a lovely view of the communal out-house that was still the building's sole...er...sanitary system). The single 10x8 foot bedroom was windowless, and served as the entire family's sleeping quarters, no matter how many may have been in the family.

The main improvement, as I noted above, was to the building owner's bank account as he could stuff more families into each lot he owned. Several landlords utilized as much of the 100 x 25 foot lot as possible by adding a rear tenement, a second building in the rear yard of the first, with exactly half the square footage and the same number of floors as the original building. These smaller 'rear tenements ' had two two room apartments per floor...eight to twelve more sources of income on the same 100x25 foot lot, depending on the height of the building.

Though these brick tenements may have looked a little better than the older wooden tenements, living conditions in the tiny apartments were just as horrible. The buildings were ovens in the summer and ice boxes in the winter. And, as for those outhouses, as many as twenty four  families...thirty two if there was a rear tenement...had to share a single three or four hole outhouse that quickly blew past nauseating and disgusting to become putrid.

Fire safety wasn't even given a passing glance. Stairways were still only three feet wide, the interiors of the buildings were only slightly less combustible than a cardboard box, lighting was provided by candles and /or oil lamps, and fire escapes just plain long didn't exist. 

Those narrow stairways and hallways were unlighted, meaning they were shadowy caverns at best, even on sunny days. At night, it was so dark that you had to inch your way up or down steps, feeling for each step with your toes. We're talking you can't see your hand in front of your face even if you were touching your nose dark.  Going down those steps would be dangerous under normal conditions.  Now imagine trying to descend them if that same stairwell was chock-full of heat and smoke.

Conditions in these firetraps didn't improve any, despite several studies and newspaper articles meant to expose the deplorable conditions that the immigrants were living in. Those conditions were quickly coming to a head. By 1860, New York City was already the nation's most populous city and had snagged the 'Most  Crowded City In The Country' award without even breaking a sweat. As I noted above, before 1898, New York City consisted of only Manhattan Island, and as the 19th Century's seventh decade kicked off, New York's population had swelled to just shy of 815,000, all of them stuffed into Manhattan Island's 22.8 square miles, jamming nearly 35,690 people into every one of those square miles. jamming nearly 35,690 people into every one of those square miles. And a huge percentage of those people lived in the thousands of sub-par tenements that had been built over the past decade and a half or so.

These buildings were all but built to burn, so there had obviously been more than a few fires in them, and there had probably been some fatalities as well, but what really amazes me is the fact that a major loss of life... ten or more...had never occurred when one of these tender boxes lit off at Oh Dark Hundred. Apparently luck had been shining on the tenement dwellers of New York, fire-fatality wise at any rate, over the last two decades or so. 

Unfortunately, that good luck came to a sliding, screeching stop in February and March of 1860,
 when at least thirty people died in a pair of tenement fires...and we're obviously here to take a look at those two fires, but first we need to take a look at the fire department that would have responded to them.

As you can likely well imagine, the New York Fire Department of 1860...160 years ago...was nothing like the present day F.D.N.Y. For one thing, it was an all-volunteer department, and wouldn't become a paid department for another five years. The then New York Fire Department boasted fifty engine companies, sixty or so hose companies, and seventeen ladder companies. All but one of the rigs were hand-pulled to incident scenes, and the great majority of the engines were hand-pumped rigs, though there were a few steamers in service by then. The steamers, BTW, were also hand-drawn with a single exception, that exception being a single self propelled steamer. 

None of the ladder rigs had aerial ladders...the turn table mounted aerial ladder wouldn't become common for a bit over two decades. All of the ladders were hand raised, including the big 40 footers that were the longest ladders in the department. 

These 138 companies were loosely organized under a central commission with a salaried Chief Engineer (What we call the 'Chief of Department today) who was elected from the ranks of the department.

The guys received alarms via citywide bells that rang the number of the fire district...there were eight districts...where the fire was located. I'm making an assumption here, but a citizen who discovered a fire had to run to the nearest bell tower or possibly fire or police station to turn in the alarm. There was a rudimentary telegraph system connecting the various bell towers, possibly the police stations, and a few of the fire stations.

The firehouses doubled as social clubs for their members, but most also had bunk rooms, and by 1860...and well before, in fact...duty crews slept at the stations most nights to ensure a quick turn-out on night calls. (We'll talk about this in a little bit in 'Notes)' The 'Bunking In' system actually worked fairly well, but there were problems. There were some...er...spirited rivalries between companies, and the occasional fight broke out on scene or enroute over who got to a hydrant first/ who would get first water on the fire, etc, to the oint that the actual reason they were there in the first place...that'd be the fire...kind of got forgotten in all of the excitement. Thing is, it often wasn't the firefighters themselves involved in these fights, but rather, the 'runners'...hangers-on who ran with the companies and who tended to be ruffians and hooligans and such...who caused the problems.

Don't let these problems give you the wrong idea...the firefighters of the old Volunteer Department were every bit as courageous and gung-ho as the modern firefighter is today, and they saved countless lives and, yes, saved  a few buildings if they could get to the scene early and get water on the fire quickly...but there were also more then a few occasions where they lost entire blocks in a fire that would have been little more than a single alarm working fire involving a floor or two of a single building even ten years later, much less today.

The problem  (OK...one of the problems) was those hand-pulled, hand pumped engines. I'm not going to call them primitive, because for their day, they really weren't. There were actually pretty sophisticated as well as beautiful rigs. There was just a very definite limit to their capacity. The biggest ones could flow between 300 and 400 gallons per minute, and that only for a short period of time. Remember, their crew was providing the motive power, and the 'motive power' quickly got tired, meaning crews on the 'brakes', as the handles that operated the pumps were called, had to be switched out often if they wanted to pump at full capacity. This also meant that the engines required huge crews. 

Also there were very few of these big 3-400 GPM 'Class 1' pumpers. Most were class 2 (around 200 gallons per minute ) or class 3 (Around 150 gallons per minute) rigs. Being smaller in capacity didn't make working them any less exhausting for the guys manning them. Their crews...usually ten men to a side manning the brakes...also had to switch off frequently to pump the rig at it's full capacity.

A restored New York style 'Hand Tub' from about 1855. The 'Brakes'...handles that operated the pump...were side-mounted on the New York style rigs.  The brakes are shown here folded in the traveling position, once they arrive at a scene, the brakes would be folded down, and the crew...generally about ten men per side...would pump them up and down briskly...make that rapidly...to pump water through a hose line connected to the discharge on the side of the rig. The water was directed onto the fire through big, brass or nickel plated straight tip play-pipe-style nozzles....one can be seen mounted on this rig just above the rear wheels. Rigs such as these were capable of either drafting from a water source such as a pond or cistern, or being supplied by a hydrant...the intake is visible on the front of the rig. A good crew could get around 150 GPM out of a rig this size, but one twenty man crew couldn't keep that pace up but for a very few minutes. This meant that engines required huge crews so the twenty man crews manning the brakes could be switched out every few minutes in order to keep water flowing. OH...BTW...remember, these guys had to pump the rig after hand-pulling it to the fire.

Note the beautiful paintwork and striping, as well as the murals...Rigs during this era were elaborately decorated and beautifully detailed , and their crews took an immense amount of pride in both their rig's appearance and performance, and weekly work details (Usually on Saturdays) were held to keep the rigs maintained and the fire house clean. This tradition...both pride in the equipment and house, and work details to maintain and clean the rigs. equipment, and house...carries on in volunteer fire companies in the U.S. to this very day.

There were a few steamers in service by 1860, all but one of them was also hand-pulled, and that one exception was a big self-propelled steamer that was said to be so slow and cumbersome that the hand engines could generally beat it to the scene. The steamers were about the same capacity as the class one hand pumpers...around 300-400 GPM...but the big difference, of course, was the fact that they could pump at full capacity as long as there was fuel for the firebox. This would make a big difference at both of the fires I'm writing about in this post.

Almost all of the 'New York' style hand engines had hose reels with 200 feet of 2.5 inch hose on them, and almost every engine company also ran a small two wheeled 'jumper' hose reel that could be either hand pulled or hitched to a tow hook on the rear of the engine. These little rigs usually carried anywhere between 400 and 600 feet of hose, and were called 'Jumpers because their size and relatively light weight allowed them to be 'jumped' over curbs and obstacles.  The reels on the engine and jumper allowed the engine  companies to lay in to the scene...if the hydrant was close enough...and get at least a couple of lines in service as soon as they could get water without having to wait for a hose company to get on scene.

The department, as noted above, also had 60 or so dedicated hose companies. The hose wagons were generally four wheeled carts with a single hose reel carrying from 600-1000 feet of hose. All of the hose was 2 1/2 inch hose, and in 1860 all of it would have been riveted leather hose. The members of the hose companies were likely tasked with stretching the attack lines and any additional lines that were needed., and I believe they also actually made the fire attack, assisted by the crews of the engines who weren't manning the 'brakes'.

A pair of hand drawn hose wagons from the NYFD Volunteer era (And yes, NYFD is the correct way to write it for the volunteer era. The FDNY, or the Fire Department of New York didn't come along until a few years after the salaried department took over)

Hose wagons were always hose reels during this era. The hose was made of leather, which couldn't be flat-packed like cotton jacketed rubber lined hose, which was introduced in the mid 1870s, and didn't gain wide acceptance until about the early to mid 1880s.  These rigs are just as elaborately decorated as the engines. 

Side view of a hand drawn hose wagon. The front of the rig is to the right of the frame, where the tongue is visible. The tactics used upon arriving at a scene were actually very similar to those used today. The crew of the hose wagon would pull the first section off of the reel and snub it around the barrel of the hydrant, the the crew would pull the rig forward, unreeling hose as they headed for the fire.  At the fire building, some extra line would be pulled off, then it would be 'broken' at a coupling, and a nozzle would be attached. Meanwhile the engine would connect to the hydrant ('Take The Hydrant'), connect to the line off of the hose wagon, and pump water to the crew on the nozzle. This tactic is called a 'Straight Lay', and it's been around since the hydrant was invented, and will likely be around long after all of us are gone.

A restored hand drawn ladder truck.  These were very simple rigs...simply a long, open frame wagon with racks for several ladders, up to 40 feet in length, and hooks beneath the ladder racks, for buckets...The buckets carried by the New York volunteer era ladder companies were a throw back to the days when bucket brigades were the only way to put water on the fire. Ladder wagons were among the first wheeled fire rigs in use, BTW, and didn't change greatly until horse drawn rigs came along in the 1860s, changing further...and becoming closer in appearance and operation to their modern descendants...when turntable mounted aerial ladders were developed in the 1880s. 

 This actually a rear three quarter view. This rig's front end, with the tongue and tow-ropes is to the left of the frame. The 'tongue' visible on the right side of the frame is actually a tiller attached to the rear wheels, which are steerable, to assist in getting the rig around tight corners. This exact theory exists to this very day, with the tillerman steering the wheels of the trailer of that most exclusively American of fire rigs, the tractor-drawn aerial ladder, .

 Ladder rigs were long, open frame wagons carrying several ladders of various lengths. All of these rigs had a rear tiller...actually a second tongue attached to the also steerable rear axle...as well as the tongue and ropes at the front used to pull the rigs to the fire. The tiller, of course, was used to help steer the rig around corners on the narrow streets of the day, foreshadowing that most American of fire rigs, the tractor drawn aerial ladder.

Just shy of 2000 firefighters ran around 350 actual working fires every year, along with around 150 'other' alarms. (That's for the entire department, BTW...not for just any one single company.)

An 1860-vintage map of Manhattan, with the areas in the detail maps for the two fires marked. I wish I could have found a better map...this was the only one I could find that was large enough for street names, etc. to be readable, and covered enough of Manhattan to show both fire scene locations. This one was still close...it stops at 46th Street.

Note the railway lines indicated on the map. Most of not all of the rail lines in Manhattan were horse drawn street cars. Electric street railroads (Better known as Trolley cars) wouldn't appear for nearly three decades. 

Detail map of the area surrounding the Elm Street fire scene, with the fire location and the locations of the companies mentioned in the post indicated. Lady Washington Engine 40 was literally right on top of the scene! the companies mentioned, and indicated on the map, were only a small fraction of the companies that actually responded to the scene.

This was the department protecting the citizens of New York City as the sun slid down behind the roof-tops on the cold night of February 2nd, 1860. By 7 PM that chilly Thursday evening, most of the city was winding down. The majority of businesses had closed for the day, families were beginning to turn in for the night, and in the volunteer fire houses in the city, the crews who were staying overnight were gathered in the station lounges discussing local and world events, telling war stories, playing cards, and generally killing time as they waited for an alarm. It wouldn't surprise me if a couple of the guys, with shiver-producing memories of fighting fires in cold weather running through their heads, commented that they hoped the bells stayed silent that evening.

Gas streetlights had been on for a couple of hours by then, casting circles of soft orange light around their poles, while that same glow lit the windows of larger businesses and of residences in the more affluent areas of the city...but not of the six story brick tenement at 142 Elm Street (Today's Lafayette Street).

That early in the evening there were likely a few candles burning in the twenty occupied apartments on the second through sixth floors, but no gas lights...as noted above gas lighting was not one of the amenities included with the  apartments.

The building wasn't entirely without heat...the apartments did have fireplaces in the front rooms, as well as cook stoves, and coal fires were likely burning in at least some of the fireplaces,  pumping coal smoke through the common chimneys that served each stack of six apartments and maybe barely warming the sharp chill inside the tiny flats. These fireplaces were far more effective at adding to the sulfurous cloud of coal smoke that hung over the city than they were at actually heating the iceboxes that the occupants called home.

This is similar to the way each floor of the Elm Street building was laid out...four two room apartments with the narrow public hallway and stairway in the center of the building. There was a fireplace in each of the combination sitting room-kitchens, and the entire family shared the single bedroom. These buildings were thrown up quick and cheap and were uninsulated, making them ovens in the summer, and freezers in the winter. The fireplaces and cook stoves provided the only source of heat.  The was also no lighting other than candles or oil lamps, so the stairways were pitch black at night (And not much better during the day). As the residents of the building at 142 Elm Street discovered, these buildings were also fire traps.

All of these apartments were two room apartments with a single bedroom for the entire family, meaning that some of these bedrooms had ten people sleeping in them, often in a single bed. All of those people in a single bed did help keep everyone warm in the all but unheated building, but still couldn't have been fun. By 7:30 or so, most of the kids had probably already gone to bed. There wasn't much to do in a barely lighted, barely heated apartment on a winter evening, and huddling in bed beneath a heavy comforter at least gave the impression of warming them up a little. But some of the building's occupants...parents and older kids...were still awake between 7:30 and 8:00 PM, when someone possibly said 'Mom...Dad...I think I smell smoke...'

The first floor of the tenement was divided into a pair of stores...a small grocery on the south side, and a bakery on the north...with the public entrance for the stairway that led to the apartments between the two stores. The building also had a basement...also likely served by the public stairway... that was used as storage by both first floor businesses, and the bakery had a large supply of hay stored in it's section of the basement. Sometime between 7 PM and 8 PM that evening, a fire started in the bakery's basement and quickly extended to that hay, filling first the basement, then the public hallway with heavy smoke that rolled into the narrow stairway and surged upward as if it was going up a chimney.

This was the smoke one of the older kids may have told their parents they smelled, and by the time they smelled it, it was already too late. Their parents may have even smelled the smoke themselves though they couldn't see it because of the lack of light in the apartments. But they may not have worried about it...at first. You have to remember all they had for light were candles  and oil lamps, and between them and a draft occasionally shoving some smoke into the room as it blew down the common chimney serving the apartments' fireplaces, seeing...or smelling...a bit of smoke hanging in the room wasn't at all unusual. 

So no one was worried at first. Until heavy smoke pushed into the rooms, burning everyone's eyes and sending their lungs into spasm. One of the apartment's occupants may have opened the door to the hallway, and let hell into the room as heat and dark, toxic smoke instantly filled the room from floor to ceiling. By the time that happened, it was beyond too late.

The stairwell was already stuffed with smoke before the fire really got rolling...hay is notorious for producing heavy smoke, especially when it's smoldering...but then the hay lit up,  and flames quickly rose to the basement's wooden ceiling...actually the underside of the first floor's flooring...and started rolling across it, heating everything in the room until it flashed over, sending flames surging up the stairs into the both the public hallway and the stairwell, cutting off escape well before most of the occupants even knew the building was on fire.

The heavy smoke would have quickly filled the building from the top down, surging up the stairwell and spreading across the upper part of the building, first rolling into the sixth floor apartments almost before the occupants could react, then 'mushrooming' and spreading downward,  quickly charging the entire building with smoke. As this was happening, flames burned through the floor of the bakery, rising to and rolling across the ceiling and heating the interior of the small store until it, too, flashed over, blowing the bakery's front windows out and allowing flames to bend upward into the night sky, lighting Elm Street up like noontime.

An engraving of the Elm Street Fire, from 'Our Firemen:The History Of The New York Fire Departments From 1609 to 1887. I believe this same engraving appeared in the New York Times. This isn't entirely accurate, but it's still a good representation. People had already started jumping before fire department arrived on scene, but firefighters still managed to make some pretty spectacular rescues in the fire's early stages. Sadly, they weren't able to rescue at least 20 residents.

Most of the occupants of those sixth floor apartments may have died almost before they knew anything was wrong, suffocating in their beds as the smoke mushroomed across the top of the building, but a few woke up to find their apartments filling with smoke. They stumbled out into the hallway to find they couldn't make it down the stairs and...somehow...climbed a ladder up to a roof scuttle, and dragged themselves out onto the roof. The problem was, 142 Elm was unusual as it wasn't built in a row of tenements...it was a single six story building in the middle of a block of two and three story storefronts.  Once they got to the roof, they had no way down, other than to jump.

The occupants of the lower floors had time to either escape or die horrible deaths as they tried to. The stairwell was already stuffed with smoke and flames when one of them gathered their family and tried to make it out the door and down, only to be chased back inside as a dark, noxious, hot wall of poisonous death boiled into the room. The ones who didn't breath in a lung full of super heated air and collapse to the floor in agony did the only thing they could do...they headed for the windows and threw the sashes open. But they faced the exact same problem as the sixth floor residents who were now trapped on the roof...they had no way out of the building now other than jumping from the windows.

 Most of the building's second floor residents would make it out by doing just that. A family of five named Wise would be the sad exception. The Wises lived in one of the front second floor apartments...probably the one over the grocery store...and the fire was probably well advanced when they became aware of it, because only the father and a 3 year old child made it out.

Wise may, in fact, have been one of the first people to become aware of the fire, but it was already too late when he and his family sprung out of bed as their apartment filled with thick, nasty smelling smoke. They didn't have time to dress, so they bolted from the bedroom still wearing their night clothes. Mr. Wise scooped up his youngest child...a three year old boy...and they ran for the door to the hallway, yanking it open, then cowering back as a storm surge of dark, super-heated smoke rolled in on top of them. Fire rolled in through the door and started running the ceiling as he turned and ran for the front window, yelling for the rest of the family to follow him as he threw it open.

When Wise threw the window open it created a draft that pulled the flames already rolling across the ceiling towards it, giving the five Wises only seconds to make it out. Wise held his son against him tightly as he looked out of the open window and down at the sidewalk twenty or so feet below him. Smoke was eddying around his body and his back felt like a slab of bacon in a frying pan as he climbed over the windowsill, only to find that it was just as bad there. Their apartment was above the grocery, but the entire first floor was charged with smoke...in fact, fire had likely cooked through the wooden floors of both stores by then...and smoke was pushing from around the store's front door and streaming upward. He was coughing and hacking on the smoke, and his son was crying...

I don't know if he dropped his son, or landed on him, but Wise couldn't stay astride the windowsill...he pulled his other leg across, turned himself so he was sort of sitting on the sill (This may have been when he dropped his son)...and pushed off. That twenty foot or so drop felt more like twenty stories as he fell, the second or so he was in mid-air seeming to last forever, and then his feet slammed into the sidewalk and his knees bent, and he may have even clocked himself with a knee as he tumbled, but he sprang up, bruised but otherwise unhurt, and looked around for his son, who he could hear crying. He quickly found him, lying nearer the street, one leg turned and bent unnaturally. The child wailed in agony as his broken leg dangled when his dad picked him up, but he had to get away from the building. Fire was boiling out of the front window of the bakery, only feet away,, and standing on the sidewalk in front of the building was like standing just inside the open door of a furnace. Wise turned and jogged out into the street and away from the building.

Someone came running up behind him as he moved away from the building, calling out and asking if all of his family had made it out. There was a sudden flaring glare above them as Wise turned to reply...he instead looked up, horrified, to see fire rolling up and out of the window he'd just bailed out of, cascading up and across the front window of the third floor apartment above his. By saving himself and his young son, he'd cut the rest of his family off from escape. 

Even as he looked up, tears running down his face, the nearby district 5 fire bell began banging out the alarm...five bongs, a pause, then five more, repeated over and over, the distinct and unique tones of the fire bell crisp and clear in the cold night air, as the city's other bells joined in. Someone...either another occupant who'd made it out, or a neighbor...had run to the nearest police station or maybe the bell tower itself or, even more likely, Lady Washington Engine 40's fire house just a short block or so away at 173 Elm Street, to turn in the alarm, but it was far, far too late.

The alarm could well have been turned in by one of the seven member White family, six of whom were home when the fire broke out. Another one of them may have been the person comforting Wise as he stared at the flames rolling from his apartment window. Issac White and his boisterous and energetic brood lived in the other front second floor apartment...above the bakery where the fire started... and had also been chased out of bed as smoke filled their apartment, but there were very likely two differences in their escape, and one of them was a biggie

First, they smelled smoke and realized the danger earlier...a couple of them may have been awake, and, being over the bakery, smoke was probably pushing through the floorboards, alerting them to the fire sooner than the Wises across the hallway. They likely also tried to make it out through the hallway, and also got a face-full of heat and smoke as Issac White opened the apartment's door...but instead of leaving the door open as they retreated towards the window, he slammed it closed, and ordered his family to the front windows.

All six of the seven who were home...seventeen year old Gustave was absent that night...were coughing violently as Issac White shoved the window open. Smoke was pushing hard from around the bakery's front door, and likely pushing from around the window frame as well, streaming up the front of the building, and the window that the Whites were escaping from was directly in the path of all that smoke.  White first helped his wife climb over the sill and, knowing they had only minutes, told her to 'Bend your knees when you land'...I'll drop Pauline (Their youngest) and Louis to you'...then watched as she pushed off of the window sill...he waited just long enough to see her land and leap up..

It was probably about then that eleven year old Louis possibly called 'DAD!!' and he looked back to see the faint outlines of two of his children...seven year old Pauline and eighteen year old Esther...crumpled on the floor, coughing violently.

'Grab Esther!!' He told his other kids as he scooped little Pauline up and bolted for the window. It was getting HOT in the apartment. Louis, along with his twenty year old sister Eliza, helped Esther to her feet. In White's arms, Pauline croaked 'Daddy?? 'Shhh, honey, don't be scared, I'm gonna drop you...Mommy's gonna catch you.' White possibly told her. Then he called down to his wife that he had Pauline and to get ready to catch her.

'Hurry up! For God's sake, Zack,, Hurry up!'  What Issac White couldn't see, his wife could...flames were rolling along the ceiling of the bakery. He held Pauline out of the window, and let go...he didn't have time to aim, but his wife sidestepped beneath the window and managed to catch Pauline...going down and landing hard on her backside as she did, but Pauline...who grabbed her mom tightly and sobbed in terror...was safe.

Issac got ready to pass Louis...who, at eleven, was pushing being as tall as his dad, and was already taller then both of his older sisters...out the window, but he handed the still semi-conscious Esther off to his dad. 'I can jump Dad' Louis told his dad between violent coughs. " 'Liza and I can help Esther down..." He looked over at his 20 year old sister Eliza. 'Sis, you go first..."

Issac looked towards the apartments door. The crack beneath the door was glowing bright orange, the apartment was so packed with smoke he could hardly see his kids only a couple of feet away.

" 'Liza, can you make it? He asked his daughter, helping her over the sill.. 'Yeah...' she answered, quickly gauged the distance to the sidewalk, then let go, her nightgown billowing and hair flying as she fell. Louis was already climbing over the window sill as Eliza landed perfectly, then rolled towards the street to get out of the way. He pushed off even as he climbed over the sill...out of the corner of his eye, he saw something fall, then saw their cross-the-hall neighbor going out of the window of the other 2nd floor front apartment. Louis landed hard but un-hurt, as his mom ran to help Mr Wise.

The temperature in the apartment suddenly spiked hard...Fire had burned through the upper part of the door, and was beginning to roll across the living room ceiling, reaching hungrily for the open window. Issac knew they only had a few seconds to escape. 'Esther, Honey, are you ready? He asked her even as he helped her over the sill. He didn't have time to get fancy...he turned her so she was facing the window, even as she nodded, coughing. White glanced down and let her go.

Issac pulled himself through the window and out into the cold night air even as he saw Luis and Eliza break Esther's fall, then drag her towards the street. He heard glass breaking as his feet pounded hard against the sidewalk, ...his knees bent and he went down on his right hip and side even as a quick, blast-furnace hot gust of air washed over him along with an orange flare that lit the sidewalk up...the front window of the bakery had blown, and fire was rolling up and over him. Issac crab-walked backwards frantically, hearing his wife and kids all calling for him.

After a couple of seconds that felt like the intake orientation class in Hell, he stood and jogged to the middle of the street, where Mr Wise and his terrified little boy had joined the rest of the White clan. His family was soot stained and dirty, and Esther was doubled over, retching from the smoke she'd  'eaten' inside the apartment...but all of them were alive. Little Pauline was trying to comfort the tiny Wise boy, whose dad had tear tracks running through the soot staining his face.

Flames were blowing out of the bakery and cascading up the building's front wall, joining with the fire now blowing out of the window that the Wises had just escaped from to reach as high as the fourth floor. The fire rolling out of the Wise apartment flared through the smoke pushing out of the grocery below it. Heavy smoke was boiling from the upper part of the building to roll upward into the night sky, bending northward as it did so. Even as they watched, the front window of the grocery blew out, and more fire boiled into the night. The street was lit up like noon-time, and even fifty or so feet away from the building, the little group had all but forgotten that it was cold outside.

The city's fire bells peeled in the background, and Issac couldn't help but think 'The boys won't have any trouble finding this one' as he asked 'Are we the only ones who made it out?'

"I think so..." He heard Mr Wise croak tearfully  "Oh, my God, I think so..."

Though it wouldn't have mattered to him much at all...he'd just lost most of his family...Mr Wise was wrong. In the rear second floor apartment above the bakery, George Boedner had also discovered the fire fairly early as smoke filled his apartment, and had possibly, like Issac White, opened the door to the hallway to get a face-full of heat and smoke, then slammed the door and ordered his family to one of the living room windows, which looked out onto the rear yard of the tenement. They had an advantage that the occupants of the front apartments didn't have...a shed of some kind (Possibly the communal out-house) was hard by the rear of the building on that side, and he, his wife Frederica, and his sixteen year old son Henry (Very likely and almost inevitably called 'Hank') could just step out of the window onto the shed roof, then jump to the ground. His youngest child...tiny four year old Caroline...probably couldn't even see out of the windows, with their high-off-the floor sills, much less climb out of it, but he could just hand her out to one of the older kids.

The apartment was filling with smoke fast, and...like Mr White...he could see a flaring orange stripe beneath the hallway door. He shoved the window open and looked at his family.

'Hank, climb out onto the shed...Caroline come here honey...' He picked his daughter up as Hank quickly pulled himself through the window and stood on the sloping tin roof of the shed. 'Here...' he started to hand Caroline out to him '...Get your sis...WHOA!!!!'

The shed's tin roof rang like a bell, bouncing Hank Boedner off of his feet, as something...no some one...hit the roof hard and bounced, and only then did George see the clothesline rope hanging against the wall...the rope started swaying and swinging, and he heard someone above him, crying 'Francine...Oh My God, Francine...' Still holding Caroline, George leaned out of the window and looked up to see Bill Vopel, who lived in the fifth floor rear apartment above the bakery, climbing down the rope, hand over hand. His wife was lying on the roof on her side moaning. Hank, who'd missed being taken out by the plummeting Francine Vopel by less than a yard, was temporarily out of the ball game as he half sat, half leaned back on his hands, shaking his head back and forth as he tried to get the world to stop spinning in two or more different directions at once.

'Honey, I'm going to let you down on the roof' George told his daughter, then lowered her gently to the roof. 'Go over there' he pointed towards the end of the shed. She scampered in that direction only to be bounced off of her feet onto her bottom as Vopel dropped onto the roof. Hank, now recovered, looked at his dad, who said 'Go check your sister, I'll get your mom...' then turned to see fire cooking through the top of the hallway door and running the ceiling. Frederica, overcome by smoke, was on the floor, under the flames, her nightgown beginning to smoke. George crab-walked to her...God it was hot!...and grabbed her hands, back scooting across the floor, coughing, retching as the smoke thickened...then someone said 'I've got you' and hands grabbed his shoulders a someone else grabbed his wife and started dragging her towards the window.

*****

Many of the members of New York's volunteer fire companies 'Bunked In' at their stations overnight, to give them a quicker response time, and Lady Washington Engine Company 40 was no exception. Their firehouse was located just over five hundred feet from the tenement, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the very first notification of the fire came in the form of frantic pounding at their front door.

Lady Washington's house...and indeed, the majority of New York's volunteer houses in 1860...enjoyed all of the bells and whistles that the tenements lacked. They very likely had gas lighting, and heat, and spacious, comfortable lounges and day rooms, and it's a good bet that, at 7:30 PM, that the duty crew was awake and playing cards or discussing whatever was discussed in a 1860 New York firehouse when they were interrupted by loud frantic pounding at the station's front door.

A couple of Engine 40's guys...or possibly a couple of the company 'runners' who were hanging out in the cheerful warmth of the lounge...were sent downstairs to see what all the noise was about...they yanked open the 'man door (As opposed to the rig's 'Exit Door') to have a couple or more people yelling 'Oh My God, they're still inside!!!' and "It's on fire!!' while pointing up Elm Street towards the burning tenement. One of the members or runners looked up Elm Street to see the sun rising twelve hours early in the wrong direction. I can just about bet the words 'Oh S***!!!' were yelled loudly even as their eyes went huge as they turned to yell up the stairs..

"Let's GO!!! We got one in full bloom right up Elm Street!!!!

Shoes clattered on steps as firefighters and runners bailed out of the lounge and down the stairs. There was no telegraph alarm system back then, but there was a telegraph system connecting the bell towers, and some of the stations also had a telegraph key. I don't know if Lady Washington's house was one of them or not...but if it was, one of the crew who was trained on using it immediately started pounding out a message to the bell towers.

