59. Encore Episode: Stages of Fire

© Podcast text copyright Peter Schmitz. All rights reserved.

Hi Everyone! Adventures in Theater History is still on Summer Hiatus. So we're bringing back so Encore Episodes - shows that we broadcast earlier on in our run. This was Episode #12, called "Stages of Fire," about the history of theater fires in the City of Philadelphia in the 19th Century. 

[OPENING THEME]

There were incendiaries in Philadelphia. Unknown malicious malefactors (arsonists, we would say now) were starting fires in warehouses, starting fires in storefronts, starting fires in churches. There were unexplained fires in breweries, in barns, workshops, stables, and cellars. Or at least that’s what the papers said. Or anyway that’s what the papers said people were saying. Journalistic standards weren’t that high, back in the year 1820, but you gotta admit they were trying to get people the news they needed to know. And even without these news stories, people could hardly help noticing all the fires  around town themselves - all the city buildings that were burning down, or that just escaped annihilation when a flaming item, thrown by some mysterious person or persons, was snuffed out, just in time. Any look through the Philadelphia papers, sure you’d see the news about wars, treaties, and elections. But there just seemed to be so many fires happening. And in almost every story you see that word: Incendiaries.

Who the incendiaries meant in the minds of Philadelphia’s newspaper readers, exactly, was never quite clear. Immigrants, perhaps, or criminal gangs of black men, working class white ruffians, perhaps, who joined volunteer fire companies just to start fires and then put them out for the thrill of it, or to collect insurance payments from unscrupulous businessmen. In 1820 Philadelphia was undergoing a transition from being a genteel seaport town to being a rough-and-tumble center for manufacturing and heavy industry. Life felt unsettled. New buildings went up, and then suddenly they burned down and no one knew why.

After all, what about the fire that had destroyed the Masonic Hall on Chestnut Street the previous year, on March 9th, 1819? Was that not suspicious? The beautiful neo-Gothic structure, the organizational home to the powerful and influential order of Masons. It was gone overnight, its tall steeple collapsing into the smoking ruins despite the efforts of the city’s volunteer firemen. Amazingly our old friend from Episode 7, the painter John Lewis Krimmel, who so liked to depict the daily life of Philadelphia was on hand. He watched as the flames rose and he sketched away busily, catching the firefighters in the midst of their work. Though it was the middle of the night he had no trouble seeing his drawing pad. The flames were so bright and rose so high that they could be seen in New Castle, Delaware, thirty-two miles away. 

And now, almost exactly one year later, farther up the same block, another Philadelphia landmark, the New Theatre, also caught fire. This could not be a coincidence.  Wrote the Franklin Gazette: “It was no doubt the work of an incendiary, as there has been no performance in [the theatre] for a week, the company having left the city for Baltimore. The fire was discovered a little after seven o’clock yesterday evening. It appears that it had been communicated to the scenery. An attempt was made by some citizens to remove the scenes,  . . but the flames were too rapid and extensive, and in a short time the whole building was in a blaze. In four hours it was entirely consumed.” The only items recovered from the theater were the Green Room mirror, the model of a ship, and the prompter’s clock. All the sets, the extensive costume collection, the musical scores and orchestra parts, the prompt-books. The gas-works, which had only recently been added, making it the first theater in America with a system of gas heat and illumination. But most heartbreaking was the space itself. A theater is burnished over the years by memories, by the communal recollection of shared experience. Any actor or regular audience member can tell you the sensation: you walk into a space where theater, that transitory and experiential art form, has been created and shared with others, and immediately the memories come flooding back to you. When that space is lost, that link to the past is also gone.