As one of their number frantically pounded on the telegraph key, a couple of the crew pushed the big exit doors open as other members, along with runners, grabbed the twin tow ropes strung to either side of their rig's tongue, and started dragging the big white, blue, and gold leaf painted crane-neck style side-stroke hand engine out onto the street. Their firehouse was north of the burning tenement, on the opposite side of the street, so they swung out and to the left as they left the house. Even as their foreman shouted 'Start her lively, Boys!!!' they heard the District 5 fire bell's first sharp, clear 'BONG!!' as it began banging out the alarm.

A beautifully detailed drawing of Lady Washington's rig, from Kenneth Holcomb Dunshee's 1939 book 'Enjine! Enjine!, which described in detail the development of hand-pumped fire engines in New York. The rig was known as a 'Crane Neck' engine because of the way the frame curved upward behind the front wheels...this allowed the wheels to pass beneath the frame and turn 90 degrees, which allowed the engine to be turned around in it's own length. The reel mounted ropes just ahead of the front wheels were the tow ropes the crew grabbed hold of to pull the rig...the tongue was used more for steering and for pushing the rig backwards than for pulling. 

The red cylindrical structure with the company number painted on it houses the air chamber, which filled with water. forcing air into the top of the chamber. As the crew pumped, this trapped air would push additional water into the hose line on each stroke, which created a steady, solid stream of water rather than 'spurts' or a ragged stream. Air cylinders were, and indeed, still are, an integral part of all piston type pumpers...be they hand, stream, gasoline or Diesel operated.

The rig was built in 1856 by a company named James Smith, and had twin 8.5 inch diameter pump cylinders with 9 inch strokes, giving it a capacity of 265 GPM @ 60 strokes per minute. Of course, the faster the crew on the 'brakes' pumped, the more water they could move, so at, say, 80 strokes per minute, they could get 350 GPM out of the rig...but only for as long as the crew could keep that pace up. This is why engine companies of this era needed huge crews...as many as 40 to 60 guys (Not all actual members of the fire company...we'll get to that in Notes, too) would be queuing up to take their turns at the Brakes as the guys pumping them tired out.

The cylinder bearing the company number above the front wheels is the rig's hose reel, which carried 200 feet of 2.5 inch hose. The hose on the reels was primarily used when multiple engines were used to relay water from a distant water source to the fire. The engine on the water source...be it hydrant, cistern, or river...would hook up to the hydrant/drop it's suction hose into the water source, then pull all of it hose off of the reel, connecting to to their pumpers discharge. The next arriving engine would connect the line to their intake, then pull their hose off of and lay it out for the next engine,...the process would be repeated until they got water to the fire. There were stories of as many as thirty engines being involved in relay operations a full mile in length. Politics sometimes made this operation even more complicated...we'll get to that in 'Notes'.

Another advantage of having a hose reel on the engine, of course is that it allowed the company to go in service as soon as they got to the scene if there was a hydrant close enough to the fire building for them to do so. Lady Washington's guys were able to get water on the fire with-in only minutes of arriving on scene on Elm Street because of a close-by hydrant, but the fire was already beyond the control of a single  hose line. Even so, Engine 40 firefighter Danial Scully rescued/assisted in rescuing at least six people trapped in the second and third floor rear apartments.

Most engine companies also ran a small two wheel 'Jumper' style hose reel that carried an additional 400 feet or so of hose...two or three men would grab this small rig and follow (Or sometimes, lead) the engine to the fire, giving them around 600 feet of hose before the hose companies rolled in. This allowed them to have a couple of lines in service, or start setting up a relay operation before the hose companies got to the scene.

An immaculately restored 1853 James Smith and Co hand tub just about identical in design to Lady Washington Engine 40's rig, right down to the front mounted hose reel. This rig is owned by the Fire Museum of Maryland, and was built for the Brooklyn Fire Department in 1853. The Storm Engine Company, of Babylon, New York bought it used and placed it in service in 1881. I'm not sure when the Fire Museum of Md. purchased, but it was pictured in the 1939 book Enjine! Enjine!, referenced above, as a museum display. It's absolutely awesome, IMHO, that this rig has been maintained all these years...and yes, she's fully functional to this day.

There were pretty capable rigs for the day, capable of pumping around 265-350 or so GPM with a full crew working the brakes at full tilt, which would be around 60-80 strokes per minute. The problem was the crew could only keep that rate up for between five and ten minutes at best, even less if they were pumping harder. .This is why engine companies from this era required huge crews, so a fresh crew was ready to take over when the working crew grew tired and needed a break. Also, the crews usually didn't take breaks as a group...each person on the brakes would drop off as he became tired, to be replaced by one of the fresh men waiting their turn.

Most New York engine companies also ran a two wheeled 'jumper' hose cart that carried an additional 400-600 feet of hose. This small, light weight rig could be pulled by two or three men, or hooked to a tow-hook on the rear of the engine, and pulled along with the engine itself. This, along with the reel...or, in some cases, reels...on the engine gave the crew a bit more flexibility and allowed them to operate independently of hose companies if the need arose. These rigs got the nick-name 'Jumpers' because their light weight allowed them to be 'jumped' across curbs and other obstacles.

Two or three other men grabbed the tow bar of the company's small, two wheeled hose cart...known as a 'jumper'...and followed the engine's crew out of the house. The blazing tenement was only a block or so south of them, so they were on scene in two or so minutes, despite the fact that they were on foot, pulling the engine and jumper behind them.

 The front windows of both first floor stores had probably blown by then, and fire was rolling out and up, lighting Elm Street up like Mardi Gras, but that wasn't the sight that sent cold chills down their spines. It seemed that every window that wasn't puking fire and smoke had at least one person leaning out of it, screaming for help as smoke pushed from the window, eddying and rolling around them as it did so. As if that wasn't bad enough, five or six more people were on the roof, silhouetted in the flame-glare kicking back off of the smoke.

Today, the Officer In Charge of the first in engine company, seeing trapped residents hanging from the windows of a well involved multi story, multi family dwelling as he rolled up, would break out into a cold sweat even if he was riding right seat on a brand new example of the newest, most advanced pumper on the road, with an equally new, equally advanced 110 foot tower ladder rolling in right behind them, and the rest of a full first alarm commercial/multifamily dwelling assignment only minutes away. Needless to say, the foreman and crew of Lady Washington Engine 40 had it far, far worse than that modern fire officer.

While they did have hose...almost every N.Y.F.D. engine carried a reel with 200 feet of 2.5 inch hose and a couple of play pipes and nozzles, plus they had another four hundred feet of hose on the jumper, along with another playpipe...they didn't carry water on board (Booster tanks on fire apparatus weren't even a concept yet, and wouldn't become common for nearly 70 years.) and they didn't carry any more hose or any ladders. Hose Companies were separate companies, with their own houses, as were ladder companies.

The nearest hose company...Atlantic Hose Co 14...was quartered about a half mile east at at 3 Elizabeth Street, and the nearest hook and ladder company...Eagle Hook and Ladder # 4...was an equal distance away to the southeast at 22 Eldridge Street. Both companies were a good seven or eight minutes away with the crew running hard, feet pounding on cobblestones as they dragged the rigs behind them, and neither had the advantage of having the fire staring them in the face as they came out of their stations. They had to 'Chase the glow' to find the fire's location. Lady Washington's guys would be on their own for a long, long eight minutes or so.

Lady Washington's crew did  have a hydrant though, at Elm and Grand Streets, just north of the fire. Lady Washington's crew started scrambling. Their foreman shouted up to the people trapped in the building to hang on, that help was on the way, then, over the rumbling crackle of flames, and peeling of the fire bells, started barking orders to his crew.

"Lets get on that hydrant and get a line in service!!" Then to the crew on the jumper...' Get some more line off for a second line!!' This taken care of, he looked at two of his firefighters...Danial Scully and one other firefighter.. "Dan...you two haul ass around back and see what we've got on the backside of this thing...

The two firefighters disappeared down an ally between a pair of storefronts as the hose reel sang, spinning fast as the crew dragged all 200 feet off of it.  One member cut it at the first coupling, grabbed a hydrant wrench out of the engine's tool box, and dragged the female end towards the hydrant as another grabbed the male end and quickly spun the coupling onto the rigs's intake. Another crew coupled the rest of the line to one of the pumper's two discharges and screwed a playpipe and nozzle to the line's business end, while the rest of Lady Washington's guys unfolded the brakes from the 'traveling' position, pulling them down and out to the rig's sides.

"Ready for water!!" The hydrant man slapped the hydrant wrench onto the operating nut on top of the hydrant and spun it, water surged through the hose line, swelling it as it rushed into rig's tank as twenty guys...ten on each side...grabbed hold of the brakes, waiting for the water to fill the tank so they could prime the pump.

"OK...Work her boys!!!" The rig started rocking as the crew slammed the brakes up and down, shoving water through the attack line, then a half inch stream of water spurted from the nozzle and blasted into the flames roaring from the bakery windows...

As the first stream bored into the fire, the jumper's reel sang as a second line was pulled, cut at a coupling, and connected to the engine's second discharge. Another playpipe was spun onto that line's business end, and the call 'Ready for water on the second line!! was called back to the engine. A firefighter at the rig spun the discharge valve open and a second stream bored into the flames.

With the guys on the brakes going all out, they may have been pumping as many as 80 or so strokes per minute, or about 350 GPM from the pump's twin 8.5 inch diameter by 9 inch stroke cylinders, or about 175 GPM from each of the two lines. They may have even darkened the fire in the two stores down a little bit, giving the very false impression for a hopeful minute that they were getting ahead of it...but the fire was already way ahead of them, and they knew it. The stairwell and public halls were fully involved on all six floors, and the fire had rolled into apartments on at least three floors.

Around on the backside of the building, fire had cooked through several sixth floor rear windows already, and smoke was pushing from several other windows as Dan Scully and the other fire fighter ran up to the rear of the burning tenement. The communal outhouse was hard by the north side of the rear wall, and several people were on it's roof, but even worse, there were people leaning out of a third floor window on the south side of the building, smoke billowing around them as they screamed for help.

'Give me a boost up on that roof, then haul ass back around front and tell 'em we need men and ladders back here!' Scully said, then yelled up...to both the people on the shed roof and the ones at the window... "Hang on!!'

Scully's partner made a stirrup with his hands and boosted him upward as he pulled himself over the edge of the roof, looking at the four people standing, and in one case, lying on the tin. One, a boy of about sixteen or so was holding a little girl. A couple of feet away from the kids a man was kneeling  next to a woman who was lying on her side, moaning in pain. A clothesline was swaying in the breeze...which was blowing towards the front of the building...as it led upward to a fifth floor window that was just beginning to show fire.

'My Mom and dad are still in there!' the teenager yelled, pointing at an open second floor window The smoke rolling from the window was tinted orange. Scully knew what his next move had to be. 'I've got 'em' he told the youth, then ran across the roof and looked through the window. He could see the garish orange glow of flames through the smoke, which was banked down to within two feet of the floor, boiling out of the window like it was being pushed by a pump. He could see movement...

Dan Scully took a deep breath and pulled himself through the window, rolling onto the floor of a reasonable facsimile of Hell. Sweat instantly broke out as the heat of a thousand summer days enveloped him like a malignant cloak. The air near the floor was still breathable, but barely. A few feet ahead of him, he could see a man in pajamas and a robe dragging a badly burned woman in a smoldering nightgown towards him. He scuttled forward on hands and knees and grabbed the man.

'I've got you!' Scully told Mr. Boedner, even as he felt a hand on his shoulder...glanced around just long enough to see a helmet front plate with a big white '14' on it. 'Atlantic Hose is on scene Danny Boy...' The helmet's owner told him. '...Four-Truck's right behind us. This 'f***ing place is getting ready to light up'

Even as the Hose 15 firefighter told him this, they were scuttling towards the window. "Get her!' Scully told him, indicating Mrs. Boedner. The Hose 14 firefighter got her beneath her arms and started dragging her towards the window, Dan Scully close behind, urging Mr. Boedner on as well. The smoke was almost down to the floor now, the heat horrendous. He sensed more than saw the Hose 14 guy pass Mrs Boedner out of the window to someone else on the roof before half climbing, half diving out himself, heard the boy yell 'Mom! even as Mr. Boedner reached the window and was all but yanked outside.

'Get the hell outa there Danny!!' Dan Scully didn't have to be convinced.  He couldn't see and, even scooting along the floor on hands and knees as close to the floor as he could get he could barely breathe...he felt along the wall, felt upward, found the windowsill, and reached up, grabbing it and boosting himself up and out of the window, landing astride the sill, jackknifed across it on his belly. Smoke was boiling out of the window, that pulsing, rolling smoke that today's firefighters call 'chunky smoke'. He started pulling himself the rest of the way out of the window even as the Hose 14 firefighter who'd assisted with the rescue helped drag him out onto the out-house roof.

The rear yard of the tenement was a madhouse of sound and light, Flames were blowing from every sixth floor window. as well as several fifth and fourth floor windows, with a crackling roar, lighting the rear yard up like mid-day. He heard someone yell 'I've got one on the floor' even as he glanced at the window of the other rear second floor apartment to see a firefighter disappearing into the smoke rolling from it as he climbed off of a ladder (Good, he thought, Four-Truck's here). Desperate, terrified screaming was coming from above him, and he looked up at the third floor apartment, above the apartment the Ladder 4 firefighter had just entered, where the trapped family he'd seen earlier...The four members of the McCarrick family...were pleading desperately for help.

Oh, shit!!! ' He likely thought to himself as he stared up at the man and woman leaning out of the apartment's rear windows as smoke billowed around them. The thought 'Why isn't anyone going after them' formed in his head at the same instant he spotted a crew from Hook and Ladder 4 manhandling a big 40 foot ladder down the rear ally.

Firefighters from Hose 14, Ladder 4, and a couple of other just arriving companies were helping the Boedners and the Vopel's off of the outhouse roof as the Ladder 4 guys turned the big ladder, on its side, dug one of the feet into the yard's dirt, and started walking it upward. As they raised it, the firefighter who had shouted something about 'One on the floor' was just emerging from the second floor window he'd entered, handing off a badly burned man to another firefighter on the ladder at that window. The trapped family that Ladder 4's guys were going after was above that second floor apartment.

They didn't have near enough time to bring the trapped third floor residents down one by one. But Scully had an idea. Each apartment had two windows. The ladder at the second floor window was beneath the window closest to the outhouse. The family on the third floor was leaning out of the third floor window nearest to the corner of the building..

Scully slid off of the roof on his butt, landing on his feet, and calling out to one of the Ladder 4 guys he knew. 'Keep some one on that ladder!' He yelled, pointing to the ladder beneath the second floor window. 'And get someone on the shed roof!' The ladder smacked against the building's wall, beneath the third floor window. Scully started up the ladder, saying 'One of you guys come up behind me about six or eight feet under me', then, as he climbed, outlined what he wanted to do. It only took him a couple of seconds to scramble up the ladder. Heavy, dark smoke, thick and hot, boiled from the window. As heavy as the smoke was, Scully could still make out a vague orange glow...fire had cooked through the hallway door. 

'Thank God, Thank God!!!' The trapped father called out. Scully could see two small heads behind the parents. 'Hand me the kids first' Scully told him...Mr. McCarrick handed the first kid...a young boy of about six. dressed in night clothes...out of the window...Scully twisted around, grabbing the child by his hands and swinging him down and around, lowering him quickly to where the firefighter below him could reach up and grab him. Scully was already turning around to grab the second child...another boy, about a year or so older...to repeat the process. Below him, the firefighter on the other ladder grabbed the first child as he was swung across and immediately turned and handed him  to a firefighter on the shed roof.

The four firefighters quickly transferred the second child to the shed roof as well.  Even as they were being lowered to the ground, Scully was saying 'Your turn, m'lady' as he helped Mrs. McCarrick out of the window. 'I'm gonna swing you onto the ladder behind me, the guy below us...' I got it! The woman, who was quick on the uptake, told him. 'Better hurry up! he heard from the other ladder...a quick glance showed flames beginning to belch from that second floor window.

Mrs McCarrick wasn't a tiny woman, but thankfully she wasn't huge either....Scully swung her around behind him, yelling for Mr. McCarrick to climb out onto the ladder.  Scully then turned and helped McCarrick out of the window as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the firefighter on the ladder next to them grab his wife, almost over balancing as he did so.  Rather than swinging her onto the roof he helped her find her footing on the ladder in front of him, then guided her down as he climbed down the ladder.

'Think you can make it down?' Scully asked Mr. McCarrick, to get an 'Oh hell yeah...lets get the hell outa here!' The two men climbed down the ladder as flames began bending out of the window he'd just exited, painting the smoke rolling from that same window orange. Once he hit the ground, McCarrick quickly found his wife and kids, gathering them in a huge hug, tears running down their faces. Scully breathed out satisfied sigh, leaning a hand against the ladder as he did so.

Even as Dan Scully and his crew, along with Ladder 4's crew, were getting the Boedners and the McCarricks out of the building, more companies were rolling in. As the hose companies arrived, their crews laid lines from more distant hydrants, meaning that as the engines were dragged on scene, their crews had to set up relay operations to get water to the scene. As many as three or four engines would be lined up 200 feet apart, pumping into the next engine's intake, each relay supplying a single stream. Twenty man crews manned the brakes on each engine while anywhere from thirty to sixty men on each waited their turn to take over for two to three minutes at a pop...that was as long as anyone could last pumping the rigs before they needed to rest for a few minutes. As many as six or eight streams were probably playing on the fire, but sadly all of this effort was all but futile, as the only effect those multiple streams seemed to be having on the fire was to annoy it a bit.

Meanwhile more ladder companies...the city had 17 of them at the time and at least three or four responded to the scene...rolled in behind Ladder 4.  Even as the more streams were placed in service, 'Truckies' slid the heavy wooden ground ladders out of their racks on the long, hand-pulled ladder rigs, and hustled them to where they were needed on the front and rear of the building. 

It was a hectic, boisterous, and active scene, and the noise was horrendous. Disjointed calls of 'Pump! Pump! Pump! at each engine, timing the rocking 'CLANK-CLANK! of the brakes, were overshadowed by shouted orders, screams for help, and the rumble of flames. 

These later arriving companies were making another desperate rescue on the front side of the building even as Dan Scully and his crew raced against time to get the McCarricks out of their rear apartment. Bill North, his wife, and their three kids lived in the third floor apartment directly above the Wise apartment and the grocery, and now the couple was leaning out of a smoke-puking third floor window, yelling for help, their kids cowering behind them.

Several firefighters quickly sized up the problem, a plan very similar to the one Dan Scully came up with was hatched on the fly, and orders were shouted. Several firefighters ran into the building hard by the south side of the burning tenement and up the steps, quickly finding their way to a front second story window.  Another crew began setting another forty footer against the wall of the tenement as the Norths begged them to please hurry. The top of the ladder slapped bricks just below and to the left of the window the Norths were hanging from, between it and the corner of the building.

A firefighter leaned out of the window of the building next door as two other firefighters quick-climbed the ladder, making it bounce as they bailed up the rungs. Fire was rolling from the window Mr Wise had escaped from and cascading upward, across the window next to the one the Norths were framed in while the window directly below them was painted a livid, flaring orange...only Divine Intervention, luck, or a little of both had kept it from blowing, the same elements apparently keeping the fire in the hallway from cooking through the Norths' hallway door.

'Give me the kids first!' the firefighter at the top of the ladder called to the Norths. He could feel the heat radiating through the orange-tinted second floor window directly below the trapped family. He looked below and to his left 'You guys ready?!?, getting a 'Yeah, go!!' The first child was handed out, the firefighter at the top of the ladder turned and handed him down to the firefighter below him, then twisted back around the grab the second child. As he was doing this, the second firefighter swung the first child over the the firefighter leaning from the second floor window of the building next door, who quickly pulled him inside the window. This process was repeated twice more, with all three firefighters hustling, the firefighter in the building next door telling each child to wait behind him as he pulled them in the window.

Mrs North was next....she climbed out onto the ladder...unlike the kids, she was too big to swing across. There was a cracking next to them, and fire boiled from one pane of the other window in the Wise apartment.  The firefighters nearest the top of the ladder had 'leg-locked' the ladder, passing one leg around a rung and hooking that foot beneath the rung below it so he could use his arms to swing the kids over the firefighter next door.  He kept the leg lock in place and had her climb down to him, then grasped her around the waist, twisted, and passed her down to the firefighter below him, who quickly started carrying her down the ladder.

A firefighter applying a leg lock to a ladder. This allowed him to have his hands free so he could handle hose and tools and make rescues. There are actually a couple of ways to apply a leg lock...the firefighter can also lock his foot beneath a rung rather than the beam of the ladder, which is the method I've seen used most often.

Mr. North was already climbing out of the window, even as the firefighter released the leg lock...as he pulled his leg back up and over the rung, more glass fell from the window of the Wise apartment, and more flames rolled into the night, causing him the forget that this was a Winter night. Unknowingly parroting  Dan Scully, he asked Mr. North if he could make it down, to get an enthusiastic 'Yes!, even as Mr. North all but climbed over him...the two men scampered down the ladder. Just before they made it to the sidewalk, the entire building shuddered as if someone had tapped it with a giant sledgehammer, and fire blew from the second floor windows of the building next door...a sight that filled him with dread until he saw the three kids hugging their mom as the two firefighters who'd been in the building next door led them across the street. Both windows of the Wise apartment were vomiting fire and, as if in sympathy, the smoke boiling from the North apartment turned orange as flames rolled from those windows as well. The Norths were likely the last people to get out of the building alive.

 Even as the Norths were rescued, Foremen (Lieutenants in modern rank structure) were looking up at the tenement roof, where possibly as many as a dozen sixth floor residents were trapped. More shouted orders were bellowed through speaking trumpets as another desperate operation was set in motion to rescue the residents trapped on the building's roof. This one, unfortunately, wouldn't be as successful.

Several firefighters laddered the steeply pitched roof of the building next door to the tenement's north wall, then pulled another of the big 40 foot ladders up to the lower building's roof. Then, working as quickly as the roof pitch would allow, they dragged the ladder up to the roof's peak, and set it against the wall of the tenement. If they could have set it straight up and down it might would have barely reached. But to be climbable, of course, it had to be at an angle...so when the ladder was raised, even at the steepest angle possible to climb, it was a good ten feet short of the tenement roof.

At least half a dozen, and possibly as many as a dozen desperate sixth floor residents were watching hopefully as the ladder was raised, their hope turning to despair as it came up short. The roof consisted of a wood deck covered with pitch-covered canvas and gravel, and fire had already cooked through it over the stairwell. Heavy smoke was pushing from the edges of the roof, and fire rolling from sixth floor windows was overlapping the roof's front and rear edges. The trapped residents were beyond desperate. A couple of them decided to try to reach the ladder.

Even as the firefighters on the roof begged them not to, one or two people climbed over the edge of the tenement's roof, hanging on to the shallow parapet wall as they peered downward at the ladder, trying to aim. They were doomed before they even let go of the wall.

One of them hit the ladder and bounced, then hit the lower roof and rolled to the edge before anyone could stop him...he tumbled off of the roof and hit the sidewalk below. A second man missed the ladder entirely, bounced off of the lower roof and fell into the building's rear yard.

Even as the firefighter on the lower roof watched the men fall, someone shouted up to them to 'Get off the roof!!!!' Smoke had started pushing from between the bricks a few feet below the tenement roof as more fire popped through the roof itself. and then, the guys on the roof could only watch helplessly as they got a front row view of possibly the most horrible instant in a night full of horror.   

The roof's support beams had burned through to the point they were unable to support the roof's load anymore, and it collapsed inward in a long, raged 'V'. from front to rear, dumping the trapped residents who hadn't jumped back into the flames. Even as the roof collapsed, it shoved at the tenement's sidewalls, kicking them outward.

The guys on the lower roof were suddenly too busy to be terrified as they scrambled onto the roof of the next building down, diving across just ahead of a slab of sidewall and burning wood that took out the 40 foot ladder as it slammed into and through the roof they were just standing on with a horrific crunching crash and a light show of sparks and burning embers. The second floor windows of the lower building blew out in a twinkling shower of glass as flames rolled through the two story building's now devastated roof. 

The devastation was mirrored on the other side of the building as a chunk of wall and burning wood the size of a freight wagon crashed through the roof of the building on the south side of the burning tenement just seconds after the three North children were carried out of the front door.

On the street, several firefighters moved the ladder that that had been used to access the two story building's roof down one building so the roof crew could get back down.  In the background the city's fire bells began tolling continuously, pounding out a general alarm. Their problems had increased exponentially in the space of only two or so seconds. The tenement was fully involved now, with flames  boiling from every front window and through the roof. Even worse, fire was moving in both direction on the west side of Elm Street and, across the street, window frames on a large factory building began smoldering as radiant heat reached across the street 

No more rescues would be made after the roof collapsed, and the firefighters who had avoided becoming victims by a matter of feet and seconds simply stared up at the now roofless tenement for several seconds, then at the fire-gushing hole in the roof they had just vacated, the horror of what they had just witnessed replaying in an endless loop, overlaying their sudden shivering reaction to their near death as it did so.

 The crews dropped all efforts to extinguish the tenement...it was both beyond saving and extinguishing it was beyond the capabilities of their equipment. Instead, they began concentrating on stopping the fire from taking the rest of the block. The second floors of both 140 and 144 Elm Street were now well involved, with fire blowing through the roof of both buildings while small flames were flickering from the window frames on  multiple floors of the factory building across the street. 

 Orders, amplified by speaking trumpets, were shouted to turn a couple of streams on the factory windows, taking care of that problem, which would crop up a couple of more times before the night was over.  The crews on hose lines were divided, with half on the south side of the tenement, and half on the north side, tasked with keeping the fire from taking any more structures. I have a feeling that the roofs of the buildings at 138 and 146 Elm were laddered, with hose lines taken to their roofs as well, but 146 Elm was a frame building, and fire quickly took hold of it as well, chasing the guys on that roof over to 148 Elm. 

With the crews on the pumpers working their guts out, helped along by their company runners and possibly spectators, crews made twin stands at 138 and 148 Elm, and from what little I could find, they kicked butt. They actually knocked the fire in 146 Elm down before it could cause more than 200 dollars worth of damage (Still not insignificant...that's about 6200 dollars in 2019 money), and held the fire in 140 and 144 Elm to the second floor of both buildings.

Unfortunately, the second floors of both buildings contained several apartments, which meant those families were also burned out...but at least they were all alive and uninjured...all of them, knowing it was a pretty good bet that the fire would extend to their buildings as well, had evacuated early in the fire.

The fight to save the block may have been helped along by the Exempt Engine Company...an engine company comprised of semi-retired firefighters which was equipped with not one but two steamers, one of which was a big self-propelled rig with a capacity of around 800 GPM. The Exempts only responded on general alarms, and it's a good bet that at least one of these steamers responded to Elm Street when the general alarm was called for. 

Of course with this rig's cold-molasses-like top speed of  between two and five miles per hour, it could have taken as as long as 40 minutes to make the mile and a third between The Exempt's firehouse at #4 Centre Street and the fire scene. When they finally got on scene, they may have taken over the hydrant Lady Washington Engine 40 had been on (If Lady Washington's guys let them...more on the weird politics of those early volunteers in 'Notes'). But if the steamer did respond, and if they were allowed to take a hydrant and flow water, they would've been able to supply multiple lines all night long if necessary, and most of the battle to save the block would have been won. 

A drawing of a big Lee and Larned Self Propelled steamer of the type that Exempt Engine had in service and possibly responded to the Elm Street fire with on the general alarm. This thing was a beast! It weighed 11,000 pounds and was capable of pumping 800 GPM as long as it had fuel. The rig didn't require horses or men to get it to the scene or pump it...but it was also said to be slower than frozen molasses running up-hill.

The rig's rotary gear pump was rear mounted...note the air chamber just behind the fellow in the rear of the rig.  This guy would have been the rig's engineer, who was in charge of operating both the steam engine and the pump...oh, and the brakes.

Yep...you read right...driving this behemoth was a two man operation. The driver steered, while the engineer handled the brakes...getting stopped required planning and team work. The Exempt rig's slow speed helped a bit there, but getting to a scene more than a mile or so away could be a half hour or longer trip. On the night of the Elm Street fire, the rig was responding from the Exempt's fire house at #4 Centre Street, about a mile and a third north of the scene,  so at it's blazing top speed of between two and five miles per hour, it would have taken anywhere from fifteen to about forty minutes to get to the scene. That being said, if the rig did respond to Elm Street, it probably saved the block.

The tenement was on the ground by about 11 PM, and probably burned a good portion of the night as the crews continued to throw water on it, but then the steamer would have been a true Godsend, able to pour water into the flaming, smoldering ruins for hours on end without breaking a sweat.

The steamer (Again, if it actually responded) didn't entirely eliminate the grunt work, or even come close, though. Someone still had to hang on to the long play-pipes and straight tip nozzles that were the go-to water application tools of the era. Large-capacity deluge sets and water towers/ladder pipes were...at the least...a bit over two decades away, so crews on the hand lines had to switch out as other firefighters with pike poles pulled the ruins apart as much as possible so they could get to the stubborn, smoldering flames buried beneath fallen walls and floors.

It's called overhaul, and it's what happens after the rescues are made and the fire's knocked down. It's tough, gritty, hard work that hasn't changed all that much in a couple of hundred years, and can be every bit as dangerous as fighting the fire. Even with all of the modern technology that's been developed and implemented over the last couple of centuries, getting to that last bit of hidden fire to ensure that it doesn't flare back up a few hours later still requires back-breaking effort.

Keep in mind that the tenement wasn't the only damaged building they had to overhaul. There were at least four other structures damaged. It's a pretty good bet that there were crews there for most of the night. 

The investigation and search for bodies didn't start in earnest until the next morning. Portable lights  powerful enough to illuminate an entire scene were still a couple of decades away at best  (And lights both portable enough and powerful enough to be taken into nooks and crannies while searching along with generators portable enough to be taken to scenes, were even further in the future). They also had to wait for the building's ruins to cool down enough for them to begin digging.

It very likely took at least a couple of days for investigators to locate and remove all of the bodies (If they, indeed, did find all of them), but it was obvious before they started, just from the number of missing, that the death toll was bad. The New York Times published a pretty sensationalized article the very next morning estimating the death toll at 30 (Which I think is actually more accurate than the official death toll of 20...more on that in Notes) and the public took immediate notice

Several articles had been published over the last couple of years decrying the unsafe and horrible living conditions residents of these early tenements faced, and a horrific fire such as this had been predicted for years.

A Coroners Jury was impaneled, and came to some immediate conclusions about the fire. While an actual cause was never determined, it was determined that the building's poor design and lack of fire safety contributed directly to the loss of life. Building owner Edward Waring was found to be directly responsible for the building's poor condition, but I could find no record of what, if any action, was taken against him.

It's a good bet, however, that no action was taken against him at all. Waring was likely fairly prominent and more that a little wealthy, and wealthy building owners very frequently skated on charges of negligence and worse in multiple fatality fires back in that era, an outcome that occurred well into the 20th century, as I've already recounted in a couple of posts. On top of that, Waring's building, sadly, was not only far from being an isolated case, it was actually the norm for tenements of the day.

 I did find, however, that the Coroner's Jury made several strong recommendations to the city's governing body, all of them involving fire safety. This wasn't anything new...Articles and editorials had both decried the conditions that immigrants had to live in and predicted just such a tragedy for over a decade, and now that that tragedy had occurred, the public and the press went slam off, 

With the Coroner's Jury opinion and suggestions backing them up, the public demanded action from the city, but local governments had (And to this day still have) a tendency to react at the approximate speed of a turtle going uphill. You know the drill. While some discussion very likely did take place concerning a fix for the city's overabundance of firetraps, nothing was actually done. See, the city's Common Council (What we'd call 'City Council' today) found they had a problem...they weren't authorized by state law to enact any kind of fire safety ordinances. 

This, of course, meant that the Common Council had to get the state government involved. This caused things to move just as 'quickly' as you might think it would've. On February 10th...eight days after the fire....a bill was introduced to the State Legislature that would empower the city's 'Common Council' (What cities big and small call the 'City Council' today) to draw up, enact, and enforce ordinances. 

While awaiting passage of that law, New York's Common Council appointed a committee to look into the problem and suggest solutions. Then the Council studied and discussed the various suggestions that the committee came up with, and drew up some some pretty ground-breaking ordinances requiring all tenements to be equipped with fireproof stair towers and/or fireproof exit stairways accessible from each and every apartment. Aaaaand, nearly two months after the Elm Street fire, that's all that had been done.

 The problem was, of course, that until the law authorizing the common council to enact and enforce them was passed, the new ordinances weren't even worth the paper they were written on. Again, they had to wait for the State Legislature to give them legal authorization to enact the ordinaces, and waiting for the state to act on anything was like taking cold molasses, putting it the freezer, then trying to get it to flow uphill. 

Unfortunately both NYC's Common Council and the State Legislature were about to get some unwelcome incentive to kick their efforts into a higher gear.

 Unknown to anyone (And to everyone's ultimate horror), the February 2nd fire was just the first horrific tenement fire that would occur during the cold winter of 1860. OK...the second one was actually during the early Spring...March 28th to be exact, a week shy of two months after the Elm Street fire.

The winter of 1860 was likely beginning to wind down along with the month of March on the evening of March 27th, and as Tuesday the 27th  became Wednesday the 28th, everyone in the four story wooden tenement at 90 West 45th Street, about three and a half miles north of the fire scene on Elm Street, was curled up in their beds, asleep.

The tenement at 90 West 45th Street was, if possible, even more of a fire trap than the building on Elm Street. It was one of four flat roofed, wood frame four story tenements...84-90 W 45th Street...that were thrown up quick and cheap in 1853. The four tenements were just shy of twenty feet wide by forty or so feet long. A combination grocery/liquor store was located on the first floor of  90 West 45th...the fire building...while a pair of three room apartments were located on that building's second, third, and forth floors. The buildings at 84-88 W 45th had apartments on all four floors rather than a first floor store. 

Each apartment in the fire building featured a main living/cooking/dining room with a fireplace. and a pair of tiny bedrooms

A good approximation of the floor plan of each of the 45th Street tenement's floors. Each floor had a pair of three room apartments, with the public hall and stairway on the right side of the building. The dotted square next to the stairway is the possible location of the roof scuttle, though it could well have been more towards either the front or rear of the building.

Like the Elm Street tenement, that hallway would have been pitch black at night even when it wasn't stuffed full of smoke...these buildings were the absolute definition of 'Fire Trap'.

Detail map of the area surrounding the W. 45th Street fire scene. Unfortunately the map stopped at 46th Street, so I couldn't mark the exact locations of H&L 8, Hose 31, or Engine 1.

Much like the tenement on Elm Street, the buildings had wood frame roofs covered by wood decking, then a layer of canvas covered by pitch (Tar), and then a layer described as a 'sprinkling of small stones', pretty much making it an all but perfect avenue for horizontal fire spread (This is what's known as foreshadowing, gang). Not only were there no firewalls between the buildings...they wouldn't come along for a few decades yet...I have a sneaking suspicion that the walls between buildings were 'Party Walls', meaning that two buildings shared the bearing wall separating them. 

Each of the four tenements had a public entrance toward the right side of the building (Separate from the store entrance on the fire building)) and a single three foot wide stairway that opened into a public hall on each residential floor. The first floor public hallways in the buildings at 84-88 W 45th likely also had back doors opening into the rear yard. Again, like the Elm Street tenement, there were absolutely no nods of any kind given to fire safety.

There were scuttles leading to the roofs of the buildings, but only one building...88 West 45th...had a ladder that allowed access to the roof through the scuttle.

Five of the six apartments in the fire building were occupied, all by large families. Timothy Nolan and his wife and four kids called the 2nd floor rear apartment home, while a widower named Kearney lived in the 2nd floor front apartment with his two children. On the third floor we had the six members of William Irving's family in the front apartment and Thomas Bennett, his wife, and four kids in the rear apartment. In the Bennett apartment, Mrs. Bennett's sister Jane McNalley was visiting, and was staying overnight.

The front 4th floor apartment was unoccupied, while Andrew Wheeler, his wife, and their four kids lived in the rear 4th floor apartment.

Several of the fathers worked for New York's Sixth Street Railroad Company, and two of them...Thomas Bennett and Andrew Wheeler...were working a midnight shift, meaning that they weren't at home and that their families were slumbering peacefully in their absence when, sometime around 1 AM, someone slipped into the unlocked public entrance of 90 W.45th, opened up a closet beneath the stairs, set the contents of the closet on fire, then slipped back out into the night. 

If the arsonist meant for the fire to take the whole building...and it's a good bet he did...he probably left the closet door open, but even in the unlikely event that he closed it, it wouldn't have taken long for the flames to have cooked through both the flimsy door and the steps themselves, and then, just as it did on Elm Street nearly two months earlier, the stairwell acted just like a chimney, drawing heat and smoke upward to the forth floor, where it immediately started mushrooming. 

What happened next was a near-repeat of the Elm Street fire, as smoke and heat filled the cock loft (Space between top floor ceiling and roof) and fourth floor chock-full in only minutes even as flames stair-climbed the wooden staircase. Of course, all of the heat and smoke didn't go up the stairwell, as the fire would have rolled across the hallway ceilings on each floor as well. Keep in mind that these were narrow little hallways...about five feet wide, and the stairwell, which was filled with first heat and smoke, and only minutes later, flames, took up three of those feet. Fast rising flames would have lapped over into the hallways and started running the ceilings as soon as the flames themselves reached each floor, and this would have happened from the bottom up, only a minute or so after the heat and smoke reached the fourth floor hallway and started mushrooming.  This would have blocked any possibility of escaping down the stairs long before any of the occupants discovered the fire. 

The lower floor apartments themselves would have stayed smoke free for a few...a very few...minutes as smoke and heat 'mushroomed', filling the building from the top down to meet up with the flames climbing the stairs. It was a toss-up as to who discovered the fire first...the Wheelers on the 4th floor, or either the Nolans, or Mr. Kearney and his kids on the second floor, but my bet's on the Wheelers, and the reason why is also the reason that this fire was a near repeat of Elm Street.

The fire started in the first floor hallway...next to the apartments...rather than the basement, beneath them, as it had on Elm Street, so for the first few minutes of the fire all of the heat and smoke went straight up the stairwell rather than pushing up through the floors and walls.  This kept the second floor apartments from filling with smoke for just a little longer than had happened two months earlier, allowing the Nolans and Kearneys to sleep in innocent and ignorant bliss for a few minutes even as the Wheelers were discovering, to their horror, that their apartment was filling with smoke.

The Wheelers were possibly awakened...if they indeed did wake up...when they started coughing violently as they breathed in a lungful of smoke, and if they did wake up, Mrs Wheeler probably yelled for her kids to run for the front door, where she joined them, threw it open...and found the hallway packed with heat and smoke, making it totally impassable.. Then they may have looked for a ladder to try to get out of the roof scuttle...but I doubt it. There was no way anyone could have lived for more than a couple of minutes in that hallway by then. More than likely they were chased back inside the apartment and Mrs Wheeler then probably herded her kids to the windows, which looked out into the tenement's back yard, to find themselves trapped. 

Of course, there is another, even more likely scenereo that would have been more merciful if no less horrible. Mrs Wheeler and her kids could have also suffocated in their sleep, never realizing the horror that overtook and killed them.

If the Wheelers did wake up and try to make it out, Thomas Bennett's wife, her sister, and the Bennett children were possibly awakened a floor below them, in the rear third floor apartment, by what sounded like a thundering herd pounding across the floor above them as the Wheelers ran out of, then back into their apartment. It's even possible that the Bennett apartment hadn't filled with smoke as thickly as the Wheeler's top floor apartment yet, but there was still smoke hanging, evil and malignant, when the Bennetts woke up, heavy enough to snap all of them wide awake and send them, like the Wheelers in the apartment above, tumbling and rushing for the door. 

Mushrooming smoke had banked down enough to fill the third floor hallway by the time the Bennetts woke up, and when Mrs. Bennett yanked the door open, she was met with a fast thickening wall of smoke and heat that rushed into the apartment like a vaporous tidal wave, filling the tiny living room before she could slam the door on it. I'm of two minds as to whether she did get it closed or not...but we'll get to why in a second. Whatever happened in the Bennett apartment, we know for sure that they did wake up, because Mrs. Bennetts sister would make it out...which is also why I wonder about the front door.

In the front third floor apartment, William Irving and his family likely woke up in much the same way as the Wheelers and Bennetts, coughing and hacking and wheezing on the smoke pushing into their apartment. And, also like the other two families, they rushed to the front windows when they found the hallway blocked by smoke and flames. They shoved the windows open and looked down at the sidewalk...thirty or so feet below them.

When they looked down they very possibly saw Mr. Kearney lowering his two kids out of  a front window of his second floor apartment...he probably leaned out of the window, stretching his arms downward as he held each child's hands, trying to get them as close to the ground as possible, before he let them drop.  Once he was sure they were safe, while yelling at them to 'Stay right There!!. he climbed out of that same window and dropped to the sidewalk in front of the building, gathering his two kids and getting them away from the fire. We know for sure that the Kearneys as well as the Nolans in the second floor rear apartment made it out uninjured, and likely did so fairly early in the incident. My bet is that the Irvings called to Mr. Kearny to help them, or to call the fire department or just screamed 'Oh, God, please help us!!!, but whatever actually happened, Mr Kearny quickly realized that there were people trapped in the building.

In the rear apartment, The Nolans likely also realized that they were trapped in the building the exact same way that all the other families in both fires had...by opening the door to a wall of heat, smoke, and fire, and quickly slamming it closed. Their apartment faced the rear yard, and they may...or may not...have had the communal outhouse to climb out on. Mr. and Mrs. Nolan quickly corralled their four kids and dropped them out of the windows, probably lowering the oldest kids first so they could catch the younger ones, before climbing out of the windows and dropping to the ground themselves. Then they worked their way through the backyard to the ally, than a cross ally, and out to 45th street. Or maybe they went in the back door of one of the other tenements...remember they had apartments on the first floor...and out of the front. If that's what they did, it's more than possible that they also started waking up that building's residents as they cut through.

Or, maybe some of the occupants of 88 W 45th...the tenement next door to the fire building...were awakened by the commotion and, realizing that the building next door was burning like a torch,  evacuated their own building. And if that's what happened, it's a good bet that some of them started going through the other two tenements and getting people out. We'll never know for sure just how the the residents of the other three tenements found out about the fire, but we do know that everyone in those three buildings made it out without even breaking a sweat.

Of course, as residents made it out of the buildings, they had another problem on their hands...Unlike Elm Street, there was no fire station near the scene on 45th street, so someone also had to haul ass to either a police station or the bell tower to report the fire, which had been burning for as much as ten or fifteen minutes before the citywide fire bells began banging out the alarm. 

Volunteer firefighters who were pulling duty at the stations rolled out of bed, pulled clothes on, and tumbled down stairs.  Other firefighters unlocked the big exit doors and pushed them open, as even more firefighters and runners, coming from home, joined them at the tow-ropes, and the crews dragged rigs out of the exit doors, looking for a tell-tale glow or column of smoke..

The fire likely wasn't hard to spot. The building was all frame, and frame buildings tend to burn hot, fast, and bright. Fire had likely cooked through the building's fourth floor windows, and very possibly the windows of the Bennett apartment on the rear of the third floor. On top of that, fire had likely cooked through the roof, ignited the pitch-soaked canvas roof covering, and started advancing across the roof like a brush fire, quickly spreading southward to the roof of 88 W. 45th, next door.

Engraving of the 45th Street fire that appeared in the New York Times. The fire building's fully involved, and the fire is spreading southward...to the left...into 88, 86, and 84 W 45th. Ten people died at this fire.

Engine 46's steamer is shown on scene...but the rig pictured looks nothing like 46's Lee and Larned rig, leading me to wonder just how accurate the rest of the engraving is. If anything, the steamer in the engraving looks like Exempt Engine's self propeller, which didn't respond to the scene as far as I know. 

Engine 46's Lee and Larned 300 GPM steamer was instrumental in stopping the fire from taking most of the block, and confining the fire to the upper floor or two and roof of 84-88 W 45th.

At 8th Ave and 48th Street, about a half mile north and slightly east of the fire, Hook and Ladder 8's crew quickly spotted the orange-tinted smoke column urging skyward to their south, and started dragging their big open frame ladder truck down 8th Ave, with Hose 31...quartered right around the corner and therefore directly behind Ladder 8's quarters...and Hudson Engine Co 1, whose house was a half a block up 48th Street, right behind them.

 Another half mile or so south and West, at 138 W 37th Street, Mt Vernon Engine/Hose 46's guys spotted that same smoke column to their north. They may have waited a couple of minutes for more of their members and runners to show up, because their rig was a bit heavier than many of the engines...they had a brand new hand-pulled Lee and Larnard steam-powered rotary gear pumper, her brass work gleaming.

As they waited for a full crew to show up, the rig's engineer took a lighted taper from the stove and shoved it into the tinder and kindling laid on top and around the coal in the fire box, lighting it off. The ten or so minute run to the scene would be just about enough time to get steam up in the boiler.

As soon as enough men to pull the steamer showed up, they took their places at the tow ropes of both the steamer and the four wheeled hose wagon and dragged the rigs out of the station, the hose wagon leading the way.

Even as the crews of Ladder 8, Hose 31, Engine 1, Engine and Hose 46, and several other companies ran their rigs towards the fire, someone (A part of me wonders of it was the actual arsonist, but it could also have been one of the occupants of any of the four buildings as many of the men were employed by the railroad.) ran into the Sixth Ave Railway shops and shouted that 'The house at 90 West 45th was on fire!!!' 

Andy Wheeler and Tom Bennett likely looked at each other, shouted near simultaneous 'Oh My God!!'s, and took off at a dead run. The fire was likely already lighting up the night sky by then, filling them with dread as they ran through the empty streets. The city fire bells began tolling even as they ran, as if to confirm what they were seeing.

Whoever ran into the shops and notified them did so early enough that the two men beat the rigs to the fire...they could see flames rolling from the upper floor windows for a couple of blocks as they ran up 45th street, and both  of them tried to make it into the first floor public hallway when  they got there. One of them yanked the door open (Probably burning his hand as he did so) to be met by a face-full of fire and a furnace-blast of heat as flames rolled out of the doorway  and bent up and out, reaching to the third floor In that instant they saw that the hallway was burning from top to bottom, the stairs nothing more than a flaming framework, and knew that they couldn't get to their families.

Above them, the Irvings were hanging out of the windows of the third floor front apartment, yelling for help, and this gave Tom Bennett a little bit of hope. If the Irvings were still alive, maybe...

...But his hopes had already been dashed. In the third floor rear apartment, even as the two men ran up,  the Bennetts were beyond desperation, into something beyond terror as flames roared into the apartment from the hallway. From the little I could find out (And trust me on this, it was very little) I think Mrs. Bennett was startled by the wall of smoke that rolled in to the apartment, and she and her sister grabbed the kids and left the door open as they ran to the windows, shoving one or maybe both of them open. This created a draft, that pulled the fire right on top of them as it rolled towards the open windows.

All five of them cowered from the flames, leaning out of the two rear windows until their night clothes began scorching. One of the kids started screaming as his shirt caught on fire. And in desperation,  Jane McNalley climbed over the window sill and, as her sister and nieces and nephews screamed in pain and terror, jumped, injuring herself horrifically as she slammed into the backyard's packed earth. William Holden, who lived behind the burning tenement, on 46th Street, had been awakened by the screams of terror coming from the building (He would state later that he thought some of the husbands were beating their wives again (?!?!) ) and looked out of his window just in time to see her jump. He quickly dragged on some clothes, rushed downstairs and out of the back door of his own building, and reached the injured woman about the same time as as several neighbors (Among them Andrew Wheeler) along with some firefighters from the first arriving companies. They quickly carried her away from the building, to a near-by Police precinct. From there she was taken to the hospital with severe burns as well as a broken femur.

She probably jumped only a few minutes before the first rigs rolled onto the scene. Ladder 8's crew wasn't the first rig on scene, but they weren't far behind the first arriving engine and hose companies, and they were the first arriving ladder company. The glow became progressively brighter and larger as they neared the scene, and when they swung left onto W 45th, it looked like the sun was rising about five hours too early. The entire upper part of 90 W. 45th was a seething, crackling mass of flames rolling twenty or more feet above the burning roof, and flames had spread across the roofs of at least two of the other tenements, and possibly all three. They could look up, through the fourth floor windows of 84, 86, and 88 W 45th and see burning, melting tar dripping downward into the fourth floor, the top floor windows of 88 were likely already glowing orange. On top of that, flames could also be seen in the third floor windows of #88...fire had burned through the party wall between the two buildings. 

Their was probably a hydrant fairly close to the scene, and the first engine had probably taken it, and gone in service, so there was at least one stream flowing water as Ladder 8 rolled up, but that one stream was all but pointless. Hose 32 and Engine 1 possibly laid in from a second hydrant on the way in...'Bringing their own water'....or they may have taken water from an earlier arriving engine, and another stream or two was soon boring into the flame. Even as the crews of Ladder 8, Engine 1, and Hose 32 rolled in and went to work, they took one look at the building, and at the flames walking across the roof and showing in the windows of #88...and someone very likely said something to the effect of 'We're gonna lose this whole f***ing block!'.

Fire had spread from first floor to roof in the stairwell of the original fire building, and heavy, boiling smoke was pushing from between the siding boards and churning from the front third floor windows, all but hiding the terrified people hanging out of them. Ladder 8's crew saw them through the billows of smoke, could hear them calling for help, and swung into action.  They pulled a wooden ladder (Probably a 35 footer) from the rig and quickly raised it to the third floor window that the Irvings were hanging from...and that's where things went south.

Several firefighters quickly climbed the ladder, trying to reach the Irvings...too many of them, as it turned out, and the ladder fell (The NY Times article says it broke, I'm wondering of the bottom simply kicked out, but in either case...) the firefighters tumbled to the sidewalk, and the Irvings let out a collective groan of despair.

Thankfully the firefighters weren't injured, and quickly regrouped. They may have started to re-raise the ladder, but up on the third floor, John Irving came up with a new game plan...he first lowered his son, John Jr, then one of the boy's younger sisters down as far as he could reach, dropping them to the waiting firefighters who caught them and deposited them on the sidewalk...and then his wife screamed that two of the kids had run back to the bedroom and she couldn't get to them because of the smoke. Mr Irving told her to get out of the building, he'd go look for them. She refused, screaming that she wouldn't leave her kids even as her husband bodily dragged her to the window, and dropped her to the waiting firefighters as well, yelling down that he had to find his other two kids.

Ladder 8's guys were already raising another ladder, (Or re-raising the original one), yelling at him to get out of the building, that they'd go after them as they did so. I don't know for sure if Mr Irving jumped as well, or went down the ladder...The article says jumped, and I tend to agree, if for no other reason so he wouldn't delay the firefighters who quickly raised the ladder to the window. Two of them quickly scrambled up, and pulled themselves through the smoke-puking opening.

Keep in mind that this was long before any kind of breathing apparatus had even been thought of, so the best they could do was to stay low, crawling across the floor, breathing the tiny layer of breathable air next to the floor as they crawled to the first bedroom...the rooms were probably laid out 'railroad' style, one behind the other, with connecting doors, and the firefighters probably found the two kids cowering in that first room. 

Did I mention it was getting hot in there as well, and that fire may have burned through the front door as they were carrying the kids back to the ladder?  As they reached the window...the smoke was likely churning by now as fire rolled across the ceiling, and they only had a minute or so to make it out...the first firefighter to reach the window handed a child out to a comrade waiting on the ladder, that firefighter started down, carrying the terrified child. Then the firefighter at the window climbed out onto the ladder, took the second child, and started down, even as his partner bailed out onto the ladder right behind him. They likely hadn't reached the ground good when fire boiled out of the window they had just exited through. Ladder 8 had barely been on scene for ten minutes.

No more occupants would be rescued from the tenement, which was likely in 'Full Bloom' by now with fire rolling from every front window and through the roof. On top of that, the fire had extended across the roofs of all four tenements, flames were showing from the front windows of the third and fourth floors of 88 W 45th, and smoke was beginning to push from the eaves of the brick building at 92 W 45th, on the other side of the original fire building...things weren't lookin' good for the home team....

The scene was controlled bedlam as the Irving children were reunited with their parents...the rumbling crackle of flames overlaying the rocking clanking and shouted cadence of pumpers working, while several streams hissed into the fire, but it was obvious that the original fire building...and very likely 88 W 45th as well...were doomed. The crews pretty much 'X'ed off those two buildings and moved lines in place...front and rear,,,of 86 and 84 W 45th to try and stop it.  They were about to get some much-needed help. Hose and Engine 46 (Possibly one of the very few 'two piece' companies in the city). made their way north on 7th Ave with the lighter hose wagon in the lead by a good half a block, their crews watching the ever-expanding orange glow.

They made the turn onto 45th and found the street lit up like noon-time, with flames rolling from just about every window of #90 as ladder 8 reunited the Irving children with their parents. The guys on the hose wagon wrapped a hydrant and laid the first of 46's lines in to the scene as the Steamer's crew made the turn, a cloud of smoke pushing from the rig's stack and following them up the street. 

'How many lines can you guys pump??' A foreman asked Hose 46's crew as they spun a nozzle onto the end of the first line, getting a 'Two!!' in reply as a couple of the guys grabbed the female coupling on the end of the hose load, and started hand-jacking the second line back to the steamer...

At the hydrant, the crew nosed the engine in to plug, grabbed the suction hose, and made the connection (That front intake was way ahead of it's time BTW...modern pumpers have featured front intakes for decades because it makes 'hitting the plug' and connecting to the hydrant so much easier), spun the couplings of the two hand lines onto the pair of discharges just above and to the left of the intake, and waited for the call to 'Charge the lines!!'

When that call came minutes later, the steamer's engineer opened his throttle, then twisted the discharge valves open, and the lines jerked and swelled with water. The air became full of a new sound and sight that, would soon become common at fire scenes...the rapid, staccato 'CHF-CHF-CHF-CHF-CHF-CHF-CHF-' of a steam pumper running wide open as it punched a column of smoke skyward..

At the scene, the crews on the steamer's lines very likely started working on the fire on the top floor of 84 W 45th, maybe (I'll even go with 'probably' ) taking one line around to the rear of the building and hitting the fire from two sides...a basic tactic, popularly known as 'surround and drown', that's used to this very day. Remember these were actually small buildings, and Mt Vernon's steamer was probably a 500 GPM pumper, so it could supply a pair of 2 1/2 inch lines flowing 250 GPM apiece. They probably made quick work of the fire on the fourth floor and roof of 84 W 45th, then moved to 86 as lines from the other engines also bore into the fire. One big difference though...As long as they had coal, Mt. Vernon's steamer could pump all night long without slacking up.

A drawing of a Lee and Larned hand pulled 300 GPM steamer much like that used by Mount Vernon Engine 46. This was a rotary-style pump, powered by a innovative rotary style steam engine (Almost a very early version of a steam turbine) but it still utilized an air chamber to smooth out the fire stream, as the stream of water flowing from the nozzle's called. 

Photo of Lee and Larned steamer very similar to Mount Vernon Engine 46's rig. This pic shows the relative size of these small steamers...they still weighed in at around 5000 pounds, making them just light enough for a large crew to hand-pull to the scene. This one was owned by the Reading Hose Company #1, of Reading, Pa.

Note the interesting way the suction hoses ('Hard Sleeves' in fire service vernacular) are mounted vertically at the rear of the rig rather than the usual practice of mounting them on horizontal brackets on the sides.  

While 46's crew worked their way back towards the original fire building, I have a feeling that a combined crew from several other companies went in 92 W 45th and up to the top floor where they used hooks (What we call 'Pike Poles' today) to pull ceilings so they could get to the fire in that building's attic...they stopped the fire there before it did more than about $500 damage, (Still not insignificant, though...that's still around $15,500 in today's money.) They managed to stop the fire before it got much beyond the four tenements, and, from the impression I got from the single newspaper article I found, they actually left at least the shells of all four buildings standing. Enough was left standing, in fact (Again, from the impression I got) for investigators to enter the original fire building and expend far less effort locating and removing bodies than that same task required on Elm Street.

Firefighters still had that same long night of overhaul and investigators had the same wait to get inside to look for bodies they had to deal with on Elm Street two months earlier. Andy Wheeler and Tom Bennett, meanwhile, spent a long, heart-wrenching night searching desperately for their families, hoping against hope that they had, somehow, made it out of the building.  

Just to make an already heartbreaking situation even sadder, Andrew Wheeler was given a huge dose of false hope when he was told that his entire family had escaped. Sadly, Both mens' hopes were dashed the next morning when police and firefighters entered the tenement and began removing bodies. Ten bodies were found, all burned and crushed beyond any hope of recognition, and all ten were taken to the police precinct and placed in the rear yard, where they were covered by canvas sheets. All of the residents of the building with the exception of the Bennetts and the Wheelers had been accounted for, so it was a matter of letting Thomas Bennett and Andrew Wheeler identify the remains of their families.

That sounds so simple and clinical, but it was far, far from that simple, either practically or psychologically. First off the bodies were not only charred beyond recognition, they weren't all intact.. From the descriptions of the bodies published in the New York Times...and they were graphic...I'm pretty sure that there was, in fact, a partial collapse of the third and fourth floors both because of the random way portions of some bodies were preserved, and because some of the damage was traumatic rather than thermal (I.E. being crushed by a falling floor beam rather than burned). At any rate, the bodies were entirely unrecognizable, forcing both men to use jewelry and the little bit of hair and clothing that remained to attempt to identify their wives and children.

It was a soul-crushingly sad task.  The only possibly positive ID that could be made was Andrew Wheeler's wife, who he identified through a ring on one of her fingers. (This is another clue that the building did indeed collapse. Had the floors remained intact, the bodies would have been found in their respective apartments.)

No indication of exactly how the two men chose what bodies to bury were made, and that is a thought process that, IMHO, was just too sad and private to even try to evaluate...it would, in fact, be all but ghoulishly invasive to even think about doing so, so I'll leave the mourning process carried out by Thomas Bennett and Andrew Wheeler to history and let the two men and their families rest in peace.

But, back in 1860, the good citizens of New York weren't so inclined to allow the incident...or, in fact, incidents...to rest. They were horrified, and demanded some type of action be taken to protect residents of the city's tenements from suffering similar fates. It actually seemed, for once, that quick and decisive action was going to be taken. On April 17th...19 days after the second fire...the state legislature passed the bill that had been introduced back in February, giving the City of New York the power to enact and enforce fire codes. The ball was then kicked back to the City. The Common Council had apparently been burning midnight oil, because they already had a pretty detailed ordinance requiring that a means of egress be provided for residents of tenements, ready to go...all they needed was for the State Legislature to pass the aforementioned bill. The ordinance was enacted almost before the ink on the Governor's signature was dry. 

The ordinance stated that:

In all dwelling-houses which are built for the residence of more than eight families, there shall be a fire-proof stairs, in a brick or stone, or fire-proof building, attached to the exterior walls, and all the rooms on every story, must communicate by doors, or if the fire-proof stairs are not built as above, then there must be fire-proof balconies on each story on the outside of the building connected by fire-proof stairs, and all rooms on every story, must communicate by doors. If the buildings are not built with either stairs or balconies as above specified, then they must be built fire-proof throughout. All ladders or stairs from upper stories to scuttles or roofs of any building, shall if movable, be of iron, and if not movable may be of wood; and all scuttles shall be not less then three feet by two feet.

The new building code also retroactive, meaning that whichever option the building owners decided on had to be retrofitted to existing buildings as well as being incorporated into new construction. And yes, you read that right...sixty years before they started becoming common in new construction, enclosed fire stairs were, theoretically, required to be retrofitted to all tenements.

Retrofitting existing buildings with fire proof stairway enclosures and completely fireproof construction in new buildings was an awesome idea that was decades ahead of it's time, but there was also absolutely no way that the city's building owners were going to spend big bucks retrofitting their buildings with fireproof stairway enclosures...it just wasn't going to happen. The city fathers very likely knew this from the start, and this is why the law provided the option of fireproof exterior stairways.

So  iron stairways immediately began sprouting on the front and rear walls of New York tenements like crab grass in summer, right? Right???

Er...wrong.

Absolutely no one who owned a building liked any part of the new building code at all. Tenement owners...who got an average of about 7-10 dollars a month in rent for each apartment, or about $215-$310 today, ( Still a bargain compared to most apartment rentals today, especially in Mid-Town Manhattan!) took a look at the cost of installing an iron fire escape stairway...which would include design, as such structures didn't actually exist yet...calculated just how much of their monthly rent income would get eaten by those costs, and absolutely refused to even consider installing iron fire escapes.. (What...profit coming before safety?!?!? Say it ain't so!!!)