Every news story seemed truly sorrowful to report the loss of the beautiful and beloved old theater building. Sure, its acting company and its longtime managers, Warren and Wood, were naturally upset, but many of the reporters must have spent many happy hours in it themselves. The American Daily Advertiser was also sure as to the ultimate cause: “There is reason to believe that this melancholy event was occasioned by some desperately wicked incendiary, and that the horrible deed must have been perpetrated several hours before the fire was discovered.” That there was a volunteer fire company literally abutting the theater, made it all the more suspicious. The fire was in fact first seen near the engine house. “We noticed the detection of a bundle of combustibles which had been fired and put under the beams of the Resolution Hose Company!” declared the Democratic Press. Fortunately, the previous night's unseasonable snowfall still covered the roofs of all the adjoining buildings, which dampened any flying embers from igniting them, and which was some relief for all the fire companies who quickly gathered to spray water from their hoses on the main blaze. But other reports also said that two villains were discovered trying to cut the firemen’s leather hoses, as they lay stretched along the streets, with blades concealed in their shoes! And the inmates from the nearby prison, where a riot had broken out and been quelled just five days before, were heard cheering on the flames, urging a general destruction of the town! Surely dark forces were at work . . 

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

We’re only twelve episodes into our overall story, but we’ve already mentioned quite a lot of theater fires on this podcast. You might remember some of them: The original Federal Street Theatre in Boston burned down in 1798. Ricketts Circus and Art Pantheon in Philadelphia went up in flames in 1799.  The Richmond Theatre fire in Virginia, a ghastly event, had killed over seventy people in 1811, as we detailed in our last episode. And in that episode we also noted the riot and fire that destroyed the Vauxhall Garden Theatre at the intersection of Philadelphia’s Broad and Walnut Streets in September of 1819.

You may have thought this was an odd fixation of mine, but I put those stories in there for a reason. Because theater fires were an astoundingly common event in the 19th Century, and I don’t think it’s been covered very well by theater historians. There were a lot of theaters being built in America’s burgeoning urban areas, and fire fighting and fire prevention were not well developed, so these theaters burned down with alarming frequency. I’m going to talk about quite a lot of theater fires today, the ones that happened in the city of Philadelphia, mostly. But theater fires, some of them fatal to audience members and performers alike, happened all over the world during that time period. They can’t have escaped people's attention, and yet in the 19th Century this fact never seemed to have discouraged people from attending the theater for too long. Theater-going was such a central part of civilized life back then that the threat of fires was heavily discounted by most people - kind of like automobile crashes in the 20th century. Sure it happened, but you know, not every day . . so, let’s get in the car, let’s go see a show! It wasn't until the disastrous Brooklyn Theatre Fire in 1876, in fact, which killed almost 300 people, that municipal authorities in America began to require by law that fire prevention and safety measures be present in every theater building. Even then adoption of these anti-fire measures in theaters was slow, haphazard and often overlooked in many places. It took the truly hideous death toll of over 600 people in the 1903 Iroquois Theatre Fire in Chicago until prevention efforts were taken scrupulously and consistently. 

But to go back to the beginning of the 19th Century. Philadelphia theater goers and theater managers were certainly aware that in London, the Covent Garden Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1808 and The Theatre Royal Drury Lane had burned down in 1809, and both these theaters had to be rebuilt at enormous expense. The Park Theatre in New York City also burned down in 1820. The owners and managers of the New Theatre in Philadelphia had every reason for abundant caution, and for their repeated nervous pleas to their patrons not to smoke during the show. Theaters, after all, are just full of things that can easily catch on fire: curtains, stage drapery, ropes, paint cans, scripts, musical scores, stacks of furniture piled in storage areas, costumes. And now Warren and Wood literally had a system that piped coal gas through the building. The fire insurance companies of the city were getting nervous, with all the talk of incendiaries. Warren & Wood were informed that their fire insurance policy had expired, and would not be renewed. They could not find any other insurance company to take the risk. So they did without a policy, as their season straggled to an end in March 1820. Even the subscribers, the 150 or so businessmen who literally owned the building and got free tickets to every show, were told that their insurance policy would not be renewed at the end of May. So it might seem suspicious that these businessmen got reimbursed when the theater building caught fire in April, but not Warren and Wood. If this were a modern detective show, we’d certainly point that out with a little musical sting, wouldn’t we?

[Law & Order Sting]

Thank you Chris. So in the end, what was it, who burned the New Theater down? Incendiaries, careless smokers, venal businessmen, an angry theater fan, a disgruntled employee? Well, turns out it wasn’t really that interesting a story. Some spark from a lantern hanging in a window next door fell near the foundation onto a small pile of sawdust or old leaves - it may have smoldered for hours. The workers in the restaurant nearby later said they had been smelling smoke faintly all day, but didn’t think it was their problem.  Only funny thing is that the lantern that caused the spark likely belonged to the very people who were supposed to prevent just such a disaster: The Resolution Hose Company, the volunteer firefighting force, right next door.

This probably caused some distress, because volunteer fire companies in Philadelphia were a big deal. A point of civic pride, the companies supported themselves through donations and by organizing fire insurance plans themselves. Racing to fires with their hand pumped engines, they were the admiration of all small children and the heroes of all those whose lives and properties they saved. Popular plays were even written about them. However, by the mid- 19th century it was allowed that these volunteer companies had become a bit of a problem. Violence often erupted between rival companies, and political parties began to employ some members as toughs on election day, some were more operating quite a bit like gangs, actually. But when the alarms rang, though, they were still doing important work, and often at great personal risk. 

There’s a lot to discuss here, though I don’t want to travel down too many byways. Originally when I was making plans for discussing Philadelphia theater fires with you, I thought this would be a multi-episode adventure, and I would spend at least ten minutes on every single one that occurred, from the beginning of the 19th century, up to the beginning of the 20th Century. But I’ve decided to put them all into one episode, going into less detail and trying to tell the larger story. It’s a bit tricky because there’s about twenty or so really significant fires to discuss, actually. I’m looking at the file I’ve created, full of newspaper clippings. Each specific theater fire got at least three days of coverage. If there was significant loss of life, it might get two week’s worth of stories, especially if there were young victims or injured or dead firefighters. To be fair, these events seemed to inspire exactly the sort of journalism major urban newspapers had been created to report about: Fast paced writing, full of excitement and danger. There’s a story arc, with a clear beginning, middle and end to each one.

And one other thing: back then, there would always be an instant and publicly stated resolve to rebuild. Nobody ever just walked away. As William Wood remarked in his memoirs about losing his theater: “Despair . .  was not the fashion of the times.” Before the day was over, he and William Wood had taken a lease to move their company to the vacant Walnut Street Theatre, and made arrangements to renovate and prepare that former circus for their fall season. Within two years they had rebuilt the Chestnut Street Theatre on the same site in a new form, one that would stand for the next thirty-five years. They even discovered that the William Rush wooden statues of Tragedy and Comedy, that had been standing guard over Chestnut Street from alcoves in the facade of the theater since 1808, had survived the conflagration. The architect William Strickland would place these beloved sculptures in a similar location in the next Chestnut Street Theater as well. However, spoiler alert: within a few years, Warren and Wood went bankrupt and lost control of the Chestnut Street Theatre. Wood instead became the manager of the new Arch Street Theatre, which was built in 1826 on Arch between 6th and 7th Streets.

But before we can talk about that I should mention that another Philadelphia theater building, one long familiar to listeners of the podcast, had already met its fiery end. On May 9th 1821 The ramshackle and dowdy Old Theater, which had stood in Southwark, on the far side of South Street since 1766 - and had hosted everyone from George Washington to Major Andre to John Durang - went up in flames, too. Again, the possibility of an ‘incendiary’ was mentioned in the paper, but no cause was found. The theater was empty at the time, so no lives were lost, though neighboring houses were also destroyed in the blaze. The lower half was salvageable, however, and it was made into a warehouse, and then into a brewery. The building lasted until 1912 when it was finally torn down.

After that there’s a gap of about 30 years before there’s another major theater fire in Philadelphia, and talk about ‘incendiaries’ pretty much goes away. During this era there were only really three prestigious theaters in the city; and the Walnut, the Chestnut and the Arch Street Theaters managed to survive without catching fire - perhaps it was just good luck or good management. Mr. Wemyss, the longtime manager of the Walnut in the 1830s, always made a point to hold numerous benefit performances for volunteer firefighting companies. One year he hosted 24 separate benefits for firemen - and perhaps for that reason whenever a fire broke out nearby, the roof of the Walnut street theater was always immediately manned by hose companies, spraying water to prevent flying embers from catching it alight.