Owners of hotels and other large commercial buildings could well afford to install a fire escape or two...but refused because they were, well, ugly. Can't have an ugly old iron stairway hanging onto the outside of their expensive building, and marring it's beautiful lines now could they? Or reminding hotel guests that the building they were paying their hard earned money to stay in might, Oh I don't know, catch on fire. The very sight of those iron stairways hanging on the wall of the hotel would scare potential guests away!!!! (Much better to have them unafraid and unprotected...profit-wise at any rate)

The wealthy building and business owners, immediately bent the ears of their respective Common Council members, and they apparently bent them hard, because by the time the new ordinance was enacted it had been watered down like a fast food soft drink. When the city actually wrote the new code, the refinements noted above, from what I could gather, had become mere suggestions and 'Means of Egress' wasn't actually defined, even though it, well, was. As in 'We really  want you to do this, and you really should, but we're not going to make you do it.  And so this awesome new building code that should have made living in a tenement in New York City a little safer had it's teeth effectively pulled almost before it was even enacted. )n top of this, when it was enacted, there was almost no effort made to enforce it.

This problem was made even worse in 1862 when the Common Council tried to put a bit more bite into the code by amending it to state:

That every dwelling over forty feet high occupied by more than six families above the first floor and all dwellings occupied by more than eight families above the first floor ―shall have placed thereupon a practical fireproof fire escape that shall be approved of by the Department for the Survey and Inspection of Buildings.‖Any dwelling of thoroughly fireproof construction or sited alongside a structure of the same height, both with flat roofs, was exempt from the regulations

Notice something missing? Like any actual definition of just what a 'Practical Fireproof Fire Escape'  was? The Common Council removed any definition of 'Fire Escape', thereby leaving the Building/business owners of the city free to interpret it anyway they liked. And 'Any Way They Liked' inevitably meant 'The Way That Costs The Least Money'.

 So both tenement owners and business owners often circumvented the new regulation...if they worried about complying with them at all...by equipping each apartment, room, or office with a rope ladder, or in some cases just a rope, that was secured to the floor or wall on the interior end and could be tossed out of the window in event of fire. Just climb out and climb down.

Yeah, right.. Just try climbing down a rope ladder...or a rope...at Oh Dark Hundred in driving or, better yet, freezing rain while wearing the flimsy, voluminous night clothes popular in that era. Keep in mind that the building's burning down around you. And you're also trying to get your family out.

One of several designs for a rope ladder fire escape design that were embraced by building owners due to their low cost. Imagine, if you would, trying to get out of a smoke-puking window, get your feet onto those spinning, twisting foot-pegs as you try to get yourself onto that swaying, swinging rope as other rope ladders are tossed out of windows above you. Now imagine trying to climb down  the thing without falling. Now imagine you're trying to do all of the above in freezing rain or sleet. OH... yeah. You're trying to get your family out at the same time. 

Thankfully, this design didn't really catch on.

While an escape rope in each apartment did offer the advantage of, well, every apartment having it's own escape device, the difficulty of climbing down the things over-rode that minuscule advantage quickly, especially when you consider the fact that everyone above you would be tossing their own escape ladder or rope down as well. I have a feeling that the only thing these escape ropes or rope ladders helped with was assisting terrified building occupants in falling to their deaths.

A few building owners installed a vertical iron ladder on the front and rear wall of the building, but this didn't really help either. The ladder was probably in the center of the front and rear wall in 4-apartment-per-floor building such as the one on Elm Street, and on the stairway-side of two-apartment-per-floor buildings like the tenements on 45th Street, but occupants still had a big problem. To get out, you had to climb out onto the window ledge, and reach and step to the side, put a foot on a rung as you grabbed the ladder's beam, and pull yourself over onto the ladder.

This would be a trick for a healthy adult to pull off during a fire, especially in nasty or freezing weather. A small child...or an unusually small adult for that matter....wouldn't be able to pull it off at all. The elderly would likewise be unable to access the ladders. And, again, everyone would be trying to get on that same ladder at the same time.

 I'll let you guys' imagination toy with the absolute and tragic cluster that situation would create, even on a warm, pleasant spring or fall evening. NOW...again...imagine that our theoretical fire's in mid-January, and a nice freezing drizzle or freezing rain's falling at the time, coating those iron rungs with about a quarter inch of ice. Not a pleasant prospect at all.

Newer designs of the vertical ladder fire escape included a balcony on each floor, accessible from each front apartment, with the ladder passing through a well in the balcony, but that only solved the problem of accessing the ladder. It still didn't help the very young, very old, or infirm climb down the thing. Nor did it thaw out the coating of ice a good freezing rain would apply to it.

If you look closely enough, you can still find some true relics around, such as this vertical ladder style fire escape...this one has been restored, and is very likely on a commercial rather than residential building. At least this one has balconies, making it a little easier to access, as well as giving the occupants of each floor a 'staging area', if you will, to access the ladder from. The balconies, however didn't even come close to fixing the worst problems these vertical ladder escapes were saddled with.

One problem with vertical ladder escapes was the difficulty that the very young and the elderly would have accessing and descending them. Another problem would be the difficulty residents of lower floors would have getting on that ladder if it was already crowded with residents from the floors above them. Oh...and we're still talking about using the things on a nice, warm Spring evening. A little bit of freezing rain on a 28 or so degree night would quickly coat that ladder with a quarter inch or more of ice, turning it into a death trap for panicked residents trying to escape the building.

Sadly, it took decades for these vertical ladder escapes to actually be outlawed  They were still allowed on new construction until the 'New Law' was passed in 1901, and the ones already installed were grandfathered until an ordinance passed in 1929 mandated that they be replaced with more conventional stairway-type fire escapes. But guess what...all of them weren't replaced, and can still be found here and there on 'Old Law' tenements. In fact, in 2008, a NYU student fell from one she and a friend were hanging out on, severing her spine, and making her a paraplegic. She sued the building owner, winning a 29 million dollar settlement.

When building owners were confronted about these ineffective, and down-right dangerous escape devices (If building officials even bothered to try and enforce them) they simply simply pointed out that all that was required was a 'Means of escape'. They had indeed provided a means of escape. And they would also point out that the Building Department had apparently approved them, because, well, they were there  And the sad thing is, of course, that they were absolutely right.

In 1867 The Common Council made a good try at fixing that problem, along with several others by passing the Tenement House Act of 1867, and the very first issue that set of ordinances fixed was actually defining a 'tenement'  Oh...Didn't I mention that just what a tenement actually was hadn't been defined yet? Well...it hadn't. While the term had been used in all of the past ordinances dealing with multi-family dwellings, the actual, official definition of 'Tenement' had never even been discussed.

Unfortunately, the new ordinances didn't do any better job at defining 'Fire Escape' than the old one. It simply mandated that all' tenement houses' must have a fire escape or 'safe and effective means of egress during a fire'. Again, just what constituted a 'Safe and effective means of egress' was left up to the creativity and imagination of the building's owner, who inevitably added 'Least Expensive' to the  definition.

The balconies we're so familiar with...or at least an early version  of them...began to appear on the front walls of tenements, but unfortunately the iron stairways connecting them were far less common. Those same vertical iron ladders that I mentioned earlier were far more common than the iron stairways. On top of that the balconies were fairly regularly floored with wood rather than iron.

Some building owners didn't even hint at an effort to provide a way for occupants to get directly from the balconies to the ground. The balconies would, instead, be 'Party Wall Fire Escapes', installed so they straddled the wall separating two buildings, making them accessible from an apartment in each building. Again, there was no way to get to the ground from the balcony itself...the occupants of an apartment in the fire building had to climb out onto the balcony, make there way across to the  next building, get the attention of the occupant of that apartment, and hope he or she would open their window and allow them to make their way through the apartment so they could use the stairway in that building to get out.

A pair of party wall fire escapes. There was no access directly from the balcony to the floor below or the ground. Each balcony actually straddles the party wall separating two buildings. If there was a fire in one building, the fire escape allowed that building 's occupants to climb onto the balcony and move horizontally to the uninvolved building next door, then use it's stairway to get to the street...provided that an occupant of that building was available to open the window and let them in.

Some of these relics are still around...The remains of an ancient party wall fire escape, re-purposed to support a pair of heat pumps. This re-purposed fire escape has now likely become another kind of hazard...you just know that it wasn't designed to take a continuous static load as heavy as these two heat pumps If the building owner didn't reinforce the balcony before he installed them, it's a collapse waiting to happen

Property owners also argued that the fire escapes, not exactly being overly attractive, destroyed the looks of the buildings and killed property values. With these arguments in mind, many building owners installed fire escapes on the rear walls only. These rear fire escapes often emptied into a tiny, fenced in yard that wasn't big enough to hold all of the building's occupants, leaving them far too close to the fire building, with no readily apparent way to get out of the fenced in yard, once they made it to the ground, .

Fire escapes weren't the only issue that the Tenement House Act tried...and failed...to fix.

The Tenement House Act also mandated that every room would have a window in it, theoretically putting a window in those dark, cave-like bedrooms in the usually three room apartments...and building owners did indeed install windows. Of course, as these buildings all had party walls...two buildings sharing a single sidewall...there was no way to actually install an exterior window in the bedrooms, so building owners simply installed Interior windows, opening either out to the kitchen, or into the public hallway. This provided no more light or air what so ever, but did provided another pathway for fire to extend from the public hallway into apartments and from room to room..

The first attempt to fix the mess that the Tenement House Act had become was made in 1871, when the Common Council pretty much nixed requirements for fireproof interior stairways and strengthened the requirements for exterior fire escapes. While they were at it, amendments to the ordinances prohibited building occupants from placing any encumbrances or obstructions on fire escape balconies (A problem that would never be entirely remedied, I might add.)

Then in 1879, a major amendment to the Tenement House Act required every room in every apartment in new construction to have a window opening directly to the outside, an amendment that would give birth to a major New York City icon...the dumbbell tenement, or as it's better known, the 'Old Law' tenement. And, wouldn't ya know it, this new amendment managed to create a major fire hazard...we'll get to that in a minute. Lets take a look at the other problems this new amendment created while trying to give everyone a window to look out of (And get fresh air through)

These new buildings were, like their predecessors, built on 25 foot by 100 foot lots and were constructed in a 'dumbbell' shape, with the center of the building narrower than the front and rear by about three feet...eighteen inches or so on either side, When these buildings were built side by side, this created an air shaft between the buildings that was about three feet wide. Windows in the bedrooms opened onto this air shaft, technically satisfying the requirement for all rooms to have windows that opened to the outside.

Problem was the only bedrooms that got any light or air were the ones on the top floor...the rooms on lower floors were just as dark and airless as those in older tenements. Worse yet, occupants soon realized that the air shafts were perfect places to dump all kinds of trash and garbage (Including human waste from chamber pots.). These air shafts were not intended or designed to be trash chutes, and no provision had been made what so ever to remove trash from them, meaning that anything thrown into them stayed there, and rotted. And stank. Really really stank.

An 1879 amendment to the Tenement House Act required every room in every apartment in newly constricted tenements to have a window opening to the outside. Problem...none of the bedrooms in tenements, as presently designed, faced an outside wall. This meant that an outside wall would have to be created, which resulted in a New York City icon...the 'Dumb Bell' tenement, with a floor plan such as the one seen here. The buildings were 'pinched' in the middle, creating an air shaft between buildings, with the bedroom windows opening onto the air shafts. Great idea in theory, didn't work out all that well in practice for a variety of reasons that I'll take a look at in the captions of the illustrations below this one.

The front apartments are bigger...two bedrooms as opposed to one bedroom...than the rear apartments, and were more expensive as a result, but that doesn't mean that any of the apartments in the new buildings were that much nicer than those in the older buildings by any means. Oh, they were a bit bigger, and theoretically better ventilated and airier (They were actually often neither) but they were still not much nicer,  The kitchens were very much multi-purpose rooms still, and generally included the bathtub as one of the 'appliances'...yes, you could get a hot bath while watching supper being cooked. There was no counter or cabinet space (Still a problem in older apartments in NYC). The big coal cook stove turned the entire apartment into even more of an oven than it already was in summer, and was often the only heat source in winter. The bedrooms in all but the top floor apartments were still airless caves.  And trash/garbage/chamber pot contents thrown into the air shaft created a stench that was indescribably putrid

At least this particular building featured inside toilets...two toilets on each floor opposite the stairwell. All of the occupants of four apartments had to share two toilets, but it was still far better than all of the occupants of the building having to navigate the stairs at night to make their way out to the rear yard and share a single four hole outhouse!

Good detailed overhead drawing of a row of dumb bell tenements, showing just how they were laid out, along with a cut-away view of one of the apartments (Which, BTW, is not laid out exactly like the floor plan in the image above this one.)  The only apartments that benefited from the light shaft were the top floor apartments. the apartments on the lower floors got little or any light or air...the building next door blocked both. The apartments on the cross street side of corner buildings had the best deal, as seen here...the shaft windows actually opened onto the street, rather than a shaft, so those apartments actually did benefit from having shaft windows.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if landlords charged higher rents for the street-side apartments in corner buildings for this very reason.

Also, people tended to throw trash and garbage into the shafts, and it would pile up at the bottom of the shaft. These air shafts weren't designed to be accessible, so there was no way to remove the accumulated trash and garbage, which piled up, rotted, and stank. On a hot summer day, the smell would literally drive people out of their apartments, if the heat hadn't done so already. Even worse, as inaccessible to people as the bottoms of the shafts may have been, rats still managed to find the garbage at the bottom of the shaft, and make it their feeding and breeding ground, also making it a hot-bed of disease.

By far, the worst (IMHO, anyway) hazard that the light shafts created was adding a huge fire hazard. Once a fire on a lower floor blew out a light shaft window, the shaft became a giant chimney, and fire would roll out and up, auto-extending from floor to floor (Fire rolling out of a lower floor window popping the windows of apartments above it and spreading in through the windows) merrily. The shafts were seldom more than five or so feet wide, so fire would also spread to the building next door regularly. 

Roof view of a light shaft, taken in the early part of the 20th Century. Note how everything below the top floor is in deep shadow. This pretty much illustrates the lack of light provided by these 'light shafts' Ventilation was just as poor.

The kids on the roof illustrate another danger the shafts posed. Tenement roof tops were playgrounds for the kids living in the buildings, and more than a few kids have fallen into light shafts over the years. The outcome in such an incident is never good.

Inside view of a light shaft. There are still literally thousands of these dumb bell tenements in New York, though most of them have been greatly upgraded and modernized, with central air (or at least window units) and modern lighting taking care of the light/ventilation, and access doors in the hallway allowing any trash in the shaft to be removed. This building has pretty obviously been upgraded...note the modern windows. Modern plumbing and HVAC systems have been installed, most if not all have actual bathrooms in every apartment, modern (If miniature) kitchen appliances have been installed, and rents have been jacked up to the point of 'Outrageous'. This being said you still find apartments with bath tubs in the kitchen and tiny, old fashioned toilet rooms in New York. And, even with all of the modernization that has been done, there is one problem that still that hasn't been solved...that of fire spread through the light shafts. Fires in these buildings regularly go to multiple alarms, and often involve two adjacent buildings. And, sadly, also fairly regularly involve fatalities.

It got even worse. Remember the major fire hazard I mentioned above? These shaft were only a few feet wide...occupants of neighboring buildings could reach across and shake hands without even having to stretch...and made perfect flues, as in chimneys. So if a fire got going on, lets say, the second floor of a building, and blew a window in the air shaft, it would create a draft that spread it upward from floor to floor, quickly. Not only would it spread it upward in the original fire building...it would also extend to the building next door.

Literally thousands of these Old Law tenements were built between 1879 and 1901, and many still exist today, greatly upgraded, with the 'garbage shaft' problem taken care of...but the fire spread issue is still an issue if a fire gets going in one of these buildings. Of course, modern fire fighting equipment is hundreds of times better than equipment available in the late 19th and early 20th  centuries, but the basic tactic used to fight these fires...knock the fire down in the apartment of origin quickly while getting lines in place above the fire and inside the exposure building to cut it off...hasn't changed in nearly a century and a half.

Of course, more than a few Old Law tenement fires were beyond effective employment of that tactic by the time the fire was called in, and there have been hundreds of fires in these things over the decades that have gone to multiple alarms. And more than a few people have still died in those fires...then and now.

A very common sight in New York City as multiple fire companies battle a tenement fire. Looks like this on either started on the first floor or in the basement, and extended up the stairs to all floors, ultimately extending to the attic. This pic was taken in the thirties, but make that wooden (Spring-raised!!) aerial ladder a modern Tower Ladder and make the mid '20s American Lafrance pumper a modern Seagrave while giving the fire fighters modern gear, and the same scene has played out...and will play out...regularly in New York.

Which brings me back to the actual subject of this post...the fire escape. Even though fire escapes were now required on most tenements, people were still dying in tenement fires. A family of five died in an 1885 fire in a building that fell through the cracks because, while the building was five stories tall, it only had a single apartment on each floor. The family...who lived on either the fourth or fifth floor...was trapped, and those who didn't die in the fire, were forced to jump. None of them survived the fall.

Enforcement of the code was still spotty, at best, and this problem was made even worse when the City Fathers bounced enforcement responsibilities around among the various city departments like a soccer ball during a grudge match. The responsibility pin-balled between The Department Of Health, the Fire Department, and the Department Of Buildings over the last two decades of the 19th Century.  While some progress was made...The definition of just what a fire escape actually was was tightened up a bit, building owners were required to keep fire escapes painted and in 'good repair', and an 1885 amendment to the code required fire escape manufacturers to affix metal plates to the fire escapes with raised letters warning of possible jail time and $10 fines ($265 today) for obstructing fire escapes...enforcement of these new amendments to the code were still spotty at best. The right amount of money changing hands at the right time could and routinely did cause violations of the code to be missed during an inspection.

One the actual signs, warning of the ten dollar fine that could be levied against anyone who obstructed a fire escape, that an 1885 law required to be affixed to every fire escape in New York City. This one was for sale on Ebay...you don't even want to know how much it sold for!

It took the combination of an author with an agenda and public outrage to finally get a fix in. The public was aware that conditions on the city's slums were bad, and various organizations, such as the American Red Cross and the Women's Temperance League, made localized attempts to address the issues, and every election campaign offered a political fix to the problem (You know political fixes...those things that never work even when they are actually attempted) but the middle and upper classes in the city had absolutely no idea just how squalid the city's slums actually were.

Enter photojournalist Jacob Riis. Riis was a Danish Immigrant who experienced life in New York's tenements first-hand...he grew up living in them. He managed to get out of the slums, make a life for himself, and became, first, a Police Beat reporter for the New York Tribune, then a photojournalist who made his mission improving life for those who lived in New York City's slums.

He did a pretty decent job of it. Probably his best known work was an article in Scribner's Magazine, entitled 'How The Other Half Lives, illustrated with seventeen of his own photographs of conditions in the infamous Mulburry Street/Five Points area of Manhattan...then one of the worst slums in the U.S. He also gave a series of lectures based on the article, using a slide show of the same photos used in the article.

The article and lecture series had a huge impact, which was enhanced even more when he expanded the article to a full book of the same name, which was published in 1890. The book was successful both critically and popularly, and would have nationwide impact. In New York City the combination of the book and the article/lecture series set off a firestorm of public criticism of both the living conditions suffered by the poor, and the city government that allowed those conditions to flourish.

It also resulted in the formation of The Tenement House Committee in 1894 to study the problem in depth and report on possible solutions. This crew went in hard and went to work, with an amendment to the act banning rear tenements, which were likely one of the biggest fire hazards to ever occupy a building lot, passing within the year.

A major overhaul of the city government took place over the next half decade or so even as the committee worked on needed reforms, reforms that would result in the Revised Tenement House Act of 1901.

The new law was a major improvement. Among other things, minimum lot size was increased and a requirement was added mandating that all newly constructed tenements were to be built using a 'courtyard' type layout that provided light and ventilation to all apartments with-in a building while also providing access to the courtyard for trash removal.

Installation of openable interior windows in a wall facing a room with a street or rear yard facing window was required in all 'Pre-law' tenements such as the one on Elm Street. These new interior window had to be of at least a minimum size.

 The minimum square footage of apartments in new construction was increased, toilet facilities ('Water Closets') were required in all new apartments while running water and communal water closets were required to be installed in older buildings. (The latter provision  of this one took a while to be implemented in all tenements, citywide...there were older tenements still utilizing outhouses at least into the late 1910s. And no, interior toilet facilities had not previously been a requirement, though some Old Law tenements actually were built with communal water closets on each floor prior to the new law.).

Most important,, at least for our purposes...the law finally defined and codified just what was required in the construction of fire escapes, in both old and new construction. Those requirements are listed below:

 All newly-constructed tenement houses exceeding six stories in height shall be fireproof.

 All newly-constructed, non-fireproof tenement houses shall have fire escapes.

 Fire escapes shall be located at the front and rear of the building at each story above ground level or on any apartment that does not have a rear or front facing window.

 Fire escapes must be constructed with open iron balconies and stairways; stairways will be angled at not more than sixty degrees; treads will be not less than six inches wide and twenty inches long with a rise of nine inches.

 A gooseneck ladder should extend from upper balcony to roof.

 Balconies should be at least three feet wide, taking in at least one window of each apartment at each floor above ground level; they shall be not more than one foot below the windowsill and extend at least nine inches beyond each window; a landing of a least twenty-four inches on each side should be provided at the foot of each stairs; well-holes should be of sufficient size for headroom.

 Balcony floors shall be wrought iron or steel slats of at least one and one half inches by three-eighths inches in size and placed not more than one-quarter inch apart; slats will be secured and riveted to iron battens on one and one half inches by three-eighths inches, not over three feet apart.

 Balconies should carry a load of at least eighty pounds per square foot.

 The outside top rails shall extend around the entire platform and be properly secured into the wall with nuts four-inches square and washers at least three-eighths inches thick; top rails shall be one and three-quarters inches by one-and-one-half inches of wrought iron or one-and-one-half inch angle iron one-quarter inch thick.

 The outside bottom rails shall be one-and-one-half inches by three-eighths inches wrought iron or one-and-one-half inches angle iron one-quarter inch thick, well secured into the wall.

 Standards of filling-in bars shall be at least one-half inch round or square and securely riveted to top and bottom rails and platform frame, placed at not more than six inch centers and secured at intervals by outside brackets.

 Stairways shall hold no less than one hundred pounds per step, and treads must hold at least two hundred pounds.

 Treads shall be flat, not less than six inches wide with a rise of no more than nine inches.

 Stringers shall not be less than three-inch channels of iron or steel and shall rest upon and be secured to a bracket that is secured to the wall and secured to balcony at the top.

 Steps shall be double bolted or riveted to stringers.

 Three-quarter inch handrails for steps, well braced.

 Brackets shall be at least one-and-one-half inches by three-quarter inches wrought iron or one-and-three-quarter inch angle iron one-quarter inch thick, well braced; they shall not be more than four feet apart; brackets should go through walls.

 Drop ladders are required from lowest balcony; not less than fifteen inches wide, with strings not less than one-half inch by two inches and rungs not less than five-eights inches in diameter, placed not more than one foot apart and properly riveted to the strings.

 When lowest platform is more than fourteen feet above ground, a landing platform shall be provided not more than ten feet above ground and connected via a stairway; the platform should be at least three by four feet wide with proper railings and a drop ladder to the ground.

 At least two coats of paint shall be applied, one in the shop and one after erection.

 Encumbrance plates shall be placed conspicuously on all fire escapes.

 Vertical ladders will no longer be permitted upon new buildings.

Extant structures:

 All currently existing, non-fireproof tenements without proper escapes shall have them erected according to provisions previously stated.

 Fire escapes in air shafts and courtyards to not count toward required escapes.

 Party wall fire escapes, connecting adjoining buildings are acceptable only when a fireproof wall separates the two buildings.

 All wooden platforms shall be replaced by proper iron slats or floors.

 No wooden balcony or stairs acceptable.

 Fire escapes placed on wooden tenements shall be secured to wall through a wrought iron or steel plate and span at least two studs.

New tenements built to the new code all but inevitably came to be called 'New Law Tenements', terminology that has lasted to this very day. When the new codes went into effect they were strictly enforced, with a deadline for owners of existing buildings to bring them up to code, and this time those iconic iron stairways did begin sprouting on the walls of tenements throughout the city.

City governments through-out the country had been following the goings on in New York closely.  Philadelphia was passing a very similar code, very likely based on New York's 'New Law,' during the same time period, and other cities began codifying fire escapes very shortly there-after. By the middle of the 20th Century's first decade, the fire escape had become an entrenched part of urban life, most especially in the city where they were born. SO it's more than a little ironic that the technology that would ultimately make them all but obsolete was already on the horizon.

Enclosed interior stairways had been suggested for decades...as you may recall, they were actually supposed to be part of the original ordinance passed after the two tenement fires, but were deleted from the code. Then, sometime during the 20th Century's second decade, as buildings got larger and taller, enclosed, fire rated interior stairways were mandated in new construction over a certain height. This time the fire code had real teeth...if the plans for your new building didn't include fire stairs, the Department of Buildings wouldn't issue a building permit. And if a building owner tried to bypass the building code during construction, that same department wouldn't approve the building for occupancy. 

By 1920, almost all new multi-story apartment and business buildings had an enclosed stairway or two or three. Fire Escapes were still installed on new buildings...particularly factories and hotels (But not without a fight...more on that in 'Notes') but by the 1930s installation of new fire escapes had dropped to a trickle.  Finally, a law in 1968 forbade their installation on new construction in New York City. Of course, at that point, you could probably count the number of new fire escapes installed in any given year on one hand, with change left over.

But the fire escape was still here to stay...there were literally tens of thousands of apartment buildings in New York alone that had fire escapes, and millions of buildings nation-wide. And tens of millions of people live and work in buildings that still have a fire escape. And, as I noted at the beginning of this post, many of those same people have all but forgotten that escaping from a fire is what they were actually designed for. (Until a fire beaks out in their building...then they tend to remember pretty quickly.)

Ahhhh...but that brings us to the problems with fire escapes, and there are many. While they were far, far better than nothing, they were most definitely also far from perfect.  Lets just look at at a theoretical fire in a tenement for a moment. ANd lets say that this fire breaks out in an 'Old Law' tenement at, say, 1:30AM. While we're at it, we're going to pretend that our fire escape is unobstructed, despite the fact that many urban apartment dwellers use those iron fire escape balconies as, well, a balcony, complete with furniture.

If the building's residents discover the building's on fire early in the incident and remain calm, everyone's probably going to get out safely. Most if not all tenements have a front and rear fire escape, giving every apartment a fire escape window, so it would just be a matter of everyone climbing out of the fire escape window and walking down the fire escape to the street.

. But...what if our theoretical fire is on a lower floor and is well advanced by the time the majority of the residents wake up to find their apartment filling with smoke. And what it's s blown a window or two by the time these residents begin clamoring down the fire escapes?

Then we have a problem or two, and they're biggies.

At the very least the fire will be blowing out of a window right next to the fire escape, creating a major hazard that would make descending that iron stairway all but impossible. Our residents would have to pass within  a couple of feet feet of the flames roaring from the window. Clothes will be smoking, hair singing, and the fire escape will be getting hot. Anyone passing by those flames will get burned... possibly severely...and it's a good possibility that the people on the fire escape above the fire will refuse to pass the flames and have to be rescued over ladders, trapping anyone above them while they're at it.

Now...what if our fire blows a fire escape window? If that should happen...and it did and does, regularly... flames would be rolling up and through the fire escape's open grill work, essentially turning the metal stairs and balconies into a giant bar-b-que grill. Not only would anyone trying to descend the fire escape be trapped by the fire, anyone on the balconies a floor or two above our fire-spewing window would be directly exposed to it. Tragically, people have burned to death on fire escapes in full view of spectators and firefighters...this, in fact, happened at the Iroquois Theater Fire.

You wouldn't even have to be close to the fire to be injured by it. Flames impinging on the fire escape's metalwork would, literally, roast anyone on the fire escape. Just grabbing the handrail could, would, and often did...and does...result in severe and painful burns.

Also, remember, flames tend to soften and weaken metal structures, so if the flames impinge on the fire escape structure for long enough, it would warp in to the point of no longer being able to hold even it's own weight, much less the weight of dozens of terrified building occupants. So they would not only risk being burned to death with-in sight of safety...they would also run the risk of being caught in a collapse of the fire escape structure itself.

One big problem with fire escapes is illustrated in spectacular fashion here...fire blowing out of a window beneath a fire escape landing can and absolutely will block the landing above it, trapping anyone unlucky enough to be on the section of fire escape above the window. And yes...people have burned to death on fire escape landings. 

Lack of proper maintenance is another ongoing issue with fire escapes. Here a firefighter's leg has actually punched through the grating on a rust-weakened fire escape landing. Luckily the rest of his crew was right on top of the situation, pulling him back out and onto a sturdier section of the stairway. Look closely at the fire escape...you can see the rust!

Ok, lets say our building's occupants have made it onto the fire escape, and it's the original scenereo, where the fire was discovered fairly early. So our theoretical occupants have passed the fire apartment , get to the lower balcony, go to lower the drop ladder...and it won't budge. It's rust-frozen in the 'up' position, trapping all of our occupants on the fire escape. This could be anything from an uncomfortable inconvenience, as the fire department knocks down the small fire and frees the escape ladder, to a death trap as a fast-developing fire flashes over and blows a fire escape window, immolating a dozen or so people within sight of safety...and in full view of onlookers and fire-fighters..

Which brings us to maintenance of the things...or lack there-of. OK, the new laws required that fire escapes be kept in good repair, and early on most were, but as time wore on, poor maintenance once again became an issue. Not all building owners or 'supers' were worried about keeping the fire escapes ...or for that matter, the buildings they were attached to...in good repair, especially in the poorer areas of New York, such as the infamous South Bronx of the Sixties and Seventies. 

While no new fire escapes have been installed in New York (And, very likely, any other city of any size) in over fifty years, untold thousands of them still exist today, the great majority of them installed in the early 20th Century, meaning they are pushing the century-old mark. 

Fire escapes were, basically, bolted to the buildings, and as the attachments corroded, their ability to carry a load decreased to the point that they couldn't hold their own weight. And they often didn't wait for a fire to collapse...just the live load of people hanging out on them would occasionally send them...and their occupants...crashing to the street.

The bolts and brackets which attached the fire escapes to their buildings' walls weren't the only parts of the structure that rusted, of course...the railings and landings also rusted, which resulted in just as big a hazard for firefighters using the fire escapes for access as it did to residents...more than a few firefighters have had a railing or the grill-work of a landing collapse beneath them. The majority of these guys, thankfully, manage to grab hold of a more solid portion of the fire escapes to prevent a serious and potentially fatal fall, or have a fellow fire fighter grab them and assist them in getting back up through the new hole in the balcony that they created as they fell through. Sadly, though, the things do cause a number of injuries and, sometimes, Line Of Duty Deaths in any given year.