By 1837 the Chestnut, Arch and Walnut Street theaters had some new competition: a grand theater and circus called The National Theatre at the corner of 9th and Chestnut. And then another large auditorium was constructed immediately to the east of that. It was called The Chinese Museum, with an exhibition of Asian artifacts on the lower floors, and popular plays and melodramas. Side Note: In 1848 The Chinese Museum even hosted the Whig Party National Convention, nominating the eventually successful ticket of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore for President and Vice President. In 1849 the showman P.T. Barnum expanded into this growing entertainment district of Philadelphia, and also constructed a Barnum’s Museum building at the southeast corner of 7th and Chestnut. Not only did this five-story structure contain a collection of marvels and curiosities (in fact, Barnum had purchased and moved all the contents of the former Peale Museum there) but it had an large theater in the upper floors, where melodramas, pantomimes, and spectacles were presented.

On December 30th 1851, shortly after the conclusion of a performance of a holiday pantomime. Barnum’s Museum and auditorium went up in flames. Fortunately the audience had all left by that point. However, not only was the theater a total loss, but the long-established Peale museum collection was destroyed, taking with it many artifacts of Philadelphia history.

That area of Chestnut Street, which had already seen four major theater fires, by my count, now seemed to be somewhat cursed. Maybe it just looks like that to us in retrospect, nobody mentioned it at the time, anyway. Though it seems as good an explanation as incendiaries.

On July 5th 1854,  the National Theatre on Ninth and Chestnut was holding a production of a patriotic play called Putnam, about the American General who was the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The conclusion of the play ended with a hail of fake musket fire, naturally, but it seems the paper wadding of one of the muskets flew into the stage carpenter's shop, and landed in a pile of shavings. There it smoldered while the audience and actors filed out for the evening, and only burst into flames at 10 pm. Soon the backstage area was ablaze, then the entire theater. The conflagration spread to the roof of the Chinese Museum on Ninth, and despite firefighters’ efforts, it was soon a roaring mountain of red flames. In fact the entire block bounded by Chestnut and Sansom, between Eighth and Ninth streets was totally destroyed. The fire raged for many hours until it ran its course. The Baptist Church and Walnut Street Theatre nearby to the south escaped. It wasn’t until the ashes cooled that the remains of one Mr. Sheppard, solitary actor who had lingered too long in his dressing room after the show was discovered - his body horribly burnt and mutilated by falling debris. Another brand-new technology, a photograph, was made of the fire’s aftermath. It looked like a war zone.

But the city of Philadelphia was booming in the 1850s. Business was too good to let prime commercial real estate sit idle for long. All the burned over lots were quickly cleared and soon had new buildings filling them. Although the fashionable areas of the city were quickly shifting to the west, the entertainment district largely stayed put. An enormous new theater, Wheatly’s Circus, also called the Continental, arose in the middle of the block on Walnut Street between 8th and 9th streets. It had high aspirations: when the second Chestnut Street Theatre was torn down in the mid 1850s, all the furnishings and curtains were moved over to Wheatley's. Originally a circus with performing animals, it was converted to a stage where huge spectacles were typically staged.  By this time elaborate productions of Shakespeare were all the rage, and in 1861 a production of The Tempest was produced there, with a ballet chorus of dozens of ballerinas in frilly outfits to accompany the spirit of Ariel as she flew about Prospero’s Island. In the corps do ballet were four sisters, ranging in age from 15 to 20: Ruth, Cecilia, Hannah and Adeline Gale. They were all thrilled to be in Philadelphia and starting their dancing careers.

One of the most distressing stories I have to tell you about took place during that production. The dressing rooms of the ballerinas were behind the stage, and the rooms were all illuminated by open gas lights high up on the wall, as was common at the time.  Ruth Gale, had carelessly hung her filmy dress on a mirror near an open gaslight fixture on the wall, and during a quick change she snatched it down, and the hem of the garment got too near the lamp and turned into a fireball. The costume she was already wearing was made out of flimsy gauze, too and the poor girl immediately found herself engulfed in flames. Her three sisters, who were also in the room, all ran to help her as did two other girls, but they were all themselves wearing highly flammable gauze dresses, too, and . . . . well it’s really too horrible to describe in too much detail. There’s a famous engraving of the scene, which appeared in the publication Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and I’ve posted on the blog. Some of the burning dancers jumped out the back windows of the theater onto Sansom Street, and one - trailing flames behind her - actually ran out of the room and down the stairs onto the stage, crashing into glass scenery elements, which shattered and sliced into her. It’s hard to tell from the many grisly accounts in the newspaper, but it looks like about a dozen people eventually died, mostly from seared lungs - some of them days later, after much suffering, and many others who tried to help them were also burned. The four Gale sisters, Ruth, Cecilia, Hannah and Adeline, were buried side by side in Mt. Moriah cemetery in West Philadelphia. A monument with a tender and heartbreaking poem inscribed on it was set over the grave. The mid-Victorian era was really good at funerary monuments and cemeteries. But it failed miserably at fire safety.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Because, astoundingly, in the long run nothing was learned from this appalling object lesson. Just six years later, on June 19th 1867, that same venue, now called The American Theatre, had a fire again. This time it was even more disastrous, because when an accidental blaze from an adjoining stable spread to the theater, the company was in the middle of performing The Black Crook, the popular and extravagantly produced musical imported from New York. Again the stage was full of dancing ballerinas in gauzy flammable outfits, and hundreds of people were in the audience as smoke began to billow in from under the stage. In the ensuing panic, most people escaped ,but a dozen or so audience members died. Eventually the entire structure went up in flames, and several firemen were killed by falling walls. At this point, you’d think, ok, nobody is ever going to build another theater at this location, it’s cursed, but no -- by January, just six months later that theater was rebuilt and was reopening under the same name, and audience members flocked in again.

I can go on with more dismal stories, in the later half of the 19th Century Philadelphia was booming, its population swelling to over a million by the end of the 1800s. Though there was never a general conflagration of the type that were to lay waste to huge areas of Chicago in 1871, and Boston in 1872, there were plenty of fires in buildings, factories and businesses all over Philadelphia. The volunteer firefighter system was finally abandoned, and a professional Philadelphia fire department was formed - mostly by hiring the former volunteer companies and buying their engines and engine houses. The  Philadelphia entertainment industry, like every industry in town, was also expanding. Dozens of theaters were being built, in all areas of the city. And with no recognized general fire code y, incredibly, inevitably there were more incidents: 

November 25th, 1868, the Atlantic Garden Theater on Callowhill st. burned, injuring several firemen as its walls tumbled down.

October 17th, 1871, Sanford’s Opera House, a converted Methodist church turned minstrel show theater, caught on fire and the interior was entirely burned out.

March 20th, 1872, Simmons and Slocum’s Opera House, a lovely structure designed and constructed only two years before by the eminent Philadelphia architect Edwin Durang burned and only the front and back walls survived. It was rebuilt, of course, and given a new interior. Those original exterior walls are actually still standing, however - that’s now known as the Trocadero Theatre, or the Troc.

January 29th 1874, the New Olympic Theatre on 12th and Market Street, a vaudeville house, the second largest theater in the city, caught fire and burned down after only being in business for seven months. Two firefighters, George Devitt and Charles O’Neill were killed when its walls collapsed on top of their engine in the street below. 

February 25th, 1877, Fox’s American Theatre, another fairly new variety entertainment establishment on Chestnut between tenth and eleventh, caught fire and was largely destroyed, and heavy damage was suffered by the adjoining Mercantile Library. A fire insurance inspector was killed.