Also, like the apartment dwellers of times-past, the tenants of those century old buildings often use their fire escape balcony as a patio, complete with patio furniture and hanging plants, despite the fact that doing so is still illegal. Of course, all of this 'fire escape furniture' adds yet another hazard as the fire escapes age...one that doesn't need a fire to injure or kill someone. The weight of all of the knick knacks and pieces of patio furniture add weight to the potentially corrosion weakened fire escape. So the weight of our apartment dwellers, hanging out on the fire escape balcony, grilling burgers (Also illegal, BTW, for obvious reasons), and sitting on trendy metal patio chairs, could potentially be the back-breaking straw or two that pulls the fire escape free of the wall, dumping fires escape, furniture, burgers, and occupants on the ground. 

In 1968, as I noted above, New York's city fathers finally prohibited the installation of new fire escapes on any new construction but they didn't, and couldn't, go as far as demanding that they be removed from older buildings. Lets be honest here, even with their problems, fire escapes still provided the best means for the residents of older tenements to, well, escape from a fire.

Interestingly enough, dozens of fire escapes have been removed from these older tenements...and not because of a legal mandate. Instead, architects had them removed when buildings were remodeled and upgraded...and this often lead to a conflict with the building residents and, sometimes, organizations dedicated to the preservation of historical buildings.

Often, BTW, one of the arguments that tenants use to push for preserving fire escapes is that they give them peace of mind because they know they have a way to get out should their building light off....but that peace of mind just might ring false, because, unfortunately, things have come full circle, safety-wise.

 Maintenance of fire escapes is expensive...reconditioning a six or seven story iron balcony fire escape can cost upwards of sixty thousand dollars, while the cost of replacing one...if it's even allowed...can reach well up into the low six figures.

Because of this huge expense, a lot of these older fire escapes have been neglected over recent decades...building owners, as always, just don't want to spend the money. Oh, They may have spent a couple of thousand dollars to have one painted...often to hide corrosion and rust...but actually repairing those same corrosion issues very often hasn't even been given even a nanosecond's consideration, or worse and even more likely, has been intentionally ignored. So, that bright, pretty new paint often hides old corrosion.

Of course this has caused problems. I bet that fully half of the bottom fire escape ladders on existing residential fire escapes are frozen due to corrosion, making them all but useless should a fire actually occur. Also, pedestrians have been injured and killed when a piece of stairway or balcony iron work finally gave up it's hold on the building's wall and plummeted to the ground. (And the owners of those buildings realized, belatedly, that the sixty or so grand to repair the fire escape would have been far cheaper than the damages awarded to the injured party or their family). Of course, if the fire escape is in bad enough shape, the entire structure could collapse under it's own weight, much less the weight of anyone who might be on it. A railing or landing could give way partially due to the weight of someone leaning or stepping on it, creating a hazard to residents and...as noted above...firefighters alike.

Add these very real hazards to the fact that fire escape balconies are still often obstructed...despite the fact that obstructing them is still illegal...and that peace of mind quickly becomes a false sense of security. (Of course, many argue that even an unobstructed fire escape lends a false sense of security, for all of the reasons already noted.)

Preservation groups in New York and many other cities, on the other hand, argue that fire escapes are part of the city's heritage and are pushing to have them designated as historic landmarks...an argument that stretches back at least thirty or so years, most especially in The Big Apple. While the great majority of fire escapes are utilitarian, black or red painted iron stairways that don't blend with the building's architecture in the least, others use decorative ironwork...some of it  intricately detailed...that adds to the building's appearance.

 In some parts of New York...specifically certain parts of Tribecca...many of these more decorative fire escapes as well as those of the more utilitarian variety, have been granted historic landmark status, and are therefore protected. Sadly, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily maintained

Even fire escapes that haven't been declared historic landmarks will be around for decades to come, not only in New York, but in cities, large and small, across the country. People will hang out on them, and socialize on them, and turn them into patios, without a clue just how the iron balcony they are standing on came to be.

Probably the only people who are remotely aware of the two fires that, almost 160 years ago, kicked off the legislation game that birthed the classic iron fire escape are die-hard fire service history buffs and architecture aficionados. The Elm Street and 45th Street fires have all but fallen completely off of the radar.  The last living person who was directly involved with either of the fires very likely passed away nearly a century ago themselves, while any of their descendants who are living would be three to four times removed (ie: Great,great,great grandchild.) at the very least. It's highly unlikely that the story of their ancestor's demise is at all well known or often discussed.

And, while these fires were tragic, and are an interesting, and yes important, footnote in architectural and fire service history, they are just that...foot notes.  There's not even anything left in the neighborhoods where the tenements once stood to either commemorate or remind passers-by of the fires.  The block where the Elm Street tenement was located is now packed with multi-story commercial buildings, while 90 West 45th Street, as well as a good sized hunk of that block, is now home to the Capitol One building in Manhattan. The last 'Pre-Law' tenements from that era still standing anywhere in the city were torn down in the late 1920s.

No marked monuments exist for the thirty-plus who died on Elm Street and West 45th Street, but monuments of a sort to those who died in those two fires are standing...by the thousands....
nationwide, in the form of  the countless fire escapes hanging on to the front and rear walls of an equal number of aging apartment and commercial buildings. And, while the block of Lafayette Street...formally Elm Street...where the tenement once stood is now taken over completely by commercial buildings, if you walk just a couple of short blocks, to the block once occupied by Lady Washington Engine 40's firehouse, you'll find a whole row of classic restored Old Law tenements, complete with fire escapes, standing as a legacy for the twenty-plus residents who died less than a quarter mile away.

<***> NOTES, LINKS, AND STUFF <***>

 For some misguided reason or the other I figured this one would be a nice, quick, uncomplicated couple of weeks worth of work. ::Sigh:: I know, I know...I should really, really know better by now.

I was behind the eight-ball big-time on this one before I even typed the first term in the Ol' Google machine. The fires happened 160 years ago, they aren't particularly historic or noteworthy unless you're  a die-hard fire service or architectural historian...or maybe a history blogger who likes looking for hard to find stuff..., and absolutely nothing was left to memorialize the fires' victims. One of the street names has even changed since the fires occurred. So finding any info about the fires was going to be a  major challenge

Then it became real obvious real quick that this was going to be a multi-faceted post. It would have to be. I couldn't just write about the two tenement fires, and not mention the history spawned by them.. After all, one of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th Century...the iron balcony fire escape...was legislated into existence because of them. If  I wrote about the fires, I also had to write about the history of the fire escape along with the politics and legislation that created them. 

Then we had the tenements themselves...the history of the iron balcony fire escape and the history of the tenement apartment building, as well as the evolution of the laws and codes governing them are so interconnected that it's impossible to write about one without writing about the other.

And, in the blink of an eye, I had a major, multi-layered bit of research ahead of me.

 Lets take a quick look at researching the fires themselves first. Sure, they were big news when they occurred, but they weren't huge news. They weren't an Iroquois Theater, or a Titanic, or, even closer to home, a Brooklyn Theater.  They were just a pair of tragic tenement fires that just happened to occur two months apart. They were very likely referenced in the New York papers every time new legislation concerning tenements and/or fire escapes was in the news...at least up until about 1901,when the 'New Law' went into effect....and then they pretty much dropped off the radar.

When the New Law went into effect, it meant that... as far as the media of the era was concerned at any rate...the tenement fires weren't relevant any more. By the end of the 20th Century's first decade, as new tenement/fire escape legislation became unnecessary and other, far far bigger news stories took center stage, the Elm Street and 45th Street tenement fires had dropped out of the news cycle entirely, remembered only by the people who had survived them and/or lost loved ones in them and the aging former volunteer firefighters who fought them. 

Now, 160 years later, both fires have dropped so completely off the radar it's almost as if they never happened at all. That made researching them one of the most difficult pieces of research I've had to undertake since I started this blog. 

After putting every combination of 'Tenement Fires', 'New York', and '1860' I could think of into Google and a couple of it's cousins, I managed to find exactly two period newspaper articles...one about each fire... in a New York Times archive, and that was it. Oh, the fires...or at least the Elm Street Fire...was mentioned numerous times, but that was it...when I say mentioned, I mean just that. A line or two was written about it stating that it happened, that either twenty or thirty people died in the fire, depending on the source, (I actually think the latter figure is probably more accurate, more on that further along in 'Notes') and that they resulted in laws requiring fire escapes being passed (As if those laws were passed and went into effect immediately after the fires occurred.).

On top of that, only one of the two fires is generally even remembered at all. The two New York Times articles are the only source that mentioned the 45th Street fire. It was pretty much completely ignored in literally every other source (If you can call two or three lines a 'source') that I managed to find.

Thankfully, the two articles I did find were both lengthy, graphic, and pretty rich in details, up to and including names of victims and which apartments they had occupied as well as the names/numbers of several of the responding fire companies. Better yet, a couple of members of said fire companies were also identified. Not only were they identified, they were praised for making rescues. 

 Unfortunately, not a single mention was made of just exactly what tactics the guys manning those fire companies used in making those rescues and fighting the fires, or even of exactly which residents each firefighter rescued, so I also knew that, when I described the fire scenes, I was going to be doing a bit...OK, a bunch...OK a lot of speculating. And trust me, there was a lot of speculating on this one.

 Full disclosure  here, gang...just about all of the fire ground description in this post is of the 'This Is What I Think Happened' variety. This made writing it even more enjoyable than usual, as it gave me a lot of leeway, but that was tempered by the knowledge that, again, I wrote it as I thought it probably happened, without knowing just how accurate I was in doing so. With that being said, I hope that I was at least in the ball-park.

And, speaking of those fire scene descriptions...I also felt I had to throw in a pocket description of the old New York Volunteer Fire department as it existed in 1860...trust me , it was nothing like the FDNY of even 10 years later, or even the FDNY's immediate predecessor, The Metropolitan Fire Department, which was the salaried department that replaced the volunteers.

SO, I had even more research to do.

Thankfully, I managed to score a very useful quartet of bits of good luck, and I ran up on the first one as I perused yet another list of tenement fire search results. I happened across a link, on Amazon, for a reprint of a little tome entitled 'Our Firemen: The History of the New York Fire Departments from 1609 to 1887. 

Hmmmm...this could be interesting.

Originally written and published in 1887 by Augustine Costello, this huge...over a thousand pages... and seriously awesome book chronicles the history of firefighting in New York City from the very beginnings in 1609 to The State of The Art in firefighting as it existed when the book was published. The history starts, of course, at the very founding of New York, but the most important chapters, at least as far as I was concerned, were those dealing with New York's many volunteer fire companies, which were actually organized into the storied legend known as the New York Volunteer Fire Department, or usually, just the New York Fire Department.

The book chronicles every volunteer fire company, many well known fire fighters, and a slew of major fires (A couple of which found their way into my ever-growing list of blog-post topics), and yes, one of the fires mentioned was the Elm Street fire. (But, as happened so frequently, the 45th Street fire two months later was not mentioned).

Better yet this treasure trove of research info set me back only eight bucks and change...on Amazon, natch...and arrived three days after I clicked 'Add To Cart', in beautiful shape, with only a tiny, barely noticeable tear on the dust cover attesting to it's 'Used' status. I spent the better part of two weeks with my nose buried in it while jotting down a couple of legal size pages worth of notes as to where various bits and pieces of info could be found.

This modern reprint was published in 1997...110 years after the original...and is a real bargain, BTW.  Original copies in good shape do exist, but they are nowhere near as budget friendly. I went looking for the heck of it, and saw one on EBay...for around $450. The wild thing is, though, if all you want to do is read the original, you don't actually have to pay anything, because every original page, word and engraving is archived on line and viewable digitally.

The second bit of luck runs hand in hand with my life-long love of fire-fighting. I'm a member of several Facebook pages dedicated to the history of firefighting, all of which enjoy a huge and diverse membership. One of the members of several groups dealing with fire apparatus is an amazingly talented apparatus photographer from 'Across The Pond' by the name of Johnny Floyd II, who maintains a huge...no, make that gi-nor-mous...collection of historic fire apparatus photos. Two of the hundreds he had on display just happened to be an immaculately restored hand tub of nearly the exact same design as Lady Washington Engine 40's rig, and an equally beautifully restored ladder truck of the design used by New York's Volunteers.

 Better yet, Mr Floyd  graciously allowed me to  use both pics for this post. If any of you guys are just as obsessed with fire apparatus as I am, BTW, he has CDs for sale featuring literally thousands of apparatus and fire scene photos, all equal in quality to the two I posted above...I'll link to 'em in, well, links!

As I noted above, writing about these fires also meant writing about the history of the fire escape and the tenement building. There is actually...and thankfully...a  huge volume of information about both subjects online, and doing a decent job of researching them could well have involved tons of munchies consumed while reading dozens of articles and risking terminal carpel tunnel as I either typed or jotted a volume or two worth of notes...face it, that's how research is done. I think it may actually be the Webster's definition of 'Research'.

And this is where my third bit of Good Luck came in. Back in 2006, a graduate student by the name of Mary Elizabeth Andre, who was studying for her Masters of Science specializing in Historic Preservation, at the University of Vermont, wrote an excellent, lengthy, and highly detailed thesis on the History of The Fire Escape. And...just like this post...the history of the fire escape included the history of the tenement. That Thesis was made available online by the University if Vermont. In PDF. Making it downloadable.

And suddenly my research just got a little less complicated. And yes, Ms. Andres's thesis (She better have gotten an 'A' on it!) became my major source of information for the fire escape/tenement history portion of this post.

Then, finally, there is my fourth fortuitous little bit of luck, when I ran up on a link for a PDF copy of a 1939 book,  Enjine! Enjine! by Kenneth Holcomb Dunshee...yet another beautifully illustrated tome dealing with the history of New York City's early volunteer fire companies and their rigs.

Needless to say, I'm indebted to all of these people and publications. While doing the research is half or more of the fun of writing these posts, finding a source or two that consolidates all of your research into a couple of sites and/or documents is still 'hitting the mother lode', so to speak.

OK...I've rambled along and made the intro to the notes far too long, and I'm also indebted to any of my readers who've hung on this far. Before we get into the actual notes and such. they, like the post itself, are going to be written in two parts.
.
The first set of notes will be about the tenement fires and the volunteers of the old New York Fire Department. The second set of notes will dig into the history of the fire escape and the tenement a little more deeply.

As always, I hope I made this post entertaining and informative. On to the Notes!

<***>

The New York Volunteer Fire Department's Men and Rigs.

To kick this first section of 'Notes' off, we're going to take a look at the rigs...in particular, the engines...that the N.Y.F.D's crews ran at the time of the fires.

First a real quick pocket history of the hand pumped fire engine. Hand-powered pumpers existed in ancient Rome. Now, we're not sure exactly what form these rigs took. Many scholars think they were like big syringes while others have unearthed evidence suggesting that they weren't all that different, in concept at any rate, from the rigs used by volunteers in New York as well as other American cities from the early 1700s right on up to the introduction of the steamer.  Whatever type of rigs Roman firefighters were using, they were organized into companies, and ran out of stations, the remains of at least one of which still exists.

What ever firefighting technology was employed by the ancient Roman fire brigades was lost to history, and fire fighting reverted to the use of bucket brigades until hand pumpers were developed...or redeveloped...in the mid or late 1600s in England. Suffice it to say these rigs were only slightly better then a bucket brigade themselves. All of them discharged water in 'spurts' rather than in a solid stream, and were pushing it to discharge thirty or so gallons per minute  (A bucket brigade could actually apply more water per minute...it just couldn't do it effectively.). Such things as the air chamber, which allowed  the piston pumps that nearly all 'Hand Tubs' utilized to discharge a solid stream of water, had to be discovered (Or possibly rediscovered as there is evidence that some ancient Roman pumpers utilized a type of air chamber). Sturdier valves and more efficient, higher capacity pumps would be helpful. too. Wheels would be nice...yes, many very early rigs were hand carried rather than pulled. Oh...and hose. Lets not forget hose. 

In the early 18th Century, a button maker named Richard Newsham developed, designed, and built the first truly effective fire engine.  His engine was one of the first rigs equipped with an air chamber, making it capable of discharging a steady, solid stream of water. The rig was around six feet long by about twenty inches wide, and two feet high at the main deck, with an air chamber box about two feet high at the rear, giving an overall height of about 4 feet. It was a side-stroke engine...with the 'brakes' at the sides of the rig...and could be pumped by about six to eight men, who could get around one hundred gallons per minute out of it's twin 5" diameter pump cylinders (Couldn't find the stroke, but it had to have been around eight or so inches) as long as the crew could keep up a rate of 80 or so strokes per minute.

Really good hose hadn't been invented when these rigs were developed, so water was discharged through a long nozzle that was attached to a swivel pipe on top of the air chamber box...a fire fighter sat on top of the box, to direct the stream...so yes, the very first efficient fire engine also had what was, in essence, the first deck pipe. 

The rigs weren't perfect by any means...they were limited in capacity, heavy, weren't capable of drafting from a water source (Pond, river, or cistern) and the stream they flowed was often little better than a garden hose on steroids, but, with all of their limitations, these little rigs were still the first word in fire fighting apparatus in, say, 1720. The rigs were also a huge hit...once Newsham demonstrated one of them publicly, so much interest was shown in them that he abandoned button-making, formed a company, and started building them, to order, in several sizes. And, like fire rigs (And all vehicles of any kind) from the dawn of wheeled transportation, there was a long list of options that buyers could choose from when they ordered the rigs...'Checking The Boxes' when ordering a new piece of fire apparatus is far far from being a new thing!

The new colonies across the Pond (That'd be us) took a huge interest in this new technology as well when ads and flyers heralding the effectiveness and features of the Newshams appeared in various publications, and soon American cities were ordering them...including New York.

New York ordered two of the  rigs in 1731..both the largest size Newsham built, known as a 'Sixth Size' engine. The rigs were 6'8" long by 22" wide by 25" high over the main deck with a 30" high air chamber box, giving it an overall height of about 5 feet. The tank had a capacity of 170 gallons (Which the rig could empty in about a minute and a half with the crew going full tilt), and like all Newshams, it was filled via bucket brigade and discharged the fire stream through that early deck pipe on top of the air chamber..

A drawing of a Newsham engine. The largest rigs, such as the two ordered by New York City, were just shy of seven feet long by about 22" wide by five feet high over the air chamber box. You could literally store one in a modern bedroom...in fact it would make it out of a standard size door. They packed a bit of a punch, though...the largest rigs could pump around 100 GPM as long as the guys on the brakes and foot treadles could maintain about 80 strokes per minute.

The air chamber box was at the rear of the rig, it was pulled from the other end. OH...the wheels didn't steer, so you had to lift and turn it to get around corners.

A firefighter would sit on the air chamber box and direct the stream that was being pumped through the long, brass playpipe on top of the air chamber. The playpipe...the great great grandfather of the modern 'Deck Pipe'...was mounted on a swivel connection, allowing it to be rotated 360 degrees.

A restored Newsham engine just like the opens used by the city of New York. The front of the rig's to the right of the frame, the open box with what appears to be a strainer on one side is the water fill box. Citizens on a bucket brigade would empty their buckets into this box to fill the rig's tank even as firefighters manning the 'brakes' pumped water out of the tank. Needless to say, the amount of water the firefighters could pump onto the fire was completely dependent on just how much water the bucket brigade could dump into the tank. The tank took up the entire main body of the rig, BTW...the pump was actually submerged in it. This was also why these rigs...and in fact all hand tubs...ran with empty tanks. 170 gallons of water weighs roughly 1400 pounds...a full tank would have made the rig all but impossible to pull.

The brakes, which operate the pump, are the long poles mounted on the diagonal metal beams, these beams are attached to a pair of 'Rocking Beams, which are connected to the pump pistons with connecting rods. Men on the brakes pump them up and down rapidly,, swiveling the 'Rocking Beams' to operate the pump. The foot treadles are below the brakes...you can see the one on the far side of the rig more clearly, it appears as a long horizontal board...and are also connected to the rocking beams with a closed-link chain much like a bicycle chain. Two or three guys could stand on them and 'Walk' them in concert with the men operating the brakes, to add more power to the pump. The long, horizontal poles at the top of the rig. attached to the air chamber box at one end  and the rocking beam supports at the other, are hand rails for the guys operating the foot treadles to hang on to.

End view of the Newsham engine pictured above with the various operating components labeled.

About eight to ten men...four to five to a side...pumped the brakes, but the rigs were also equipped with one of the afore mentioned options...foot treadles on the main deck that were connected to the brakes. The foot treadles were connected to a 'rocking beam' that was also connected to the 'brakes' by a closed link chain (Much like a bicycle chain). Two or three men could stand on the foot treadles and 'walk' them, moving them up and down  to assist the crew manning the brakes (This likely took some real teamwork so they stayed 'in rhythm' with the crew on the brakes!). A pair of hand rails were provided for the guys manning the foot treadles, to hang on to as they 'Walked The Treadles'.

The pump was located down inside the tank at the rear of the rig, hard by the air chamber...a similar rocking beam on that end of the rig, which was also connected to the foot treadles, was connected to the pump pistons by connecting rods.

As small and primitive as these rigs were, they were far, far better than nothing and gave their crews at least a fighting chance of controlling a fire...or at least keeping it from taking more than one building. But they still had problems, and these problems started before they even got to the scene.

The first problem the crews ran into actually had nothing to do with the rigs...not directly, anyway... and the problem's name was response time. There were only two of these pumpers for all of Manhattan...the developed area of New York was way smaller in 1731 than it was even a century later, and the crews only had to drag the rigs, at the most, a mile or so, but, still, hand dragging a heavy, cumbersome, hard to maneuver piece of equipment a mile would take at least 15-20 minutes. This is after an alarm is turned in, and the fire alarm system was beyond primitive in 1731...it basically consisted of watchmen ringing church bells and a few strategically located, fire alarm dedicated tower bells.

Once the church bells and tower bells started banging out an alarm, a crew had to be formed up, informed of where they were going, and then they had to head for the scene. The fire had likely been burning at least ten or fifteen minutes before the rigs' wheels even turned, so by the time the rigs rolled  it probably wasn't real hard to find the fire...either the column of smoke during the day, or the glow at night would be pretty easy to spot...but that glow or smoke column only gave them the general direction and area. They still had to hunt for the actual location of the fire...or be informed of it's exact location.

Lets say that whoever turned in the alarm also ran to one of the sheds where the rigs were housed and assisted in pulling it to the fire, so they were able to go directly to the scene (I have a feeling this may have actually happened fairly frequently, actually)

SO they finally get on scene, and the little rigs go in service, throwing a pair of streams on the fire...
Except it didn't happen anywhere near that quickly or smoothly.

The rig had a 170 gallon water tank, and the pump was actually set down inside of the tank so that it literally drafted from it's own tank....a design feature that pretty much all hand tubs used for the next nearly 150 years,...so once they got on scene, that 170 gallons was enough for a good  minute and a half or so of firefighting while a water supply was being established, except for one problem. Unlike modern engines, the tank had to be filled before they could even start pumping... Newsham's engines, as well as every hand tub ever built, ran with the tank dry until they reached the fire scene.

Ok, you may ask, just why didn't the crews keep the tanks full so they could start pumping as soon as they reached the scene? That just makes sense, right. I mean that's the way they do it today...

Yeah, but it wasn't today.. Part of the reason...and it's a big reason...that these rigs ran with dry tanks until they reached a fire scene was weight. The water tanks on the Newsham rigs were lined with lead, making the rigs insanely heavy and hard to maneuver. To make matters even worse, the wheels weren't steerable. To turn a corner, the crew had to literally lift the rig and turn it (Or as they became more familiar and comfortable with it, likely lift the front end and pivot it.)  The rigs weighed around 700 pounds empty, a hundred and seventy gallons of water would add 1450 or so extra pounds to the weight of the rig, making it literally impossible to either pull or maneuver. (Some purely political reasons for running dry tanks reared their ugly heads later as more fire companies were organized, but we'll take a look at them a bit later.)

And then we hit problem Number Three, before the first drop of water is put on the fire. There were no hydrants...they wouldn't come along until the early years of the next century...and Newsham's rigs weren't equipped with suction intakes...rigs wouldn't be equipped with suctions for nearly a century...so, they couldn't draft from a water source such as a river, pond, or cistern. And the tanks were still dry, so no one's fighting any fire just yet.

This meant, of course, that the rigs' tanks had to be filled either by a bucket brigade or a public pump, if one was available, through funnel-like water feeder boxes at either end the rig. If a bucket brigade was used, full buckets of water were, of course, just dumped into the feeder box. If they were lucky enough to have a public pump hard by the fire scene, the little rig would be backed in so the feeder box was directly beneath the pump's spout, and a couple of guys would be assigned to pump like mad to keep the tank filled as the crew on the 'brakes' pumped just as enthusiastically to put water on the fire.

 Of course there were definite disadvantages to both methods. If they were using a bucket brigade, the crew had to wait for the bucket brigade to actually get organized and start passing full buckets to fill the tank before they could even start fighting fire. And it could take some serious time to get a bucket brigade set up, especially if the water source was some distance from the fire scene.

The bucket brigade's point of supply was usually one of the public pumps mentioned above, and there weren't that many of them, so the dual lines...one of men passing full buckets to the rig, another of the ladies and kids passing the empty ones back to the water source...would often be long, and would take awhile to get organized and get rolling. Then, once full buckets started coming down the line, it would take a good minute or two to fill the tank to the point that the pump could draft from it. We could well be another ten or so minutes in to the operation before the first gallon of water flows through that play-pipe.

The problems didn't end once they started pumping, either. Like every pumper ever built, in order for the rig to flow it's full capacity, it had to be supplied with the same amount of water it was discharging. Which means that, once the crew on the engine started flowing water, the bucket brigade had to keep up with them, hustling to keep the tank filled as the pump tried to empty it. And trust me, they really had to hustle!

 The buckets held about three gallons apiece, and we can bet some of it was spilled as the buckets were passed, so if the crew on the pumper was pumping full tilt...lets say flowing 100 GPM...thirty-three of those three gallon buckets would have to be dumped into the fill box every minute. That's under perfect conditions, BTW, with every bucket still full when it reached the feeder box. Problem was, of course most of them weren't, so it probably took closer to 40 buckets per minute to keep the rig's tank filled.. One every two to three or so seconds. 

My bet is that didn't happen, meaning that just how much water the crew could put on the fire was limited by just how much water the bucket brigade could supply. So, while the rig was, theoretically, capable of flowing 100 GPM, it's a pretty good bet it seldom was able to actually flow that much..  Between 50 and 75 GPM is likely a more realistic figure.(Even though water supply at a fire scene is a thousand times more complicated and sophisticated now than it was back then, available water supply BTW, is still the limiting factor,...you absolutely can not pump more water per minute out than  you're being supplied with, no matter how new and sophisticated your rig is, or  what your water source is.). 

Now, if they could back the rig in beneath the public pump's spout, and supply it directly from the pump, part of the problem was licked. As long as it was a good cistern with a well maintained pump, and they had a couple of good, fit guys acting as the 'Water Supply Officers', slamming the pump's handle up and down like mad, they could probably keep the engine supplied. But there were very very few times they could actually supply the rig directly from one of those public pumps.

Remember they didn't have hose yet, so that long nozzle mounted on the air chamber was their only way of putting water on the fire. Now the rigs were good for a stream of about 135 feet horizontally (Probably less for a truly effective stream...this was a small nozzle, likely with only about a half inch tip, if that) so the fire building had to be no more than about 75-100 feet from the pump for the engine to be directly supplied from it.

The problems didn't end with getting a water supply set up either. As noted above, these rigs could theoretically throw a 135 or so foot horizontal stream through a 1/2" or so inch nozzle, but that wasn't necessarily an effective 135 foot stream, especially if there was any wind blowing...it wouldn't take much of a breeze at all to break that small, fairly low pressure stream up into spray long before it reached that 135 foot mark. My bet is that, to ensure that they actually got water on the fire, these little rigs were usually spotted far closer than 135 feet from the fire building...at least until radiant heat forced the crew to pull back. And I seriously suspect that happened often in those days. 

Then once they actually got The Wet Stuff applied to The Red Stuff, it often just didn't do that much good. There is an old old fire service saying RE: inadequate fire streams that states 'If your GPMs don't exceed your BTUs, you are SOL...in other words, if you are not flowing enough water to absorb all of the heat being generated by the fire, you are not going to extinguish it. Unfortunately, our early firefighters were regularly 'SOL' in this manner from the minute the first 'BONG! of a fire bell split the air, and it had absolutely nothing to do with lack of courage, or lack of aggressiveness, or lack of skill. The equipment they had just wasn't up to the job at hand. 

Building construction back then was predominantly wood frame, and wood frame buildings burn fast and hot. No matter how competent and aggressive the crew of one of these Newshams, or many of it's immediate descendants for that matter, may have been, if they rolled in on a big, fully involved wood-frame building, the only thing that hundred or so Gallons Per Minute (And keep in mind that flow is under absolutely ideal conditions,) is going to do is annoy the fire a bit. Trust me, it wont even slow it down, and they are not going to save that building. They are going to be lucky, in fact, to save much of the block. This is one of a slew of reasons that fire-fighting back in that era was mostly a defensive operation, with the firefighters working to keep the fire from spreading to other structures rather than trying to save the original fire building. 

Another problem had to do with the lack of hose...they couldn't always put the water where it was actually needed, With that early 'Deck Pipe', all they could really do is spray water in the general direction of the fire, putting the stream through a window if they were close enough...not much good if fires blowing out of, say, eight or ten windows on two floors. And this takes us right back to the issue we discussed above. While they were far better than nothing, even a pair of these little rigs were no match for a working structure fire that had really gotten rolling before firefighters arrived and went to work, which was the majority of fires back then.

The very basic design of the hand-pumped piston fire pumper stayed the same for nearly two hundred years (Hand pumped rigs...far, far more efficient ones...were built right on up to the  early 20th century!) but the rigs that were on scene at the tenement fires bore as much resemblance to the early Newshams as a modern Ford Focus does to a Model 'T'. 

The rigs were improved as the years and decades passed, and new developments were incorporated, such as...hose. Hard as is to believe, fire hose was developed well after the fire engine...as noted above, the first New York City engines pumped water onto the fire through engine mounted play-pipes, and the first rigs equipped with discharges and capable of pumping through hose didn't appear until around the mid or late 18th century.  Many of these rigs were still of the same 'gooseneck' design...so called because of the design of the playpipe...as the original Newsham engines. The hose was connected to the same pipe, on top of the air chamber, that the playpipe could be coupled to. These rigs couldn't supply but one line, and multiple side or end mounted discharges wouldn't appear until the 1830s. By the time steamers began appearing in the late 1850s, the larger hand tubs were capable of pumping 300-400 GPM and supplying as many as three lines, flowing around 100-125gpm through each...as long as their crews could keep up the pace required to do so. 

Fire hose was originally made of  leather,...sewn originally, then riveted after about 1807. A 50 foot section of riveted leather 2.5 inch fire hose weighed in at around 85 pounds...That's without couplings BTW. On top of that, leather hose was extremely maintenance intensive, and had to be dried and treated with beef tallow or Neetsfoot Oil after each use or it would dry, harden and crack. Treating the hose was absolutely necessary, and many hours were expended getting the hose and rigs back in service after a working fire, but I don't even want to think of what six or seven hundred feet of just treated hose, dripping beef tallow, would have smelled like on a hot summer day!

BTW, in the 'The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same' department...Though the rigs and tools are a thousand times more advanced now than they were at the turn of the 19th century, getting the rigs back in service, cleaning and maintaining tools, and washing hose after a working fire is still an hours long, labor intensive job.

Now lets take a look at the pumps.

All positive displacement pumps, such as the piston pumps almost all hand tubs were equipped with, are not only capable of drafting water from a pond or cistern, they do an outstanding job of it. But for them to be able to draft, the rig they are installed in has to be equipped to draft. In other words the pump has to have a suction intake. Oh...before a suction intake could be developed, specialized hose, reinforced with coiled wire so it wouldn't collapse under vacuum, also had to be developed. The first New York rigs equipped with suction intakes went in service in 1819 (And the older rigs were modernized, so to speak, by having suctions installed on them.)

Interestingly enough, hydrants started showing up on New York's street corners a couple of years before rigs were equipped with suction intakes. (And, BTW, these early suction intakes had nothing to do with being supplied by a hydrant...we'll get to that in a minute.). For years the rigs were still supplied by either bucket brigades or public pumps, with all the problems detailed above, until water mains and hydrants began appearing in the early 19th century. The first hydrant was installed at William and Liberty Streets in 1808, and by 1817 or so, cast iron fire hydrants that are very much recognizable as ancestors of modern hydrants were sprouting all over the city.

Here's the thing...fire apparatus design didn't catch up for awhile. Even after rigs were equipped with suction inlets, at first the rigs couldn't connect to hydrants...suction intakes were designed to allow pumps to draft..or, well, suck...water from a water source. The pumps would create negative pressure...suction...at the intake, and draw the water into the pump. And it absolutely wasn't, however, capable of handling water coming into the pump under positive pressure, which is what happens when you connect to a hydrant...whatever pressure the hydrant is flowing is the pressure that the crew would be working against to operate the pump.  If a line from a hydrant was connected to a rig's suction intake, the incoming water pressure would overcome the crews' efforts and lock the pump up.

 SO how did the hydrant actually supply the rigs?

Keep in mind that under normal operation...when not drafting from a pond or river...the pump simply drafted from the rig's own tank, which was filled by a bucket brigade before water mains and hydrants were developed and installed.  When a hydrant was being used, the 'Butt End' of the line coming off the hydrant was simply placed inside the same water collector box that bucket brigades dumped water into and a couple of guys would be assigned to hold it in place as the hydrant was opened and the tank started filling. They'd then have to either hold the supply line's butt end inside the tank for the duration of the operation, or come up with a way to secure it in place. 

This exact same tactic was used when multiple engines were pumping in-line to relay water. If the water source...be it pond, cistern, or hydrant...was distant from the fire, a relay would have to be set up, pumping water from engine to engine, until they got water to the fire.  The engine at the water source dropped it's suction hose in the water source (Or put the hydrant in service as described above) and stretched a line from their discharge to the next engine in line. The crew of that engine used the exact same 'Hold the butt of the hose in the collector box' method to supply their engine, which then pumped to the next engine in line...rinse and repeat .  Ten or twelve rigs relayed water regularly using this method, and on one occasion, thirty engines relayed water almost a mile.

This method of relaying water also sometimes resulted in 'Washing' a rig...overflowing the tank...which we'll take a closer look at when we discuss the politics of the old department.

Ultimately some unnamed firefighter, tired of freezing/ roasting/getting drenched while holding the butt end of a supply line in place for hours on end, looked at his company's rig, rubbed his chin, said 'What if we just install a suction inlet...not connected to the pump...in the side of the tank, so we can connect the supply line to it, and fill the tank off the hydrant...' And so, it came to be. And word spread, and other companies did the same, and finally, rigs had intakes. Sort of.. 

These intakes were actually what we'd call 'Tank Fills' today. They still just filled the tank so the pump could draft from it, basically performing the same job that, first, the bucket brigades, and later, the guys holding the butt end of the supply line had performed for years. The new intakes just did so far more efficiently, freeing up a firefighter or two from each engine company while they were at it.

Of course, the rigs were still running with dry tanks, which meant that when the rig was connected to the hydrant, they still had to wait for the tank to fill before they could start pumping. But just spinning the supply line's coupling onto an intake and calling back to 'Charge the supply line!!!' was still far better and more efficient than either of the old methods of getting water to the pump.  

 Once the rigs were equipped with intakes, relays were also far easier to set up, of course, as the crew of each rig in line no longer had to hold the 'butt' end of the supply line inside their rig's tank...they just connected the incoming supply line to their intake. Of course, as this new, far more efficient method of supplying water to the rigs still simply filled the tank, the receiving rigs in relays could still get 'washed'.

Engines continued to be improved and become more efficient, until there were a few hand tubs that could flow nearly 350 GPM...closer to 400 GPM if the crew 'Over-pumped' the rig, pumping at 120-170 strokes per minute, pumping a vertical stream of water over 120 feet in the air. One rig, run by Engine 42, and known as 'The Mankiller', actually out pumped one of the first steamers tested by New York...for a few minutes. Of course, when the crew dropped from exhaustion, the steamer just kept pumping and pumping...

The Steamer Comes On The Scene

The first steam-powered fire engine was actually put in service in London in 1830, beating us to the punch by 23 years...the first U.S. steamer was tested (In New York, at that) in 1842, but a U.S. steamer didn't actually go into service until 1853, in Cincinnati, Ohio...the same year that the Cincinnati Fire Dept. became the first salaried department in the U.S.

Cincinnati's steamer was ground breaking, revolutionary, and a game changer. Problem was, it took the game a few years to actually change. American fire departments were slow to embrace the new technology at first. Volunteers hated the new rigs , feeling that the steamers would replace them, but ultimately the fact that they were far far more efficient than hand tubs, began to win departments, and most importantly, the volunteers, over.

None the less, several cities had steamers by the late 1850s, and New York was one of the last cities to actually put one service. The first steamer to go in service in New York was a Lee and Larned steamer, gifted to the city by the fire insurance companies, in 1859. The rig, named The Manhattan, went in service at Engine 8, on Ludlow Street, near the southern tip of Manhattan. There is some evidence, BTW, that it was this rig, rather than The Exempt's self-propeller, that responded to the Elm Street fire, not the least prominent an editorial refuting some less than complementary words written about the L&L steamers. Of course, it's not at all unlikely that both steamers were on scene.

AT first, as in other cities where steamers started replacing the hand tubs, the members of New York's fire companies were not amused by the new rig, to the point of refusing to take it's water or supply it at scenes. Ultimately, firefighters saw just how versatile and efficient the new rig was, and realized that it often made a huge difference in whether a block...and sometimes the fire building, itself...was saved or not. Again, just take a look at both of the fires profiled in this post...steamers likely helped prevent both of these fires from becoming multi-block conflagrations.

Before long, other fire companies petitioned the Common Council for purchase of steamers, and by the night of the Elm Street fire, several were in service, with more to come. As noted in the discussion of the Elm Street fire, the Exempt Engine Company had two steamers by then, one of them a big Lee and Larnard Self Propeller that very possibly responded to the scene.

Lee and Larned deserves a special mention here, because so many of New York's early steamers were made by this firm, including Engine 46's rig, the workhorse of the 45th Street fire.  The company made it's first baby-steps in 1854, when a very inventive gent by the name of Joseph Larned became acquainted with another enterprising fellow by the name of Wellington Lee, who just happened to be (A) a fire buff, and (B) working on a design for a steam fire engine.  His design was unique, ambitious, and maybe just a bit ahead of it's time...rather than a piston pump, the rig utilized a rotary gear pump, but it was the steam engine itself that was even more revolutionary. The Lee and larned steam engines were rotary steam engines...the great grandfathers of steam turbines...that turned a crankshaft which, in turn, spun the pumps gears, likely through a gear box.  

Joe Larned liked what he saw, thought the idea had huge potential, and entered into a partnership with Wells Lee, and the two entered into partnership with the well-known New York Boiler builder and iron-working firm, Novelty Ironworks. They demonstrated their first steamer in 1856, continuously improved their rigs (And demonstrated the improved steamers) and ultimately began selling the rigs, not only in New York, but nationally and internationally.  One of the first to go in service was Exempt Engine's big self propeller  at about the same time The Manhattan went in service at Engine 8, with a smaller hand-drawn steamer much like Engine 8's rig going in service with the Exempts a year or so later.

All of the L&Ls used the rotary engine/rotary gear pump mentioned above, and all of the New York rigs, with the exception of The Exempt's self-propeller, were small, hand drawn rigs, capable of pumping between 350 and 500 GPM and weighing in at about 3700 pounds. These rigs cost about $3000 apiece...just north of $93,000 in 2020 dollars.

Lee and Larned would sell at least a dozen of their rigs before the company went out of business in 1863, at least five of them to New York.. Joe Larned's career would continue, though he left fire apparatus manufacture behind to become Inspector of Ironclads for the U. S. Navy. 

Several other companies, Amoskaeg and Silsby chief among them, supplied the New York Volunteer companies with steamers during their last half-decade or so of existence, and by the time the paid department took over in 1865, the steamer was not only well accepted, steamers outnumbered the hand tubs in the volunteer fire companies...they had thirty-one of them in service, almost all of which were pressed into service by the new paid department.

<***>

And as an interesting little side note, Novelty Ironworks, builder of the Lee and Larned steamers, would also build the boilers for a little ship called the 'U.S.S. Monitor'.  I can't help but wonder if Joe Larned, being Inspector of Ironclads, had something to do with that bid being accepted!

<***>

Back in this era the only way to alert the volunteers that they had a run was the city's bell system, which was lacking on several levels, the first of which was it's inability to pin down a specific location...or, really, even get the crews any closer than than the general vicinity of the call.  New York was divided into eight districts, and, just as today, the engine, hose, and ladder companies were assigned the district they responded in (Probably their home district and one adjoining district,...remember, these guys were dragging the rigs by hand). When an alarm was dispatched, the bells would bang out the district number, but, again, all that gave the responding companies was the general direction in which to head. What it didn't do was give them the address, or even the street, much less the block, the alarm was located on. A couple of sources noted that at some point, each district was divided into quarters, so an alarm would bang out the district number, then the zone within the district ('Bong-Bong...Bong-Bong-Bong, for example would be district 2, zone 3) and this was a little better...but not much. 

The crews generally had to look for the smoke or glow, and were possibly met near the scene by police officers to guide them in, but I have a feeling an inordinate amount of time was actually spent looking for the location. The early telegraph system, which went in service in 1851, helped some...but not as much as you might think. Telegraph keys were located in all of the bell towers and, I believe, police stations and some of the fire houses. When an alarm was received at a bell tower the bell ringer would set his mechanical bell ringer in motion, (If they had them by then), then notify the other towers of the location using the telegraph key. It's possible that the fire companies that had telegraphs would 'answer up' on the telegraph, and be given the location...if they had someone trained on using the telegraph. But that last is, at best, a 'definite maybe', as they say.

At it's very best, this system was still clumsy and cumbersome, with built-in response delays that were often the reason a building...or multiple buildings....were lost. Things wouldn't improve until the modern telegraph alarm system, with fire alarm boxes throughout the city, was installed. This system was actually developed in the early 1850s, with the first system of alarm boxes installed in Boston in 1853, and several cities had street boxes by 1860. . New York didn't get a city-wide telegraph system until around 1870, five years after the salaried 'Metropolitan Fire Department' replaced the volunteers, so yep...the first paid firefighters were actually dispatched using the old system for five full years.

<***>

There was yet another problem with the early volunteer system (One that wouldn't be entirely solved for volunteers in rural communities until volunteers started owning cars many decades later). Unless they lived real close to the firehouse, they would have a long run from home before they could get the rig on the street.

New York's fire companies (And, I have a feeling, those in many other cities and larger towns) came up with a solution to that one...they had crews 'Bunk In' nightly. New York's volunteers had some pretty elaborate fire houses, and almost all of them included a bunk room. Duty rosters would be set up, with each night having a set crew of, maybe, ten men, Several of the company's 'runners' would also bunk in with them, to assist in pulling the rig to the scene (Among other...er...tasks these guys would perform for the fire company.) This way when the alarm hit, the rig or rigs could hit the street quickly. (They had  to run down the stairs though...the fire pole wouldn't come along until 1878, in Chicago).

  The rest of the company's volunteers would either respond to the station, if they lived close enough, and assist in pulling the rig to the scene and manning it, or, if they were to far away to make it to the station before the rig left quarters, make their way to the scene.  (Pretty much the way things are still done in volunteer fire companies the world over...just replace 'Help pull the rig'  with  'Catch the first out/second out engine/ladder, or grab the brush truck/tanker/rescue')

'Bunking In' is till done today. Almost all volunteer rescue squads use duty crews, as well as many volunteer fire companies...in fact, in many 'Combination Departments' (Fire departments that have both salaried and volunteer firefighters) the all-volunteer companies aren't even dispatched unless they have a duty crew in quarters and 'Marked Up'

<***>

Volunteer fire companies can and often do have more internal politics than some small unstable countries....I was a long-time member of both a volunteer fire company, and a volunteer rescue squad and, trust me on this, the monthly meetings could get down-right contentious over such minor issues as whether or not to buy a new printer. The yearly elections of officers...especially in the squad I was a member of...involved campaigns just as hard fought and sometimes cut-throat as any Presidential campaign you've ever had to suffer through...

That being said, the politics of the New York's volunteer companies made any modern fire company's politics look downright amateurish, not to mention far, far less dangerous to both citizens and firefighters.

Many of  New York's early volunteer fire companies were formed in heavily ethnic immigrant communities, and the rivalries between these ethnic groups was the basis for both politics and rivalries between companies, And these were bitter rivalries...we're not talking about the kind of more or less good natured rivalries fought out on high school and college gridirons every fall weekend here...we're talking about bitter feuds, rivaling the feuds between modern street gangs, that often led to very literal combat between fire companies. Feuds, complete with violence that often erupted over such seemingly mundane issues as getting water on the fire.

'Wait...' You may ask. '...Getting water on the fire'...isn't that kinda the basic reason they're there??

 Oh yeah...and yes, pitched battles would take place over this very basic issue, and the early fire insurance companies kicked this battle off in the late 18th century by awarding a monetary prize to the first company to get water on any property that they insured. It doesn't take much imagination to see what kind of mayhem and chaos that could result in if two fire companies rolled up on a scene at the same time, especially if those two companies didn't particularly like each other.

If two companies rolled up at the same time, and a bucket brigade was being set up, fights would often break out over just which company got water first...and these fights often...usually, in fact...involved more than just fists. Axes make for very effective offensive weapons.

Once hose was developed, our competing companies had yet another way to delay the first in company from getting water on the fire...they'd cut their hose.  Often it wasn't the firefighters themselves engaging in the worst of this behavior, but crews of 'runners', who were sort of auxiliary members of the fire company. While they generally weren't voted in as members, they were allowed to hang around the station and enjoyed many of the same privileges as regular members. and they did provide useful service both enroute and on the fire ground by assisting with 'dragging' the rigs and working the 'brakes' on the engines, freeing up firefighters to actually fight fire, as well as assisting with water supply....

....Ahhh, assisting with water supply!! Not only did they assist with obtaining water for their own company...they became experts at denying water to incoming companies, by whatever means were required.

The monetary prizes for first water had pretty much dried up by the the second decade of the 19th century, but the rivalries hadn't. And when hydrants were installed, if a pair of bitter rivals were rolling in to the same incident, some of their 'runners' would run ahead to the scene to guard the closest hydrant. There were stories of 'Runners' using barrels to hide hydrants, but I have a problem believing this simply because, even back then, having a good idea of where hydrants were in your district was just common sense...you didn't want to be running around trying to find a hydrant when a building was puking fire and smoke. which meant if some dude was sitting on a barrel that had magically appeared at a street corner, it's a good bet that (A) someone in the first-in company knew that there was a hydrant under that barrel, and (B) even if they didn't, an otherwise useless barrel with a dude sitting on it or leaning against it, in the immediate vicinity of a burning building, was almost as good an indication of a hydrant as a bright red sign.  Means of persuading the barrel-sitter to, well, unsit the barrel would be deployed.

More than likely a group of runners would simply guard the hydrant, denying it's use...or at least attempting to do so...until their company arrived. And if more than one company's runners arrived at the scene at the same time?  In that not at all rare situation, a general brouhaha would result as they battled for the honor of guarding the hydrant. Then when the companies arrived, they would join in the fray trying to get water. This would fairly regularly devolve into a general battle where the actual reason for the fight was forgotten, along with the reason they were there in the first place. And as for the involved building...it fairly regularly burned to the ground while firefighters battled each other rather than the fire.

This habit of dispatching a group of toughs to guard the hydrant for their own company even gave birth to a term that you still hear used occasionally...plug ugly. Back in the day, of course, plug ugly was the name given to the toughs guarding the plug...hydrant...for their own company. The name's meaning evolved to mean any hooligans hired to intimidate a group for political gain, and has today evolved...or maybe devolved...to mean any truly mean and ugly hooligan.

This race to get first water on the fire also led to just that...races, that is. As fire companies neared the scene and ended up on the same street, side by side, the crews would go all out to pass each other, becoming reckless while they were at it, and even pulling their rigs on the sidewalk (Lady Washington's volunteer's were called out by the Common Council for that little stunt any number of times.). These races sometimes also involved one crew actually trying...and succeeding...in wrecking a rival crews rig, which would inevitably lead to a multi-company street brawl, fought as the building burned.

While we're on the subject of water supply-influenced fights, remember me mentioning engines getting 'washed' while relay pumping form distant water sources? To review, it happened when the crew pumping one engine couldn't pump as much or more water out of it's tank than the engine supplying it was pumping in. When this occurred, water overflowed from the tank, possibly damaging the rig's paintwork and murals, which did not come cheap. This was pretty humiliating for the washed company, but it also wasn't uncommon, especially if you had a big class 1 engine pumping into a smaller class 2 or 3 rig, and this probably happened fairly frequently when you had three or more rigs in a line relaying water. Most of the time it was likely just considered part of the job, though the 'washed' crew wasn't happy about it. They just kept working the brakes, trying to keep up and redeem themselves. Note I said  most of the time.

However if the two companies involved were bitter rivals or even bitter enemies, the 'washing' would be an excuse for yet another street brawl. And yes, the water supply...and therefore the firefighting...would indeed be interrupted as the two companies hashed...or rather, pounded...out their differences.

Sometimes one company would actually refuse to supply water to a rival company (And conversely, one company would sometimes refuse to take a rival company's water)...again interrupting firefighting efforts, and this would lead to shouting matches, which would, again, lead to (Lets all say it together) yet another street brawl.

More than a few companies were forcibly disbanded by the Common Council for fighting, several of them to reorganize under another name later on, Engine 40 (Lady Washington) among them.

To be fair, situations this extreme weren't that common...but they were still common enough to cause a push for salaried, professional fire departments, not just in New York, but nationwide. (New York was actually late in the game...Cincinnati had the first salaried department in 1853, and several cities, my adopted home town of Richmond, Va, among them, had salaried firefighters by the time New York went paid in 1865.). This trend continued through the mid and late 19th century, until all of the nations's major cities were served by salaried fire departments.

<***>

When steamers first started replacing hand tubs, there was a huge amount of opposition. Volunteer firefighters thought...with more than a little justification...that the same steamers that were replacing their beloved hand engines would ultimately replace them as well. And the usual methods of showing their distaste for another company, such as overturning their rig  or refusing them water, didn't really work. The steamers were far too heavy for them to overturn , and the steamer's crew could find their own hydrant...or other water source...and merrily pump at full capacity through four or five hundred feet of hose without even breaking a sweat. These small steamers may have only been about 350 GPM  pumpers, but they could pump at far higher pressures than the hand engines, allowing one steamer to do the work of five or six hand tubs in a relay. And, better yet, they could do it for hours and hours at a time.

 At first this added efficiency didn't impress the majority of the volunteers...they just knew they didn't like, nor trust these new-fangled contraptions, and they sure as hell weren't going to be replaced by them if they could help it!  The members of the hand tub companies addressed this issue by cutting the line the steamer was pumping...fairly regularly at first. And this would, of course, often lead to one of the aforementioned spirited street brawls.

Thankfully, it didn't take long for firefighters to realize the huge advantage steamers offered, from two steamers taking the place of twenty hand tubs in a relay operation to the fact that the steamer could pump at full capacity all night long, as long as there was coal in the fire box and water in the boiler. The fact that a single steamer freed up twenty or thirty fire fighters...at a minimum...to do something other than 'work the brakes' was a tremendous advantage as well. For this reason, the Volunteers of New York's fire department not only ultimately accepted the steamer, they put thirty one of them in service before the paid department replaced the volunteers in October of 1865.

<***>

While we're talking about New York's first steamers. we need to take a look at a minor mystery...just which steamer...or maybe steamers...actually responded to the Elm Street fire?

I know, I know...I thought I addressed this one, too...it was the Exempts' big self propeller. The thing is, the city's very first steamer...Manhattan Engine 8...was actually quartered closer to Elm Street, and I've found at least two sources that have it responding to Elm Street.

Manhattan Engine 8 put the city's first steamer in service in their house on Ludlow Street, a mile or so north of Manhattan's southern tip, and just shy of a mile east and slightly north of the scene of the  Elm Street fire, almost a year before the two tenement fires.

Take note of both that location, and the distance from the fire scene, gang...Engine 8's steamer was a good third of a mile closer to the scene than The Exempt's big...and excruciatingly slow...self propeller, though it would still take #8's crew a good 15-20 minutes to hand pull their steamer to the scene. OF course, if their engineer (Pump operator) was on the ball, which I have a sneaking suspicion he was, he already had kindling and fuel in the firebox, ready to light off when an alarm hit, so they would have steam up when they arrived on scene. Manhattan #8 and her crew were very likely ready to rock and roll as soon as they got a water supply and got lines stretched.

Of course the next two questions...and they're are not only related to each other, but kind of intertwined with each other...is did Manhattan #8 even actually respond, and if so, when.

OK, the answers to these two questions are, at best, semi-educated guesses on my part because I have no real written documentation, save the editorial I linked above to go on, but I can just about bet that The Manhattans did indeed respond, and their steamer did indeed flow water on Elm Street. 

They were closer to the scene, and may well been on what passed as the initial running assignment. If they didn't go on 'The Initial', they just about definitely responded when the General Alarm was struck (The above-linked editorial actually alludes to this scenereo), very likely along with The Exempts' big self propeller. They also very likely beat the Exempts in by several minutes, at least, and had water flowing before the Exempts, but that's no biggie.

If both steamers responded...and I have no doubt in my mind that they very likely did...the battle to save the block was won . The crew of one of the steamers could have been assigned to stop the fire's spread south of the original fire building, and the other could have been assigned to do the same on the north side. And, with the two steamers able to flow around 1150-1200 GPM between them, they could easily hold the fire in check, and, in fact, knock it down. And the crews of the hand tubs...at least the guys on the brakes...could finally take a break.

<***>

When the salaried Metropolitan Fire Department replaced the volunteers in October, 1865, they made liberal use of both the former volunteer companies' rigs and, most importantly for this note's subject matter, fire houses.  Almost all of  MFD's original 35 Engine and 14 Hook and Ladder companies moved into the former quarters of volunteer companies.

Then, when the Metropolitan Fire Department was reorganized five years later, in 1870, to become the FDNY, the MFD company numbers were retained to become FDNY company numbers.  This should  make tracking just which MFD/FDNY company was quartered in which former volunteer house a breeze...except for one minor problem. Those MFD/FDNY company numbers bear no relationship what so ever to the old Volunteer department company numbers.

When the Metro Fire Dept was formed, the new companies were numbered in chronological order according to their date of organization, completely wiping out the old volunteer numbering system with the singular exception of Volunteer Hook and Ladder 1, which was replaced by MFD/FDNY Ladder 1. This made tracking just which new paid company replaced which old volunteer company difficult to borderline impossible nearly 160 years later...unless you had access to a list showing that very information.

Happily, I have access to just such a list...actually anyone  willing to part with just shy of nine bucks or so can have access to that list. It's the main focus of one of the chapters of 'Our Firemen: The History of the New York Fire Departments from 1609 to 1887, the book I mentioned at the beginning of 'Notes'. Even better, I also ran up on a PDF copy of a table listing all of the street addresses of all of the quarters of every FDNY fire company ever organized, going all the way back to the original locations of all of the original MFD fire companies.

That's right, the original street addresses of all of the original 35 MFD engines and 14 ladders, along with relocation history and the street addresses of their new houses...if they got new houses.

News flash. Several of them are still at their original street address, and one of the companies still at their original address...still, in fact, in the original if much remodeled volunteer house...is one of the companies that figured prominently in of one of the two tenement fires. (Not gonna tell ya which one just yet. That'd take some of the fun out of it!)

SO with those two lists, and the power of the interwebs at my very fingertips, listing the companies that replaced volunteer engines 40, 46, and 8, the Exempts, ladders 4 and 8, and Hose 15 should be a cinch right?

Not necessarily. While the lists made finding that information, generally, a pretty cut, dried, and quick process, in one case it created more questions than it answered...by far.

Lets take a look at the engine company that was first due on Elm Street...Lady Washington Engine 40, located just a block or so from the scene. Annnnd...things get complicated right off the bat. According to 'Our Firemen', when the paid Metropolitan Fire Department replaced the Volunteers, MFD Ladder 10 moved into Lady Washington's quarters...except they didn't.

Our Firemen has Ladder 10 moving into Lady Washington Hose 40's quarters, at 28 Ann Street on the far south end of Manhattan Island, four fifths of a mile or so southeast of Lady Washington Engine 40's actual quarters. Which brings us to another pretty insurmountable problem...there was no 'Lady Washington Hose 40'.

 The actual Hose 40 was known as 'Empire Hose Co 40', and their quarters at 70 Barrow Street (Which still exists, BTW) was about the same distance...four fifths of a mile or so...northeast of Engine 40's Elm Street house. This would put Empire Hose 40 nearly two full miles northeast of our mystery company, AKA Not Hose 40, at 28 Ann Street. Empire Hose 40 was quartered at their Barrow Street house right on up to October 1865, when the Metropolitan Fire Department replaced the volunteers, and their house was never occupied by any of the MFD companies.

There was a Lady Washington Hose 49, at 126 Cedar Street, about a quarter mile southwest of  28 Ann Street as the crow flies, maybe a half mile by road 160 or so years back, long before one way streets lengthened driving routes. OK, maybe the Author glanced at the map and mistook Cedar Street for Anne Street...except for one problem.

Ann Street and Cedar Street, IMHO, just aren't close enough together to mistake one for the other. Cedar Street and Ann Street don't connect...they run parallel to each other, with Cedar Street, as previously noted, a quarter mile or so south of Ann Street. I could see mistaking one for the other while glancing at a map if the two streets were parallel and only a block apart, but they were separated by

a quarter mile and several other streets, making such a mistake far less likely.

SO just how did this pretty obvious error occur?  While there's no way to say for sure just what happened, I have a sneakin' suspicion that 'Our Firemen's author did what every one of us has done at one time or the other while trying to do too many things at once...he looked at one thing while writing another.  He probably looked at the wrong place in his own handwritten notes as he was transcribing the list of which MFD companies moved into which former volunteer houses into the book's manuscript, and wrote down 'Lady Washington # 40' instead of the actual name and number of our unnamed company at 28 Ann Street, even though the company in the Ann Street house was a hose company rather than an engine. It didn't help, of course that Lady Washington hose also had a company number whose 1st digit was '4' (49). The very kind of error that an author might make if he's been working on something all day, then overlook when he proofreads it.

And that error went uncaught and uncorrected every time a new edition of Our Firemen was printed, and is included in every reprint of this still remarkable tome. Of course that still leaves us with a mystery...just which company did MFD/FDNY Ladder 10 replace when they moved into 28 Ann Street?

My bet is it was Humane Hose 20. Their house was at 30 Ann Street, right next door to 28, and I could find no other company quartered on Ann Street.

Thankfully the rest of our list is pretty straightforward.

The Exempts: MFD/FDNY Engine 1 took over the Exempt's house at 1 Centre Street on July 31st, 1865, only to be disbanded three years later, in 1868...there's no record of what happened to The Exempt's big Lee and Larned self propeller but we know that Engine 1 never used it...they went in service with a brand new Amoskeag steamer. Their old house at 1 Centre street is long gone

In 1873, Engine 1 was reorganized, going in service in Fire Patrol 3's (Insurance patrol, AKA salvage company), old house at 165 W.29th Street on February 17th of that year. Engine 1's old W 29th street house has a pretty fascinating history itself, almost burning down itself once, and being completely remodeled twice before Engine 1 left it for good in 1946 to move in to their new quarters at 142 W. 31st Street, where they are still quartered, along with Ladder 24, today. This house has also been remodeled once, back in 2004.

Lady Washington Engine 40: OK, lets see what happened to the actual Lady Washington Engine 40, as opposed to 'Not Lady Washington Engine 40' mentioned above. Lady Washington Engine 40's house at 173 Elm Street (Now Lafayette Street), which is long gone, was never occupied by a MFD/FDNY company. Engine 31 is likely the MFD/FDNY company that took over at least part of their 1st due area, and while they were at it, they occupied the former quarters of another volunteer company that had just moved into a brand new house. 

MFD Engine 31 went in service at 116 Leonard Street...the former quarters of Fulton Engine 21...on October 20, 1865, utilizing Fulton's 1862 A.B.Taylor and Son's steamer.  Fulton's boys had just moved into this house...about eight tenths of of a mile or so north of their old house on Temple street...the year before. The paint barely had time to dry on the walls before they had to move out.

Fulton Engine 21's old house on Temple was a good mile and a half south of the Elm Street fire, so they  probably didn't respond to Elm Street until the General Alarm if at all. 116 Leonard, however, is at Leonard and Elm, about seven tenths of a mile south of the site of the Elm Street fire, which would have put the site of the Elm Street fire in MFD/FDNY Engine 31's 1st or 2nd due area, even back in the era of horse drawn apparatus. This house, along with the entire block, was replaced by commercial buildings decades ago.