In the wake of all this, and after the 1876 Brooklyn theater fire, people across America finally began to take notice. Iron fire escapes began to be placed on the exterior of all buildings, especially those of theaters and auditoriums. But on the whole the theatergoing public remained blithely casual. There was no falloff in the demand for entertainment. Even in Philadelphia, as the city hosted the great 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and hundreds of new and flimsy temporary structures were raised all over the city, there was not a wide concern about fires. In a pamphlet entitled “Notes on the Burning of Theatres and Public Halls'', author J.M. Toner meditated: “The current of life hurries on so swiftly that the mind soon becomes oblivious to events . . from which we think we can never recover;  . . . the hopefulness and buoyancy of our nature render the the traditional nine days wonder too short for us to look for the cause and seek for a preventative against a recurrence.  . . But the fact that there is scarcely a place of public amusement of many years standing in any of our large cities that has not at some time been burned, and the principal ones a number of times . . [may] astound us.”

Clearly this situation could not continue. American cities were striving to become less chaotic and dangerous to human life, in general, by the end of the century. Building engineers, architects, and theater managers were finally insisting on taking some proactive measures. Philadelphia, which had alway been a center for science and practical problem solving, set to the task. On April 18th, 1883, a meeting was held at the Franklin Institute on 15 S. 7th Street. The Committee on Prevention of Fires in Theatres, led by C. John Hexamer, a Civil Engineer, submitted its report. The long and sorry history of fatal and disastrous fires in public theaters throughout the world was explored, and drawing on the work of architects and engineers in Germany and England, it proposed a list of thirty-eight measures that every theater building and auditorium should thereafter possess. It concluded: “Your committee in closing this report cannot help referring to two most necessary factors in reforming our theater. (1) The education of the public on this subject by popular lecture, articles, and papers; and (2) the co-operation of prominent mechanics and scientists.  . . . . The problem of building theatres properly, is eminently one of the mechanical engineer, and will never be solved if the technical resources of our age are not taken into account, and brought to bear on the question.”

So what were the thirty eight measures the Hexamer Report recommended? Well, they were many of the very things that we today take for granted in almost every theater or auditorium we know these days: Sufficient fire exits marked in large bold letters and broad corridors in every theater, leading to fire doors that always open outwards. Sufficient fire extinguishers and hose connections throughout the building. Use of fireproof materials in stage curtains. In the audience section, rows of that have aisles allowing people to leave quickly, with chairs that are bolted to the floor and have automatic springs to let the seat bottoms swing quickly upwards and out of the way. Automatic sprinkler systems over the stage and in the backstage areas. Ground plans of the theater clearly displayed, a designated set of theater employees trained in firefighting techniques, and regular inspections by fire marshals. Most of all the committee recommended better coverings for gas lamps, and even better, it said, why not do what the Savoy Theatre in London had already done two years before - install electric lights?

Theaters in Philadelphia were in fact soon adding electricity to their equipment, both for reasons of safety and because of the new stage effect that electric light could create. And throughout the city of Philadelphia, utility poles crammed with telephone, telegraph and electric wires were being strung along every street. Admittedly these also provided an enormous amount of physical and visual clutter - especially in the older parts of the city where the sidewalks were narrowest, and also would serve as an additional barrier to firefighters' access to many buildings.

The installation of electricity into the city's theaters, especially into older existing spaces was not without its hazards, especially if it was not done properly. And of course it was a theater along that same old stretch of Chestnut Street, that provided the first example. You remember the gothic revival Masonic Temple on Chestnut which burned down in 1819, well it was eventually succeeded in 1853 by another gothic revival Masonic Temple on the next block, on the same patch of ground where the Barnum Museum had burned down in 1851. As we’ve noted, it’s common for calamities to keep occuring at the same locations, for some reason. Well, the Masons had built their brand new Norman Gothic temple on Broad Street north of City Hall, and the old building had become a grand performance venue called, of course The Temple Theatre. It also hosted a so-called Egyptian Museum which held wax sculptures arranged in tableaux of historical figures and Biblical events. It was fitted with both gas illumination and the new-fangled electric lights for manager John G. Brotherton’s production of a musical comedy called The Little Tycoon. Ironically it was the electrical wiring for the theater which sparked and ignited some drapery in the hall on December 27th, 1886. The resulting fire destroyed the entire theater, though amazingly the wax tableau of the Crucifixion was saved, which some people thought was a sign of something. But this statuary rescue was likely not a comfort to the families of the two firemen who were killed while putting out the blaze.

Speaking of cursed grounds, we next have to mention the middle of the block bounded by Walnut and Sansom Streets, between Eighth and Ninth. On March 24th 1888, at the same location where, as we have heard, two mass casualty fires had already occured, the latest theater at that location - the Grand Central Theatre - burned down again along with all the scenery and costumes for the show The Night Owls. Also destroyed was the adjoining Comique Theatre on Sansom Street, though that was really less of a theater than a gentleman’s club venue for girlie shows, pool tables and boxing matches. This time the blaze struck in the middle of the night, possibly caused by a faulty heating duct - and no lives were lost. Amazingly, once again the luck of the Walnut Street Theatre, immediately to the West, continued, and it still stood, unaffected by the loss of yet another of its neighbors.

Real estate was at a premium in the crowded city and businessmen were immediately eagerly snapping up the rights to build on the lot, before the ashes were even cool. Astoundingly, another theater was immediately constructed in the same spot- this one was called the Central Theatre. To its rear on Sansom Street the Philadelphia Times, one of the most popular newspapers in the city, constructed an imposing eight story annex, with its engraving and printing plants inside, along with the office of its editors and publisher. Well, all I can say is they might know the news, but everyone was ignoring history - and we all know not to do that right?

Evidently not. On April 27th 1892, Fire struck for the fourth (or is it the fifth?, I’m losing count) time at a theater on this area of Walnut Street. The grand and popular production being shown  that night at the Central Theatre was entitled, ominously, The Devil’s Auction. As the audience was still filing in, and the orchestra was about to start the overture, the stagehands were sending up the border drapery on the opening set, a pretty Mexican scene with a stagecoach in the background. The drapery came in contact with the border lights and suddenly all was chaos. The manager, William Gillmore was on the stage and immediately knew his theater was doomed. “The House is gone, get everybody out! Get your people out!” he shouted. Immediately the cast and crew were running from the stage and audience members were clawing for the exits. There were fire extinguishers backstage and some of the crew attempted to use them, but they proved inadequate. The flames rocketed up into the flyworks above the stage, and the roof caught fire. This time at least there seem to have been an adequate number of exit doors, and the people in the balconies clambered onto the exterior fire escapes. But panic caused some folks to act in awful ways. One man with a knife literally slashed his way through the crowd out on Walnut Street, screaming at people to get out of his way as he ran. People trampled each other on the fire escapes and many fell off of them. Bones were broken, heads and chests were crushed. The performers in dressing rooms beneath the stage were the worst off, and six died there when an escape stair collapsed. One young woman, May Courteney, who had been putting on her makeup when the alarm was given, and was wearing nothing but a pair of tights, jumped up and caught the edge of the hole the falling stairway had left behind, pulled herself into the middle of the flaming stage, leapt over the orchestra pit, catching her foot on the bass drum. She fell and fainted momentarily, and then was called back to consciousness by Manager Gillmore shouting in her ear. She got up and ran blindly through the smoke, out the front door of the theater, strolled naked across Walnut Street and into Zeisse’s Hotel, where somebody finally gave her a dress to wear. Gillmore made it out, too. Fire trucks were now arriving, but were too late to save the structure. The Times building to the rear went up in a colossal tower of flame, most of its employees saved when they ran down the protective tower of the fire stairs. Some precautions  that architects and engineers now routinely took against catastrophe were working after all. 