Engine 31, BTW, relocated to a brand new house a tenth of a mile or so north, at Elm and White Streets, in 1896, where they stayed until they were disbanded in November of 1972. This house is considered one of the most beautiful fire houses ever built, anywhere, by many fire service and architectural aficionados, and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building's present owners...the Downtown Television Center...have restored the exterior to it's former glory, complete with the company IDs over the old bay doors, while upgrading the interior..  This house, BTW, has a pretty interesting history, too. 

Manhattan Engine 8:  Manhattan Engine 8...owner of the very first steamer to go in service in New York...was quartered at 91 Ludlow Street, and their old house became the quarters of MFD Engine 17 on September 17, 1865. Interestingly, while Engine 17 didn't utilize Manhattan Engine 8's Lee and Larnard steamer, they did go in service with a former volunteer rig...an 1861 Portland steamer. No mention, unfortunately, was made of what volunteer company originally ran this steamer.

 Engine 17 moved out of Manhattan Engine 8's old house temporarily in August of 1879, and moved to an unrecorded location while brand new quarters were built on the same site...they moved into the new house in March 1880, and stayed there until May 1, 1939, when they once again moved into new quarters with Ladder 18, at 185 Broome Street. They stayed on Broome Street for only 34 years, until both companies once again moved into a new house at 25 Pitt Street. Engine 17 was in the Pitt Street house until they were disbanded on Jan 3, 1973, the victims of budget cuts.

While there are several buildings of the correct vintage to be Engine 17's 'New' house on Ludlow Street, 91 is now the site of an ally entrance. Their Broome Street house was replaced by a small park. The Pitt Street house is still an active firehouse.

The story doesn't end there, though. Ladder 18 had the Pitt Street house all to themselves until November 19, 2001, when Engine 15 moved from their old house on Henry Street to the Pitt Street house, where they and Ladder 18 are still quartered.

Engine 15 is notable simply because of the Volunteer company they replaced...their original house at 269 Henry Street was the home of Americus Engine 6, and Americus Engine 6 was the home of one Boss Tweed, who went on to become one of the most corrupt politicians in New York history.  His infamous emblem...the Tammany Tiger...was originally Americus Engine 6's emblem.

Engine 15 got a new house on Henry Street in 1884, replacing Americus old house. The 'new' 1884 house still exists, converted to a community center, and is in beautiful shape

For more on Boss Tweed, take a look-see two notes down.


Valley Forge Engine 46: Now for a treat!  MFD/FDNY Engine 26 moved into Valley Forge Engine 46's former quarters at 138 W 37th Street on Oct 16, 1865, going in service with Valley Forge's 1859 Lee and Larnard streamer, which was converted to horse drawn.

Annnd...there they stayed. While their station has been remodeled and modernized no fewer then three times...1881, 1894, and 2001...this is still the very same house that Valley Forge Engine 46's volunteers rolled from on March 28. 1860. OH...thouht the building and location are exactly the same, the street address changed...it's now 220 W 37th Street.

Engine 26's guys call their house 'The Batcave', and it's much beloved by both the members of the company and the community. Engine 26's house, BTW, is the oldest still-active firehouse in New York City.

FDNY Engine 26's  several-times-remodeled house, originally built as Valley Forge Engine 46's fire house. This is the oldest active firehouse in New York

Empire Hook And Ladder Co 8:  MFD/FDNY Ladder 4 moved into Empire Hook and Ladder 8's house at 8th Ave and 48th Street on September 18th, 1865. Hose 32 was quartered right around the corner from...and therefore behind... Empire's house, and was left vacant when MFD replaced the  vollies....well sort of. No people moved in, anyway. MFD Ladder 4's rig was, of course, horse drawn, and Empire's former house had no stable facilities, nor room for any.  So the city simply converted Hose 32's old quarters into stables for Ladder 4's horses.

I'm pretty sure that horse stalls were ultimately built at the rear of Ladder 4's apparatus floor (Even though the house wasn't listed as being refurbished or remodeled any time during it's 87 years as a MFD/FDNY firehouse) Needless to say, Hose 32's old house is long lost to history.

Interestingly, Ladder 4 and Hose 32 weren't the only volunteer companies on that block...Hudson Engine 1 was quartered on 48th Street near 8th. I can just about bet that these three companies regularly rolled together. (Just how cohesive a unit they were is, of course, open to speculation) as they very likely did the night of the 45th street fire. Hudson Engine 1's old house, like Hose 32's, is long gone.

MFD/FDNY Ladder 4 stayed in Empire's old house, all by their lonesome, until March 28th, 1972. On that date they moved in with Engine 23 at 215 W. 58th street, where they would stay for about 18 months, while a a new house was built on the site of their old quarters.

They finally moved into the new house, also  at 8th Ave and 48th Street, on March 15th, 1974. The new house was built to accommodate both an engine and a truck...Engine Co. 54 moved out of their old quarters at 304 W. 47th Street (Built in 1888 and remodeled in 1915) and moved in with Ladder 4, also on March 15th 1974.

Ironically, Engine 54 moved in with Ladder 4 for ten days or so back in 1915, while their house on W 47th street was being remodeled (Must not have been much of a remodel!). Engine 54's old house on W 47th still exists, BTW, restored to it's former glory and occupied by offices.

Ladder 4 and Engine 54 are both still running out of the 1974-built house at 8th Ave and 48th Street, along with  Battalion 9.

Ladder 4 and Hose 15: Neither of these companies' houses were ever occupied by MFD/FDNY companies, and both houses are now long gone. On top of that, Ladder 4 was disbanded in 1864, four years after the amazing rescues it's crew made on Elm Street, and just one year before the salaried Metropolitan Fire Department replaced the volunteers.

<***>

The one still extant newspaper article about the Elm Street fire has the headline 'Thirty Persons Supposed To Have Perished In Fire' (Italics mine), yet the official death toll is listed as '20'. Kinda makes ya wonder just how that discrepancy....and not a small discrepancy at that...occurred.

OK, I admit that this isn't one of those mysteries that keeps historians (And history bloggers) awake at night, pondering on the issue...in fact I may well be the only person who's given more than a passing thought in the last decade or three to wondering (A) just what the actual, accurate death toll was, and (B) just how said discrepancy occurred. It's still, imho, an interesting little mystery to try and unravel.

First off, as to the How Many Actually Died...we'll probably never know for sure. Twenty's been the official and accepted death toll since 1860, and it's unlikely that,160 years later, anyone's working very hard to rectify said discrepancy or figure out how it occurred in the first place, but, Spoiler alert...it's a good bet that it occurred because of a problem that still exists today, and has probably gotten worse. But we'll get to that in a minute.

The headline reads 'Thirty Persons Supposed To Have Perished In Fire'. We know that at least twenty people died in the fire, but what of those other ten? And how many actually died? It's actually fairly easy to 'count bodies' just by reading this same article, but that still won't necessarily gives us an accurate count. We can still give it a try though. 

Lets take a look at the sixth floor first. Unlike the other four occupied floors, no records exist as to how many people lived on the sixth floor of the building, but the figure 'About a dozen' has become accepted over the decades. It's believed that, sadly, all of those dozen or so residents died in the fire, either killed in their beds by the smoke or killed when the roof collapsed. 

SO we'll call it an even dozen so far. 12 deaths.

Then we have the known deaths on the lower floors. Mr. Wise's wife and two of his kids died in their 2nd floor apartment (The only deaths on the 2nd floor). We're up to 15.

There was another family of eight on the third floor (Their names were never noted) who were all believed to have perished with the exception of one child. We're up to 22, already two more than the official toll. Then we had the four members of the Walkes family, in one of the rear third floor apartments, none of whom could be accounted for after the fire. Up to 26. 

On the fourth floor we have three families unaccounted for. The three members of the Armstrong family, the four-member Starks clan, and the four member Rebecco family. Hmmm...that's eleven right there. We're up to thirty seven deaths...seven more than the article reported and seventeen more than the official death toll.. It gets worse. There was another un-named family of four on the fourth floor who remained unaccounted for.

We're up to 41...twice as many as the official death toll, and eleven more than reported in the article.

Then we have the Tismeyer family on the fifth floor...only Mr. Tismeyer escaped, by jumping from their front fifth floor apartment, his wife and two children are believed to have perished in the fire. Mr Tismeyer was also severely injured, and we don't know if he survived.

Annnd we're up to 44, possibly 45 deaths. So how do you have as many as one hundred percent and change more deaths than originally reported? 

OK, first, the names of the people on the sixth floor weren't available to reporters, and I have a feeling that investigators had to guestimate the number of people on the top floor as well. Record-keeping apparently wasn't a huge priority for the building owner (Bet he still got his rent every month, though) All that we can be fairly certain about on the sixth floor is that everyone on that floor died. What we  don't  know is how many actually lived...and died...on that floor. They will be our unknown variable. 

As for those we know lived in the building, but weren't accounted for, they weren't accounted for at the time the article was published. Reporters likely asked other residents who made it out about their neighbors...both names and if they made it out...and based the article on that information. And lets be honest here, the people being interviewed had just lived through the most terrifying ordeal of their lives. They weren't exactly thinking clearly, and the information they gave the reporters wasn't necessarily entirely accurate. But it's what the reporters had to run with.

Then as now, papers had deadlines, and articles had to be finished and edited by that deadline to be included in the morning paper (And getting an article type-set and the paper printed was a bit more time consuming and difficult in 1860 than it was even in 1960, much less today). The New York Times article was in the next morning's...Feb 3...paper, so the reporters on scene had to go with the possibly inaccurate information they had gotten at the scene to meet the deadline. 'Thirty' was likely picked as the possible number of deaths because the editors suspected that the information was inaccurate. At that point no one knew for sure how many people had died. (Aaannnd there's our reason for the discrepancy. The media. Back then 'Media' and 'Newspaper' were synonymous, but there was more than one paper, and each wanted to be the first to publish the story. The New York Times managed to print the story in the first or maybe second edition of the morning paper, barely 12 hours after the fire was reported. Units were probably still on scene overhauling when the presses started rolling. To do this, they had to go with the information they had at deadline. (And this is also why that 'Supposed to have' was added to he headline, so they weren't actually reporting a hard number. That way the error in reporting wasn't as extreme, in their eyes at any rate, because their death toll was simply an estimate based in the information their reporters managed to get while on scene.) We'll take a look at why this is still going on today in the next note.

But what about the apparent error in the official death toll? The official death toll was arrived at days later after bodies had been counted and identified, and people who were 'Unaccounted For' the night of the fire turned up alive. I have a feeling several of them either made it out alive, or weren't in the building when the fire started in the first place. 

Even with that fact, though, the confirmed and possibly confirmed deaths still exceed the 'official' death toll. That's not unusual though...the actual death toll for just about all of the high loss of life fires through-out history varies depending on the source you're referencing, though it's a bit harder to understand with a smaller death toll.  The official death toll of 'twenty' was probably, literally, the number of bodies that were recovered and counted. Which makes perfect sense...but it still still didn't match up with the number of people missing. 

A couple of things make this discrepancy a little bit more understandable when you start digging into it a little.  First, there was just no way to know for sure how many people died on the sixth floor, which means there was really no way that officials could tally a truly accurate death toll. Even worse, several bodies were probably never found at all because they were entirely consumed...the building burned literally all night. So there were very likely missing people who would never be found, and who, conceivably, could have jst as well gotten out of the building, and just left the scene. Those missing people couldn't be listed as confirmed deaths because, well, they weren't.  They would remain forever 'missing'. Their relatives and friends would probably always wonder, even though they were likely pretty sure their loved ones had died in the fire. Officials, meanwhile, had to go with what they had, and what they had was twenty confirmed bodies.

I think that the true death toll was likely closer to the New York Times reported number than to the official death toll.  There were just too many people who were unaccounted for, and back in 1860, there weren't many reasons for a family at this income level...these were not wealthy citizens...to be away from home on a week night. (Or any night for that matter.) 

And we'll never know. The fire's too far back in the annuls of history, any relevant records are long gone, and no one's really looking in the first place. 

<***> 

Ahhh, the problem that just keeps on giving...inaccurate media reporting. The rush to get information out to the general newspaper-buying public ( And 'scoop' all the other papers while they were at it) has led to inaccurate reporting since the beginnings of printed newspapers. 

And as technology evolved, the problem got worse. With newspapers, there was a window of several hours to get information collected, confirmed (This step sometimes kinda got left out), collated and arranged into an article, edited, type-set, and printed. So there was a chance that an error could be caught and corrected (And this did happen, especially back in the hey-day of the newspaper...the mid 1930s to about the late 1940s.)

Then, came radio, and in the late 40s, TV, and live news reports soon followed, and reporters started giving their own take on what was happening, interviews got edited for brevity (Often unintentionally cutting out an important word or phrase) and, as time wore on, agenda (Often intentionally cutting out an important word or phrase). And inaccurate reporting became, well, more common.

And that brings us to today, with The Internet, and Social Media, and Instant News. And not only is news instant, everything is potentially national and even international news. Incidents that would've barely made the local news a few decades ago are now broadcast nationwide...heck, often world wide ...even as they are happening. The actual media is often playing catch-up because the incident they are reporting has already been uploaded to a dozen or so Instagram pages and YouTube sites.

And when the Broadcast media does report it, they tend to sensationalize it, going for ratings, as well as views on their own Social Media accounts. Ratings and views, as well as 'Scooping' the other media outlets, sadly, overshadows immediate accuracy. You can always go back and make a correction, but you can't go back and be the first with the story if you, well, weren't.

And, sadly, accurate reporting has not only taken a back seat to ratings and being first to report the story...there are times I think it's been kicked to the curb altogether.

<***> 

If we're going to talk about politics as it related to New York's volunteers, we gotta talk about the real politics that the department...or at least one of it's best known members...influenced.

First, you have to understand that being a member of one of New York's volunteer fire companies was a major status symbol for the men of New York. This, of course, meant that the department boasted a slew of socially prominent and powerful men among it's 3000 or so members, which also meant that those 3000 members formed a powerful and influential voting block.

I know, I know...three thousand voters is still a very small fraction of a population of 835,000 or so, but you also have to realize that a good number of those 3000 men had the ears...and support...of dozens of other equally socially and politically prominent citizens.  And those guys could, in turn, influence the decisions...and votes...of dozens of other citizens. So, if you were running for office, and had the members of the fire department behind you, you had a very good chance of being a front-runner in any city-wide election.

And if one of those 3000 or so members...or even former members...was the one running for office...

Enter one William Magear Tweed, far better known as 'Boss' Tweed, who was the Head Honcho of New York's Democratic headquarters...better known as 'Tammany Hall...from 1858 to 1873. Tweed was, and is, notoriously considered to be one of the most corrupt politicians in New York City's long, storied and often corrupt political history. The symbol and logo of NYC's democratic party during the Tweed era was a snarling Bengal tiger, and thanks to that tiger, Tweed's runaway corruption has an unbreakable connection with New York's early volunteer fire companies, with one of them in particular.

Several entire books have been written about Boss Tweed's political antics, so it's no way I can even begin to cover all of them here, but we can most definitely hit the high points. Tweed was born to third generation Scottish immigrants in April of 1823, and grew up at 1 Cherry Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His dad was a chair maker...a pretty successful one at that...and Tweed left school at eleven to learn his dad's trade. The first quarter century or so of his life was pretty normal. He learned a couple of other trades, got married in 1844, and, at the urging of a couple of his friends, joined a volunteer fire company, Engine Company 12 to be precise. While at #12, he met fellow member John J Reilly, and a couple of years after he joined the fire company, Tweed, Reilly, and several others formed Americus Engine Company 6, on Henry Street...

Let the shenanigans begin.

Americus Engine 6...also known as 'Big Six' because of the size of their pumper, a big double deck end stroke First Class rig...chose the image of a snarling Bengal tiger as it's logo, painting the head of said big cat on the sides of the company's lavishly decorated rig.  Bill Tweed was elected First Assistant Foremen, then Foreman of the company.

 Engine 6 became well known for their aggressive tactics...both on and off the fire ground,...and formed bitter rivalries with several other engine companies. Bill Tweed...he hadn't yet gained the moniker 'Boss'...became known for his skillful use of an ax in battles between #6 and their rivals. The fights became so brutal, and Tweed's antics so violent that the department's Chief Engineer, Alfred Carlson, pressured the fire company to kick him out. It took him awhile, but Carlson was ultimately successful...

...And, being guilty of several felonious assaults and possibly even attempted murder, Tweed was sent to 'The Big House' for a long stretch...No. Ya know that didn't happen. Lets be real here...if it had, I wouldn't be writing this 'Note'.

What did happen is that Tweed came to the attention of the members of the city's Democratic party. Back in that era, the Democratic Party dominated NYC politics, and apparently the party's big whigs considered a tendency towards violence a virtue in a potential candidate, because they convinced Tweed to run as a candidate for Alderman for the city's seventh ward. He lost the first election, in 1850, but won when he ran again the next year. Immediately after being sworn in, he allied himself with a loose crew of corrupt politicians known as 'The Forty Thieves'. That particular bunch, up to that point in time, were the most corrupt bunch the city had ever seen. Tweed would study hard and learn well.

The party then nominated him to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he also won...but did nothing notable in his two year term. Except maybe observe. And take notes. And learn. No, his rise to fame...or infamy...came when he returned to New York and immediately ran for a position on the New York County (Manhattan) Board Of Supervisors, which he won handily (If not necessarily honestly). And, the wholesale graft and corruption began.

Vendors were charged a surcharge to even think about doing business with the city. As this was going on, one of his cronies certified him as a lawyer, despite the fact that he never attended Law School, or ever took, much less passed, the Bar exam. Tweed immediately opened a law office, giving him an excuse, illegal though it may have been. to charge legal fees if he so much as burped in the direction of anyone he or the city was doing business with.

...And the shenanigans continue!

His rise to power was astronomically swift as he first became chairman, then overall head of the city's Democratic General Committee. This is when he took on the nickname 'Boss'. He also adopted the logo of his former fire company...Americus Engine 6's tiger...as his and Tammany Hall's logo, and forever-more, the Americus Tiger was known as the Tammany Tiger.

As head of New York's Democratic Committee , Tweed ruled the city with an iron hand, despite the fact that he wasn't the mayor. Graft and corruption of any and all kinds became rampant. He had himself appointed Deputy Street Commissioner, which gave him access to the city's contact and bid process, also allowing him to engage in such lucrative...for him...practices as issuing fake invoices, then collecting payment from the city on those same invoices. He also bought himself a printing company, made it the city's official printer, and then overcharged for pretty much every printing job he did for the city.

He also saw to it that his cronies were elected to positions of power through use of election fraud on a massive scale. Some citizens voted as many as twenty times, many of the city's deceased cast ballots from beyond the grave, and not everyone who cast a ballot was necessarily an actual U.S. citizen when they voted. Once his crew was in office (They became known as 'The Tweed Ring) identical election tactics were used at each election to see to it that they stayed in office.

The former mayor, who was a Tweed supporter, was elected Governor (Think Maybe Tweed had a hand in that as well?), and then, with the help of bribes, passed a new City Charter and had it signed into law...this charter mandated new elections that gave Tammany Hall full control of the city government (As if they didn't pretty much already have it already...the new charter just made it official.).

As if this wasn't enough, he was also elected to the New York State Senate, where he served from 1868-1873, there-by elevating his corruption to a state as well as local level (As if getting his own personal governor hadn't already accomplished that ).  More than a few votes were bought during that five year time frame.

During this period, through means that are far beyond the scope of this post, Tweed and his cronies stole somewhere between 50 million and 200 million dollars from the city. (That's in 1870 dollars BTW..that same range would translate to anywhere from just south of one billion dollars to just shy of four billion dollars today)

What did he use all of his ill-gotten cash for? Real Estate...he became one of the biggest property holders in the city (Bet having him as a landlord was an absolute freaking blast...not)

Tweed and the democratic party also had control of most of the press...note I said most. The New York Times wasn't having it. Nor was legendary political cartoonist Thomas Nast, of Harpers Weekly magazine. The two publications started a campaign against Tweed in 1869 or thereabouts, keeping a full court press on him, The nasty editorials in the Times didn't bother him as much as Nast's cartoons....referring to Nast's cartoons, he actually commented:  "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures!"

Tweed's ultimate downfall was brought on in large part by his and Tammany Hall's being blamed for The Orange Riots that occurred during the summer of 1871. The prior year Irish Catholic protesters attacked a parade being held by Irish protestants celebrating a Protestant victory over Catholicism...eight died in the riot.

When permits for the same parade were applied for in 1871, the Police Commissioner denied them, with backing from Tweed and Tammany Hall. Pressure from the Protestant community and newspapers caused the ban to be rescinded by no less than N.Y. Governor Hoffman (Also a Tweed Crony). So, the city reversed course and allowed the parade...again with backing from Tweed. (One of the great ironies here is that many of the institutions that were campaigning against Tweed also protested the ban against the parade ).

Tweed's assured both the city government and the citizens that he could keep 'His People' (A huge part of his constituency was Irish Cathodic) in check, and just to ensure that the parade remained peaceful, the parade route was protected by both NYPD and the State Militia (The forerunners of The National Guard). Despite all of this the parade was again attacked by Irish Catholic protesters, resulting in an even bigger riot, this time with a death toll of sixty.

This reflected poorly on Tweed, Tammany Hall, and The Tweed Ring, as they had ensured the citizens of New York that they could control their constituency and allow for a peaceful march. They obviously could not. Before the second riot, The New York Times and Thomas Nast's campaign against Tweed had little traction. An 'Audit' of the city's much-cooked books by a 'Blue Ribbon Panel'  headed by one of Tweed's cronies, had shown the books to be 'In Good Order' only months before the riots, somewhat defusing the campaign against Tweed, but the riot caused the good citizens of New York to take a long, hard look at their city's government. They had tolerated Tammany Hall and Tweed because he was apparently able to keep the city's huge Irish population in check. The riot, again, proved that he could not.

The Times and Nast's campaign gained more traction, helped along by the City's Sheriff providing the New York Times with incriminating evidence of  graft and embezzlement (This, BTW, was after an attempt by said Sheriff to blackmail Tweed failed). When this happened, it was like a dam broke, and information started flooding into the Times, to be published daily. This expose' had several effects, one of which was a lack of confidence in the city's ability to meet their debts...to use more modern terms, it sank NYC's credit rating on bonds into negative numbers. Total collapse of the city's credit would have  caused a devastating domino effect, bringing down every bank in the city as it collapsed.

Again, the details of what happened next are beyond the scope of this blog, but when the citizens of New York found out what had been going on with their money, there was a general taxpayer revolt which cut off the city's funding, and this led to city employees demanding to be paid, and all of this ultimately led to an investigation that discovered monies meant for the city going, instead, directly into Tweed's pocket.

Tweed was arrested, released on bail...and, for the moment, kept his position and was actually elected as a State senator (Even as members of the Tweed Ring fled overseas), but then, after further investigation he was rearrested, forced to resign his positions on city and state government,...and again released on an 8 million dollar bond (That'd be a 172 million dollar bond today, folks!!!).

His first trial, in January 1873, resulted in a mistrial, his second in a conviction on 204 of 220 counts, netting him a 12 year sentence (Reduced to one year) and a fine of $12,750 ($270,000 today). And after his year in prison (Actually served in NYC's infamous 'The Tombs') he was sued by the city in an effort to recover embezzled funds. Unable to cover the amount awarded to the city, Tweed was rearrested, incarcerated in the city's Ludlow Street Jail, and granted home visits. And, on one of these visits, on Dec. 4, 1875, he promptly escaped, fled to Spain, and became a common sailor on a Spanish merchant ship.

The U.S. Government went a-lookin' discovered his whereabouts and were waiting for him at one of his ships port-calls. He was  again arrested, transported back to New York aboard the U.S.S. Franklin, arriving back in the city on November 23, 1876, and re-incarcerated. In a bid to gain his release, he agreed to testify to a Blue Ribbon committee about the workings of The Tweed Ring, but after doing so, the State of New York reneged on their agreement, and returned him to the Ludlow Street jail, where he died on April 12, 1878. He was buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery.

Fire Escape Notes

This post has been pretty much dedicated to fire escapes on residential buildings, but while tenements, and their occupants, were the main focus of fire escape legislation, tenement residents were far from the only occupants of multistory buildings who were endangered by fire.

The 'Build up not out' philosophy of building design had been around for decades when the Elm Street and 45th Street fires occurred, and commercial buildings from hotels to theaters to factories to schools, and everything in between had been built with two or more floors. And if you think tenement owners fought tooth and nail against fire escape legislation, you ain't seen nothing yet. Business owners all but went to war with the various local and state governments over installing those iron stairways on their buildings.

Lets take a quick look at some of these businesses and just how reluctant their owners were to give their employees and guests a way to escape if the places lit off.

Hotels

Hotel owners absolutely did not want to install fire escapes, and they used every tactic employed by tenement owners to avoid doing so, and then some. Fire escape legislation for publics buildings, such as hotels, lagged behind residential fire escape legislation by several years, and wasn't addressed until 1871, when a building code add-on required the installation of fire escapes in 'All hotels and boarding houses...' Interestingly this near-toothless legislation was prompted by an 1870 blaze at the Spotswood Hotel, in my adopted home town of Richmond, Va. And, wouldn't ya know it, when this legislation was passed, 'Fire Escape' wasn't defined.  And the legislation wasn't particularly effective. Less than a year after the legislation was passed, eleven servant girls died in a fire at The Fifth Avenue Hotel, in New York, because their top floor servants' quarters wasn't served by any kind of fire escape. Inspections of numerous hotels in New York revealed that this was not an isolated problem. 

Inspectors had regularly suggested iron balcony fire escapes, to no avail. Hotel owners didn't want fire escapes installed on their buildings for a variety of reasons, the biggest, of course, being the expense of installing them They regularly utilized another two-pronged argument as well...fire escapes ruined the appearance of their buildings, and reminded their potential guests that the hotel might, well, burn (Which they did, pretty regularly). Hotel owners fought against the legislation tooth and nail, and, to be honest, the city's inspectors, not having a firm guide line to go by, didn't push back too hard...yet.

Then came a string of fatal hotel fires in the mid 1870s, most particularly a huge blaze at the Southern Hotel in St Louis, Missouri on April 11, 1876.  Twenty-two guests died in the fire, and the graphic newspaper articles of the day instilled horror and fear from coast to coast. 

Many cities, New York among them, and Cincinnati, Ohio most particularly, passed sweeping fire escape legislation. Cincinnati required iron balcony fire escapes on all factories, hotels, places of amusement, and tenement houses, though I don't know just how effective this ordinance was. 

As for New York, legislation that actually had not only teeth, but the means to bite with them, didn't pass until 1883. But this was some serious legislation, allowing the FDNY to bring suit against any recalcitrant hotel owners and force the installation of fire escapes. The owner of the Sturtevant House Hotel was the first to discover that the city could indeed force him to install fire escapes, and by the end of 1883, thirty-eight other hotels had fire escapes installed, very much against the wishes and wills of their owners.

And fire escapes were installed and everyone was safe, and all was well with the world...Oh, come on, you know better than that! First problem...while fire escapes were indeed installed on 39 New York City hotels, there were way more than 39 hotels in the city. Second problem...the State Government got involved with trying to fix the problem.

Remember those fire escape ropes that didn't catch on as Tenement fire escapes?  Well, twenty years later, a guy named Erwin pushed a bill through the New York State legislature that would require a fire escape rope in every room of a hotel.

I can't think of anything less useful in a major hotel fire, particularly if the trapped guests are above about the forth floor. I noted all the reasons that multiple fire escape ropes at a major fire would be a disaster in the main body of the post, but lets just say fire fighters, and hotel industry big-whigs argued against the legislation, and for once both sides were in agreement...unless the entire hotel was occupied by gymnasts, fire escape ropes would lead to more, rather then less loss of life. 

Ironically, potential guests agreed with the legislation, feeling that it gave them a means of escape should a hotel they were staying in light off at Oh Dark Hundred. The actual mechanics of having to climb down a fifty or sixty foot rope that was tangled in other fifty or sixty foot ropes, all occupied by panicking guests, possibly during inclement weather, at night, just didn't occur to them.

Their voices were heard and the protests of the bill's detractors were ignored, and the bill passed, going into effect on July 1, 1887. Even though actual enforcement was, at best, spotty, several hotels did comply, installing the ropes in every room above the second floor.  It didn't take long for the bill's many opponents to be proven right.

During the 1890s, there were several major hotel fires in New York State, and all of them featured trapped guests plummeting to their death after loosing their grip on an escape rope. The worst was the Windsor Hotel, in New York City, where at least sixteen died, many after just such a fall. The public went nuts. Editorials were written, letters were sent to the papers and the State legislature, and the fire escape ropes were nixed,

And the State Legislature kind of went the other way for a bit, requiring that every room of hotels with accommodations for more than 10 guests have direct access from all rooms to a fire escape balcony. Subsequent bills were added even more requirements to the 'All Rooms Must Have Access' bill, essentially requiring the owners of large hotels to all but enclose their buildings in a iron cage formed by balconies and ladders. The hotel owners were having none of it, and arguued...this time with some small amount justification, IMHO...that the current legislation, if properly enacted and enforced, should be sufficient.

Problem was, it wasn't being enforced, to the point that some inspectors were filing false reports, reporting that buildings were in full compliance when, in actuality, they didn't have any fire escapes...a problem that caused the termination and arrest of a few inspectors, and the doubling down on enforcement by the city's Department of Buildings. 

The combination of the new (And more than a little over-board) new legislation and the ramping up of enforcement prompted hotel owners to, once again, protest against any fire escapes, citing their lack of aesthetic appeal (OK, ugliness). They also used the argument that a combustible building ringed by 'iron ladders' was no safer than that same building with no fire escapes.

The Windsor Hotel, while proving how useless rope fire escapes were, also proved the hotel owners' argument false, as dozens of guest and employees did make their way out of the building using iron balcony fire escapes. Guests and employess...to the dismay of hotel owners...were actually all for fire escapes because they actually provided them with, well, a way to get out of the building in a fire.

Hotel owners continued to fight the installation of fire escapes on their buildings tooth and nail, to the point that a 1902 New York Times editorial decried both the lack of fire escapes on a good number of the city's hotels as well as the combustible nature of the buildings themselves...this despite a number of pieces of legislation that required their installation.. This, BTW, wasn't a problem specific to New York.  Building departments and fire marshal's offices nation wide wrestled with this exact same issue at the turn of the last century.

Similar editorials, coupled with the rash of fatal hotel fires during the 1890s, along with a dash of new city ordinances led to more rigid enforcement during the very early years of the 20th Century...to the point that the Fire Department would, and on one or two occasions actually did close down businesses that weren't in compliance, not allowing them to reopen until they were in compliance.

My bet is that didn't have to happen more than once or twice for the word to get around. The cost of installing fire escapes was far lower than the cost of a month or two of lost business. and by the middle of the century's first decade, it appeared that the battle to get fire escapes installed on hotels in New York was over, with (Finally) a high level of compliance.