While the fire raged at the Central Theatre, just a few dozen yards away at the Walnut Street Theatre, another audience was settling into their seats for a play called Imagination. The assistant manager E.P. Simpson was standing in the empty lobby. He heard someone outside yell Fire, and ran outside and saw the flames rising from the neighboring theater’s roof, and the panicking crowds swarming the fire escapes. He hurried back inside the Walnut and found the producer of the play now getting underway on stage, Edwin L. Price. The two men knew they would have to get every person out of their own house, but knew that dangerous mass panic could spread just as easily as fire. They quickly arrived at a plan. Price sauntered calmly onto the stage after the overture had finished, and announced that a leading actor in the play was too ill to perform that night and the performance was cancelled. If everyone would just go home, he would honor their tickets on another occasion. Oh and by the way there was a small incident happening in the neighborhood, and out of an abundance of caution perhaps this was a good time for everyone to find the nearest exit. Thank you, thank you so much ladies and gentlemen. The audience quietly filed out, without panic or jamming the exits, only learning when they got outside that they had been in real danger all the time. Meanwhile the resourceful E.P. Simpson had gone to the Walnut’s roof with the theater’s employee’s who constituted the staff fire brigade, pouring water on any spark or flaming debris. Once again the old house had survived, and once again The Hexamer Report’s recommendations had shown their worth.

But the Central Theater? A complete loss. The newspapers, except for the Times which had lost its printing plant, were full of the story for days afterwards. But as usual, public attention died away. William Gillmore took the insurance money and built another new theater on the same site, this one called Gilmore's Auditorium. A solid pile of reassuring brick, it looked like a fortress. It was billed to the public as being Fireproof - and indeed it must have been, because this theater, at last did not burn down. Starting as a legitimate house, it hosted musicals, plays and lectures. In 1905 it was renamed the Casino, and started showing vaudeville. By 1920 it was a burlesque house. In 1935 it was torn down. That center section of the block became an empty parking lot, indeed it remained so. Because, on the whole, that’s how theaters met their end in Philadelphia in the 20th Century - we tore them down. We got pretty good at stopping them from burning down by then, we just forgot how to fill them with audiences, and then we forgot what to do with them, and then we threw a lot of them away. And we seem to really like parking lots. But that’s another story, I’ll get to that in a later episode.

The government of the city of Philadelphia, which by the end of the 19th century was settling deep into the state one journalist famously called “corrupt and contented”, was not fast to respond to the Fire Department's repeated requests for a citywide high pressure water system and other improvements, not until they could figure out who got cut in on the deal, anyway. But that high pressure pumping system was finally installed 1902-1903. The pumping station for that system, at the foot of Race Street near the docks, which drew water directly from the Delaware River, was fully operational by the beginning of 1904. It was highly effective, until it too was eventually decommissioned, when times and firefighting  technology changed, as they do, and as they continue to do. 

Speaking of changes, that pumping Station at Delaware and Race is now a restaurant and theater, the home of the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival. You can see plays there. Like all great theater spaces, it’s both a safe and at the same time an exciting place. And the fire exits are clearly marked. 

I’m Peter Schmitz, and the sound and music are by Christopher Mark Colucci. Thanks for coming along on another adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia.

[END THEME MUSIC]

Hi, everybody, a few more things, before we go. We really want to thank Susie for becoming a supporting member of the show on Patreon, where we have additional blogs posts and bonus episodes. We are deeply grateful for her kindness and generosity. And also Kelly just became a Patreon member too. Also a researcher into 19th Century theater history, she already given me lots of great Ideas and inspiration, too. 

Go to our website: AITHpodcast.com, where there’s a blog about this episode. There’s an easy button to click if you too want to become a Patreon supporter, or you can Buy Me a Coffee. You can write a review of the show on the website, too, and leave us a voicemail if you have a story to tell us about Philadelphia theater history. 

Follow our Facebook page or our [Instagram] feed - there’s links on the website, and in the show notes.

What I also recommend, by the way, if you are in Philadelphia is visiting the Fireman’s Hall Museum, in a former fire station on Second Street in Old City, right near Elfreth’s Alley. Their collection of historic fire equipment and their mission of preserving the history of the Philadelphia Fire Department is a fascinating vital link to the city’s  past. Check it out.

Okay, that’s all for now, thanks a lot, bye bye.