<***>

While most hotel owners fought the installation of fire escapes tooth and nail, several of them did comply, and a few of them met the challenges head on...both that of installing the fire escapes, and of not marring their building's aesthetics. These owners actually hired an architect to design the fire escapes to blend in with the building's design while still remaining functional. This resulted in some seriously pretty iron grillwork, some of which still exists today on buildings preserved as historical landmarks.

Decorative circular iron fire escape installed on the lavish Murray Hill Hotel, on Park Avenue, at the turn 

of the 20th Century. Sadly, this beautiful old hotel was not one of the ones that was preserved as a historical landmark...it was

razed in 1948 to make way for a high rise office building.

Theaters

I touched on theater fire safety in my previous posts about The Brooklyn Theater Fire and The Iroquois Theater Fire, but to quickly summarize the problem, you have a large number of people stuffed into a comparatively small area that is loaded with combustible materials, and if those materials light off, you need to get all of those people out of the building before smoke and heat renders that comparatively small area uninhabitable...and unsurvivable.

Both of the aforementioned theater fires caused cataclysmic losses of life...294 for the Brooklyn Theater fire and 602 for the Iroquois, which to this day is the deadliest structure fire in U.S.history. Ordinances requiring fire escapes in public buildings had already been passed when the Brooklyn Theater burned in December 1878, but they were toothless, and the Brooklyn theater didn't have exterior fire escapes (And barely had fire exits at all.).

The public went ballistic after the Brooklyn Theater Fire, and cities nationwide inspected their theaters and other public buildings, 'Strongly recommending' their owners to install exterior fire escapes as well as safety equipment such as masonry fire walls, and asbestos curtains...Ahhh, if it had really been that simple! These were expensive modifications, and the theater owners fought them tooth and nail, a battle I covered in way more detail in the fire's post. Most of these fire safety recommendations were just that...recommendations, and the theater owners hemmed and hawed and delayed until the Brooklyn Theater Fire, as all news stories do, faded into the past. As several years passed without a major theater fire in the U.S., the public sort of forgot about the issue. And Theater owners and their accountants breathed a sigh of relief. And many theaters remained fire traps. 

And then the Ring Theater in Vienna, Austria burned, killing 1,300 people...and everyone world-wide again, freaked.

In New York, as well as many other major cities, theaters were inspected, recommendations became ordinance and law, and owners were forced to upgrade their theaters, under threat of closure if certain modifications weren't made. And the public was at least given the impression that these laws and ordinances were being forcefully and vigorously enforced, and maybe they were because we didn't have another major loss of life theater fire until...

The Iroquois Theater fire in 1903, and it's horrendous loss of life. Even worse, the theater was supposed to be the safest theater in the country, possibly even the world. 

Hmmm...maybe those laws and ordinances weren't being enforced all that vigorously at all.

Once again, enforcement was stepped up nationwide, even as New York City theater owners swore up and down that their theaters were so safe that such a disaster could never happen there. The fire Marshal's office said 'Well Let's see' and  found scores of fire safety problems...not necessarily lack of exits and fire escapes, but blocked  exits, locked exits, and difficult to access exterior fire escapes... problems that were either resolved, or else the theater would be closed.

Interestingly, exterior fire escapes had been added to the majority if the theaters to allow emergency egress from the balconies...compared to many of the other modifications that were required, an iron fire escape was comparatively inexpensive, and the need for ticket holders in a balcony to be able to reach the outside quickly and safely was obvious even to the building owners. The problem often wasn't lack of exterior fire escapes...it was lack of maintenance.

This occurred as more and better fire safety technology was developed and installed. As both inspectors and theater owners concentrated on other modifications, such as firewalls, interior stair towers, smoke vents, and sprinkler systems, fire escape maintenance was all but forgotten, and many fire escapes became almost as hazardous as the fires they, theoretically at any rate, allowed the building occupants to escape from.

Around 1911, New York City's Fire Marshal's office again stepped up enforcement, this time concentration hard on exterior fire escapes, forcing building owners to bring them up to code (And forcing the removal of old escapes and installation of new ones in a couple of extreme cases, such as the time when a building inspector fell partially through a rust-rotted fire escape landing.)  By the end of the 1910s, theater fire safety had been improved drastically, and has remained so. And to this day, iron fire escapes are a part of the fire safety technology in many modern theaters.

Schools

You'd think that doing what ever it took to make school buildings as safe as possible for the kids who attend them would have been an absolute no-brainer. Sadly, however, that wasn't the case. And while budgetary issues had a good bit to do with the fact that hundreds of school buildings were absolute fire traps, some of the problem was ego, especially in New York.

Schools were actually covered by the exact same 1871 law that required fire escapes on all public buildings in New York, and schools, hospitals and asylums were mentioned specifically because the occupants of those facilities...children, the sick, and the infirm...would face even more difficulty in escape from a fire than able-bodied adults. 

So the good intentions were there but sadly, good intentions don't necessarily get anything done. This was made dangerously clear two years after the new ordinance went into effect, when an inspection of the city's schools showed that all of the them needed immediate attention, and that a slew of them had absolutely no way to get the kids out quickly and safely in an emergency.

Now, school buildings built in this era...like pretty much all other buildings...were pretty much fire traps anyway. Most were what's now called 'Ordinary Construction...masonry exterior walls with wood frame construction. And when I say 'Wood Frame, I mean everything other than the exterior walls were constructed of wood. Add to this narrow stairways and hallways, wing partitions making those hallways even narrower, and as noted before, absolutely no emergency egress capability at all...yeah, New York City's schools were pretty much the definition of 'Fire Trap'

Some efforts were made to correct this situation, but a fire at Our Church Of The Holy Redeemer Catholic school in February 1883 showed that not a whole lot of progress had been made. That fire killed 16 kids, and even worse, almost all of the deaths were the result of panic...A small fire in the basement filled the building with smoke, and the deaths were caused by a crush of kids trying to descend a narrow, winding stairway busting through a handrail, sending dozens of them crashing to the floor, twenty or more feet below.  

Granted, Our Holy Redeemer was a parochial school rather than a city school, but it still fell under the new ordinance, and had indeed been inspected a month or so before the fire. That inspector, however, dropped the ball in a big way by stating that the school was safe and no cause for concern, despite it's obvious problems. There was no mention of what, if any, action was taken against the inspector, but the fire scared the city's Board of Education enough to cause them to call a special meeting for the sole purpose of discussing fire safety in the city's school buildings.

And the ball was dropped yet again, when the board's head honcho announced that all of the city's schools featured broad hallways and stairways and masonry construction , and were, therefore, immune to the kind of tragedy that occurred at Our Holy Redeemer.

He was, of course, delusional, because many of the city's buildings were in even worse shape than Our Holy Redeemer, and many if not most still had no fire escapes. Oh, a few schools had fire escapes, but most if not all of them were of the old 'Vertical Ladder' style, which were notoriously difficult for small children to descend, even on a warm spring day during a (Sadly, rare) fire drill.  Now try to imagine a fire roaring up the stairwells, blocking them, as several hundred terrified, crying children literally try to climb over each other on that ladder in panicked flight from the fire on a snowy 15 degree January day. Not a pretty picture...in such a situation, those 'Fire escapes' would very likely cause as many deaths as the fire itself.

The city's Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children made their own investigation of Gotham school fire safety. and wrote a letter to the city's building commission and Board of education, listing 53 schools that had either no or inadequate fire escapes, with a copy sent to the New York Times editorial desk. I have  a feeling that the Times editorial, when read by a few thousand parents, had more of an effect than the letters to city departments because...allegedly, anyway...new balcony style fire escapes were installed on a number of schools, and 'Other Safety improvements' were made.

By 1893 the situation had improved some but it was a slow, tedious process. While the complaints and protests against fire escapes in hotels and theaters weren't voiced in the case of schools...after all,  the lives of children were at stake....budget problems reared their ugly heads. The ego problem noted earlier also got in the way of safety improvements...many commissioners felt that the city's schools were as safe as possible already, and that spending more money was a waste of time and resources.

Some new schools were built in the early 1890s, and these buildings were built with fire escapes as well as more interior fire proofing, but these were still primarily wood frame buildings with open stairwells. And while improvements were made to older buildings...including some fire escapes...there was still a lot of improvements needed.

SO, despite new, stricter legislation dictating otherwise, many, and maybe even most, New York City Schools were without fire escapes.  Compounding the problem were inspectors who...likely under orders... rubber stamped school inspections, turning a blind eye towards grossly unsafe conditions while they were at it. The city fathers could show anyone who had concerns about the safety of the city schools these perfect inspection reports, and say 'See...our schools are among the safest in the nation'. And this, of course, is exactly what they did. This, of course, was also the excuse they used to avoid spending money to install fire escapes and make other safety improvements.

The school board tried. In 1901 a request for 130,000 dollars...just north of four million dollars today...was made for the installation of fire escapes on all of the schools not already so equipped, but the request was rejected, with prior mismanagement of funds cited as the cause for the rejection.

Then, on March 27th, 1908, a tragedy that should have, pun intended, lit a fire under the collective asses of the New York City Government shocked and horrified the nation. On that morning, a fairly new school building in Collinwood, Ohio...just outside of Cleveland...burned, killing over 170 children who were trapped just inside the rear door in a classic panic-induced crush.

Most school districts big and small jumped to check their own buildings, jumping through hoops to make improvements that would allow their cities' kids to safely exit a burring school. Cleveland went as far as installing enclosed metal spiral fire escape stairs to all of it's school buildings, and several states threatened to close any schools that were not up to code, fire safety wise.

And New York still claimed that their schools were as safe as possible, a lie that was bolstered when around 2500 students evacuated one of the city's schools in slightly over a minute when a small fire occurred. No other info was available to me, other than the fact that it was an older school, and did have fire escapes. My bet, however, is that it was a high school, that there wasn't much fire, and even less smoke. Also, we do know that that particular school carried out regular fire drills, so when the fire alarm sounded, the kids knew exactly what to do. And, with (Again, my assumption here) little or no smoke in the halls, it was basically another fire drill. Had the fire been in an older elementary school, and had it really gotten rolling before being discovered, and had the kids rushed out into smoke and heat packed hallways, they would have had another Collinwood School on their hands...even with fire drills. The added smoke, heat, and low/no visibility make a huge and deadly difference. Collinwood school also carried out fire drills.

But the minds of the New York Board of Education, and the other city fathers didn't work that way. Instead of a wake up call, they considered it proof...proof I tell you...that all of the city's schools could be evacuated in a minute or so. The Commissioner claimed that there was absolutely no need to install fire escapes on any more city schools because, after all, the buildings could be evacuated in a minute or two, at most. This despite the fact that the evacuated school building not only did have fire escapes, it had high end, steel mesh enclosed fire escapes with stairs opening off of the sides of the balconies rather than descending down well holes in the balconies. Few of the other school buildings that had fire escapes were so equipped.

The Fire Marshal's office followed this up by issuing over 500 citations for fire safety violations in schools while also recommending the immediate closing of 13 unsafe school buildings. Things hadn't changed much for the better four years later when a special committee on school safety issued a report that illustrated how unsafe many of the city's schools still were. The superintendent of schools strongly disagreed with this report, replying (Again!) that the city's schools were as safe as they could possibly be. This was followed up by the Fire Commissioner issuing over 800 violations. The same attitude prevailed three years later when yet another fatal school fire...this one killing 21 children, in Peabody, Mass...again had cities and towns looking at the fire safety of their schools.

Things finally started to get better in New York as the 1920s dawned, and several new, fire proof schools were built in the city while some upgrades were, apparently, made to older buildings. Either it worked, or the city got lucky. Forty-four fires were reported in school buildings in 1921, and all of these buildings were evacuated without major injury to any of the students. These successful evacuations were attributed to both the new fireproof construction/upgrades, and the regular fire drills as well as early detection of most if not all of the fires.

 It was also at about this time that a push was being made, nationwide, for fireproof construction of new school buildings (This was about when the glazed 'firebrick' that many of us my age and older remember began to appear in school hallways) as well as the addition of sprinkler systems and enclosed, fire proof stairwells.

That's a battle that's still being fought today...while fireproof and fire resistant, steel framed masonry construction has been standard in new school buildings for three quarters of a century or so, sprinklers in school buildings only became common in the last quarter century. (My alma mater, Thomas Dale High School in Chesterfield County, Va, underwent a massive remodel about twenty years ago, and in a recent YouTube tour of the building it was easy to tell when the kids giving the tour passed from the new section of the building...Built around the year 2000...to the old section...Built in 1964. The new section is sprinklered, while the old section isn't). Enclosed stairwells in schools are still a rarity, because the great majority of two and three story school buildings were built before enclosed stairways became a code requirement...a huge majority of new school buildings are single story.

But back to the early portion of the last century...it was noted that fire escapes in schools were a bit of a different issue than they were in other buildings because all of the kids on a given floor might not have access to them. Most opened off of a classroom window, which would mean you had to get a hundred or more kids out of their classrooms, into the room with the fire escape, and then onto the fire escape. This could be tricky during a drill. It could become impossible...and deadly...during a well developed fire that was filling the building with heat and smoke.

School systems tended to rely on fireproof constriction to slow the spread of a fire, and early detection, alarm systems, and regular fire drills to get the kids out before the conditions in the building became untenable., and that's still where things stand today.. All of those items are just as essential today as they were seventy or eighty, or even a hundred years ago. With that being said, fire escapes became somewhat of a 'Last Resort'. 

Two things should be noted here. First, fire escapes were available in both of the worst school fires in U.S. history...Collinwood school, which we've already discussed briefly, and Our Lady Of Angels fifty years later, in 1958. And in both cases the fire escapes allowed the occupants of a single classroom....the one that opened onto the fire escape...to get out of the building. Conditions in the hallway made accessing the fire escapes from any other classroom impossible early in both fires, and both fires resulted in catastrophic loss of life.

Second, while hundreds of new, fire safe schools have been built built since the midpoint of the 20^th century, 'Fire Trap' schools still existed well into the middle of the last century, and some...especially in smaller towns...were never brought up to code before they were replaced, some as late as the 1970s. Only sheer luck kept us from having another Collinwood or Our Lady Of Angels in one of these schools.

Factories

Fire escape and fire safety technology in general, developed a little differently and a lot more slowly in industrial settings than it did in any of the other occupancies I've covered in this post. Getting factory owners to spend money on anything not directly related to making a profit was (And still is!) like pulling the proverbial teeth, and it took (And still takes) a near act of congress and a literal passage of laws to remind them that Safety is indeed related to profit.

Oh, it's far, far better today than it was 150 or so years back. Now you have organizations such as OSHA keeping a close eye on all things safety, and you have labor unions watching out for the workers, and the companies themselves have far more of a safety-oriented frame of mind (Though I'm pretty sure that avoiding fines, litigation, and higher insurance premiums has more to do with this new frame of mind than actual concern for safety). Also technology wise, modern buildings are on an entirely different planet than factories built in the mid 19th Century, while the 'safety' culture of the Victorian era was just about 180 degrees away from that of today.

Factory buildings built from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century were generally huge, multi-story masonry-walled structures with wooden floors, framed by gigantic wooden timbers. Beams, girders, and floor and roof joists were generally no smaller than 10 x 6, and were often considerably larger. The interior of each floor was wide open and packed with machinery, with only one or two exit stairways serving each floor.

These buildings were often as large as 300'-400' by 200', with wooden floors that quickly became oil soaked. If the plant was, say, a textile mill or similar occupancy, you had flammable products and raw materials. Once a fire got going in one of these places it moved fast, burned hot, and and regularly killed and injured workers who became trapped.

Fire safety for these workers wasn't even a fleeting thought to the building owners...but theft prevention was. The few available exits were often locked to deter theft, and to make matters worse, many of the factory workers were young women and children...this was long before any kind of labor laws existed.

The original New York ordinance of 1871 requiring fire escapes on public buildings didn't cover factories...they weren't public buildings...and when the ordinance was tweaked so industrial buildings were covered, the city pulled it's usual trick of making the new ordinance far too vague. All it required was 'ample and appropriate means of exiting the building in case of fire'.

Several factory fires brought the horrible conditions that these workers were subjected to to light...in particular an 1872 factory fire on Center Street in New York (I could find no other details) which is probably the one that brought the discrepancy in fire escape laws to light. There were few fatalities in this one, and FDNY apparently made a pretty good stop on it, but reporters got a look at conditions inside and were quick to report that there was only one stairway and a single 'Rickety fire escape' for several hundred workers.

New York building and fire officials 'strongly suggested' that factory owners and managers hold regular fire drills, install adequate fire escapes, add enclosed stairways, stop locking doors, and install automatic sprinklers. But the problem was they only suggested these changes...they didn't require them.

Once the fire escape regulations were changed, enforcement was at least attempted...but, again, the ordinance was so vague as to be all but unenforceable. 

Some incentive to make factories safer was provided by the September, 1874 Fall River, Mass. Granite Mills# 1 fire, which killed 23 and injured around 80. Company executives stated that the exits in the structure were completely legal and adequate, which was pretty much the boilerplate statement in such situations.

 Even more incentive to improve fire safety was added in 1877, when the Hale and Company Piano Company's huge factory in New York burned, taking 80 more buildings with it...by some miracle all of the plant's workers made it out of the building, but the public was enraged, and all but screaming for improvements in fire safety (As much to preserve their own neighborhoods as to protect the factory workers.)  Again, Hale and Company's bigwigs stated that the building (Which, keep in mind, was at that point a smoking crater in the middle of a couple of square blocks of devastation) was completely up to code and legal.

Again, the public was enraged, stating that laws that allowed a firetrap such as Hale's building to exist were all but useless. So laws were tweaked, women and children were mentioned specifically,...and the laws still only stated that 'Adequate fire escapes must be installed on all buildings over two stories in height...' without specifying just exactly what 'adequate' actually meant. 

The...literal...fatal flaw of this particular bit of legislation was demonstrated in August of 1888 at a factory fire on Chrystie Street in New York, where 20 factory workers lost their lives despite the fact that the building had fire escapes on both the front and rear of the building. Problem was these fire escapes were a hundred or more feet away from many of the workers, who had to make their way through heat and quickly thickening smoke to get to either of them. 

Also, many of the fire escapes that were installed on factories were the old 'Vertical ladder' style (They were cheaper than the iron balcony and stairway style), making them difficult to use once they were accessed. I'm not at all sure, however, if that was the case with the Chrystie Street fire. At any rate, a push for better laws and better fire safety (along with better general working conditions) was made. These demands for change were the fetal beginnings of the labor movement, and factory workers had a long way to go, but some improvements were made.

The Chrystie Street fire showed a need for revamped laws covering fire escapes in large buildings housing an equally large number of workers, and such legislation was passed and enforced...in 1889, over 100 factories were ordered to install more fire escapes, while only twenty or so were so ordered the next year.

But don't think that this fixed the problem...an 1893 factory fire in Rochester, New York killed twenty workers, this in a building that was 'legal and up to code' despite the fact that those twenty workers were unable to get to either of the building's two fire escapes.

The next year the State of New York passed a law requiring factory buildings to be licensed, one of the requirements of licensing being the strict compliance with fire safety laws...but I have to ask, if inadequate exits and fire escapes were still legal, did this do any good. Nonetheless, this is seen as the true beginning of the labor reform movement, but it was a very weak beginning...years and a major tragedy would pass before workers in factories would see true advances in fire safety.

Then we have to look at the inspection process...the agency that was responsible for inspecting buildings and enforcing fire escape ordinances and laws was chronically under staffed, and more than a few building inspections were rubber stamped...a fact that was revealed in a 1909 factory fire that killed 10. The building had no fire escapes, and not even a passing nod to any kind of fire safety, yet an inspector had visited the building not long before the fire and passed it. This, sadly, was not a rare occurrence.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York was also up to code...there was a fire escape as well as an enclosed interior stairway.  That stairway was said to be pitifully narrow, but that was a moot point on March 26, 1911, when a fire got going on the 8th floor of the building, extended to the 9th, and trapped dozens of young female workers on both floors. The doors to the stairway were locked, to prevent the girls from leaving early and prevent theft of merchandise, and the single fire escape, at the rear of the building, was an ancient, unmaintained vertical ladder fire escape. The fire escape pulled free of the wall under the weight of the girls trying to use it and dumped well over a dozen of them into the concrete court yard.  Another two dozen or more jumped to their deaths, and over 140 were killed.

The girls working there had tried a strike to force better working conditions, only to be fired for their efforts. FDNY Chief Croker had tried to force factory owners to install sufficient balcony fire escapes, fire doors, and automatic sprinklers, only to have the powerful manufacturers Associations flat refuse to do so. The tragedy was pretty much inevitable.

This fire requires it's own post, but suffice it to say that it was a wake-up call that called many practices of both factory owners and the Building Department into question. The ordinances were still far too vague, requiring only 'such good and sufficient fire escapes, stairways, or other means of egress', with the definition of 'Good and Sufficient' left up to the factory owners. Needless to say, they defined 'Good and Sufficient' as 'Cheap and Inexpensive', and inspectors had a bad habit of passing them anyway.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was the beginning of a change in that attitude, as lawmakers strived to prevent a tragedy of that magnitude from ever happening again. Among the things that were looked at in New York (State as well as City)...and hotly contested as fingers were pointed...was consolidating state and city laws and inspection procedures. Meanwhile workers...most especially women...organized and fought for better and safer working conditions.

One effect of this effort was legislation that finally required proper fire escapes on all office and factory buildings, with specific criteria as to how these fire escapes were to be constructed and maintained. (Almost identical to...and in some ways even tougher than...the criteria for tenement fire escapes specified in the 'New Law', only about a decade after that law was passed.). 

Sadly, though, this legislation didn't save over forty people...mostly young women...who died in a clothing factory fire in Binghamton, New York in July 1913. It's said that when the fire alarm sounded, many of the workers thought it was another fire drill, and ignored it, until they realized that the building was quickly filling with smoke. By then, of course, it was too late And in a tragic repeat of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, many of the victims jumped to escape the flames, falling to their deaths.

When the fire was investigated, it was found that the fire escapes were inadequate, and not constructed up to the standards required by state law...the inspection process apparently still had some flaws. It was this fire that ultimately resulted in legislation requiring enclosed, fireproof interior stairways in office and factory buildings. 

Even though exterior iron balcony style fire escapes were required now, there was a problem with exterior iron fire escapes on factory buildings because of the way these buildings were built. Factories tended to have wide open, uncompartmented floors packed with combustibles. A fire could quickly involve most of a floor, roll out of the windows, and block the fire escapes, blocking anyone above the fire from using the fire escape...or even worse, trapping them on it. As noted earlier in this post, people have burned to death on fire escapes. It would take more than exterior fire escapes to make factory buildings fire safe.

Even though fire escape requirements were again strengthened in 1916, it was realized that the best way  to protect factory workers were fireproof interior stairways, firewalls with openings protected by automatic fire doors, and automatic sprinkler systems, all of which were ultimately required in industrial buildings.

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Interestingly, the National Fire Protection Association and the fire service and insurance industry in general had recognized the many faults of exterior fire escapes on all buildings by the 1920s, and recommended they only be used as secondary means of escape. As noted immediately above, fireproof interior fire stairs, firewalls, and sprinkler systems were viewed as the best way to safeguard building occupants against fire in business buildings. 

The same held true for new residential construction...all new mid and high rise apartment buildings were equipped with fireproof interior stairways by the 1920s. The exterior fire escape will never completely disappear...there are just too many of them, literally millions of them installed on buildings through out the U.S....but by the beginning of the 1930s, the exterior fire escape had pretty much been rendered obsolete.

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What about firewalls and sprinklers in residential buildings. 

To this day, it's hit and miss. More modern townhouse style apartments were and are built with firewalls between apartments or groups of apartments (Anywhere from between every apartment to every third or fourth apartment, depending on local fire code) and garden apartments often have firewalls separating attached buildings...but I've seen many garden style apartment buildings that don't have firewalls, particularly the modern style that often utilizes an exterior stairwell with four apartments per floor...two on either side of the stairwell. These buildings are often frame construction, and fire can and will reach the attic quickly and burn the roof off of them. Thankfully that wide, concrete floored exterior stairwell generally allows the occupants to get out of the building pretty easily.

As for sprinklers in apartments, again it's hit and miss and dependent on local fire code...but thankfully, sprinklers are becoming more common in new multi-family construction. A sprinkler system pretty much removes both the life hazard and fire damage problem as it will extinguish an incipient fire before it gets large enough to endanger the building's residents. While it's at it, most sprinkler systems also sound a building wide alarm and notify a monitoring company, who'll in turn notify the fire department while the sprinkler system knocks the fire down, almost always limiting fire damage to the area of origin. Detractors of such systems point out the water damage they can cause, but my reply to them is any water damage caused by the sprinklers will still be far far less severe than the destruction caused by a working fire. 

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The Companies that sold fire escapes.

Building owners may have fought ordinances requiring fire escapes tooth and nail, but other business owners took full advantage of the new laws in order to turn a profit. Fire escapes didn't just appear as if by magic...they had to be designed and built. And, as requirements for the proper design and construction of iron balcony fire escapes were tweaked and finalized, a dozen or more companies added 'design and erection of fire escapes' to their menu of services.

All of theses companies already specialized in structural ironwork of one kind or the other, so adding fire escapes to their list of products wasn't that difficult an undertaking, and a few New York City and vicinity based firms took advantage of the new laws and ordinances early in the ball game.

Several of the companies were actually in either New Haven or Hartford Connecticut...

Hartford Construction Company: architectural and ornamental ironworks; fire escapes, stairs and beam work a specialty 

New Haven Fence and Fire Escape Company: structural and ornamental iron work for buildings, beams, channels, anchors, plates, and stirrups 

Robert Wilson and Son of New Haven: dealers and manufacturers structural and ornamental ironwork, including fire escapes 

 Thomas Dimond of New York City: iron work for buildings; manufacture and repair of iron guards, doors, shutters, railings and fire escapes 

 Berlin Construction Company of Berlin, CT, New York City and Springfield, Massachusetts: all kinds of steel work for buildings, including fire escapes, balconies and ladders

 Central Iron Works of New York City: fire escapes and exterior stairs .

It's notable that only two of these companies are actually located in New York City. 

Dozens more companies joined the game as Fire Escape legislation went national and almost every city adopted ordinances and laws requiring iron balcony fire escapes. By the early 20th Century, pretty much every company that specialized in iron structural fabrication had added 'Fire Escapes' to their catalogs, and companies would ship the unassembled fire escapes to the sites where they were to be erected, along with a crew to handle the building of the escapes.

It would be impossible to list every company that sold and erected fire escapes during that era, but a couple of them deserve special mention.

E.T. Barnum Wire And Iron Works, of Detroit, Mi., was one of the most notable companies dealing in Fire Escapes. E.T. Barnum had a huge plant in Detroit and an equally large sales network. They distributed a large, richly illustrated catalog yearly, and sold everything from fire escapes to jail cells to weather vanes, and everything in between...as long as it could be fabricated out of iron.

The last catalog I could find was printed in 1931, not sure what happened to the company after that.

Another even more notable company was Union Steel Screen Company, out of Battle Creek, Michigan. If their name sounds familiar, it should. They ultimately dropped 'Screen' from their name and became Union Steel...one of the largest such companies in the world at one time. Union Steel was in business until 1995

A couple of the early companies also had long histories, and one of them is still around...sort of.  The Berlin Construction Company, which got it's start as the Corrugated Iron Company, is still in business as Berlin Steel. While in their early years they fabricated all kinds of structural iron for buildings, fire escapes included, the products they were best known for were iron (And later steel) truss bridges. The company built well over 1,000 bridges throughout the eastern and southern U.S, though most of them were built in the Northeast. Needless to say Berlin Steel went out of the fire escape fabrication business more decades ago than most of us will live.

One of the NYC-based companies...Central Iron Works...also survived into the 21st Century, though in it's last several decades it was more of a dealer of scrap iron than a structural fabrication company. It's last remaining vestige...a huge and somewhat iconic scrap yard bounded by 27th and 28th Streets and 10th and 11th Avenues in Manhattan...was emptied, graded, and replaced by Condos back in 2013 

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LINKS

As I noted in the main body of this epic tome, there was next to nothing on line about the two tenement fires...in fact, the articles I found in the in the New York Times archive were it. I mean, there wasn't even a Wiki article!

There were far more links pertaining to early New York Fire Department and FDNY history, as well as Fire Escape lore and tenement history, and as always I'll post the best several as well as a link to Ms. Andre's thesis.

So without further ado, on to the Links...

http://www.nytimes.com/1860/02/03/news/calamitous-fire-tenement-house-elm-street-destroyed-thirty-persons-supposed-have.html    Archived New York Times article about the Elm Street Fire.

http://www.nytimes.com/1860/03/29/news/destructive-fires-four-tenement-houses-destroyed-two-mothers-eight-children.html?pagewanted=all   Archived New York Times article about the 45th Street Fire.

https://www.uvm.edu/histpres/HPJ/AndreThesis.pdf    Mary Elizabeth Andre's thesis on the history of the fire escape. It's in PDF format, so it's downloadable. As I commented above, she better have gotten an 'A' on it!

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc2.ark:/13960/t66425b2z&view=1up&seq=7  As promised, the full, original text of 'Our Firemen'. This is a huge file...a shade over 1200 pages...so it may take a couple of minutes to load. Worth the wait, though!

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Firemen-History-Departments-Volunteer/dp/1577150139   And for anyone who wants a modern copy of the book, here's the Amazon link. This one's pretty much a 'Must Have' for any fire buff or Fire Service historian.

https://archive.org/details/enjineenjin00duns/page/n9/mode/2up  The full, original text of the 1939 book 'Enjine, Enjine...another must-read for Fire Service aficionados! 

https://noidea.dog/fires   A quick, capsule history of the fire escape, complete with some illustrations of a few early designs for 'fire escapes'. Trust me on this, there's a reason I put 'Fire Escapes' in quotes. Some of these designs redefined ludicrous.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/how-the-fire-escape-became-an-ornament/554174/  Another article on the history and social impact of the fire escape. 

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/06/07/tenement-homes-new-york-history-cramped-apartments A very in-depth article on the history of the tenement, published by the New York Public Library.

https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements  History Channel article on the history of the classic New York Tenement.

http://tenement-museum.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-room-with-legally-mandated-view.html  Post on the Tenement Museum 's blog discussing the old and new laws governing tenements, as well as the differences between pre-law, New Law, and Old Law tenements. This organization has actually restored a couple of tenements to their original appearance...inside and out.

https://www.6sqft.com/a-short-history-of-new-york-citys-foul-air-shafts/   The history of the 'Dumb bell' Tenement...and most particularly, the air shaft.