HISTORICAL INTEREST

May 1901 fire ravaged Gridley (see above post for link to Pantagraph article).

November 13, 2011 2:00 pm • By Bill Kemp Archivist/librarian
McLean County Museum of History

The day after the May 3, 1901, fire, Gridley businessmen took
sad measure of the destruction along the west side of Center
Street. (Photo courtesy of the McLean County Museum of History)

The large blaze several weeks ago in downtown Minonk, which
ended with the loss of six buildings, including one built in 1888,
serves as a reminder that fires have plagued the commercial
districts of Central Illinois communities for more than 100
years.In 1894, for example, unrelated conflagrations devastated
portions of Chenoa and El Paso, and one year later, Heyworth was
beset by the same misfortune. Bloomington, of course, lost much of
its downtown in the “Great Fire” of June 19, 1900. The reasons for
these periodic, destructive fires were many, including lax or
nonexistent building codes, inadequate firefighting equipment, the
large percentage of wood frame building stock, and insufficient
municipal water pressure to douse flames.On May 3, 1901, a little less than a year after the Bloomington
fire, it was Gridley’s turn to face such destruction. Fed by
bone-dry weather and high winds, the fast-moving and unpredictable
fire “swept away” the better part of two blocks of the village’s
commercial heart. At the time, this small but vibrant community in
northern McLean County claimed a population of a little more than
700 (today, it’s roughly double that figure).The best account of the 1901 fire comes from Charles S. Rowley,
the editor and publisher of The Gridley Advocate. Around 3:40 p.m.,
Howard Tarman, the village’s fire marshal, was leaving his Center
Street furniture store when he spotted flames coming from a nearby
alley. Shouts of “Fire! Fire!” soon rang through town.Tarman hastily returned to his place of business in order to
retrieve valuable papers kept in the upstairs workshop. By that
time the widening blaze had transformed William Settle’s meat
market and William Fritz’s barbershop, located immediately south of
Tarman’s store, into a “mass of roaring fire and smoke” And just as
Tarman darted out of his building and onto the street, “flames
entered his store overhead, leaping like some giant wild animal in
search of prey.”Residents of all stripes, including women and children, manned
hand pumps to pull water from several street cisterns, including
one near the Christian Church. Despite their efforts, the
wind-whipped flames jumped across Center Street, and one building
after another “went down like houses of cardboard.” As flames
engulfed the better portion of the town’s business district,
water-soaked stock boards were used as shields to save the Kent
Brothers brick store at the northwest corner of Center and Fourth
streets.Meanwhile, fearing that much of Gridley was under imminent
threat, frantic residents emptied their homes and placed furniture
and other valuables in the middle of streets or at the village
park.Although his shop was a complete loss, African-American barber
Albert P. Scott fought the flames side-by-side with his neighbors,
and he even helped save the W.D. Castle residence. “In the race to
the house [Scott] outdistanced my father,” recalled Drew Castle
years later. “Vividly I can see him jumping over the fence and
grabbing the ladder my father had laid on the ground. He placed it
in position, rushed up on the roof and jerked the burning shingles
off with his bare hands.”Fire Marshal Tarman and his men had the fire under control by
5:40 p.m., though in those two frightful hours much of Gridley’s
downtown—three-quarters of Center Street between Fourth and
Third—had been reduced to smoking rubble.In the age before the automobile, interstate travel, and box
superstores, even relatively small towns were home to a large
number and variety of shops, stores and offices. The list of
burned-out Gridley businesses, for instance, included two furniture
stores, a meat market, two implement dealers, restaurant, bank,
clothing store, two saloons, jewelry store, hotel, offices for two
doctors and one dentist, harness shop and a combined dry goods and
grocery store.Total losses were estimated at $100,000 (or more than $2.6
million today, adjusted for inflation), with personal property,
mainly store goods, accounting for $60,000 of that total, and the
buildings themselves the remaining $40,000. Thankfully, there was
no loss of life.In late October 1901, nearly six months after the fire, The
Pantagraph marveled at Gridley’s recovery and building boom, which
included a new $10,000 bank building complete with tile floors,
ornate fireplaces and bronze cages for the cashier and bookkeeper.
It was the “vim, pluck and energy” of the residents, the newspaper
noted, that “transformed a burned and almost despondent town into
one filled with handsome, new stores and residences, with clean
streets, cement walks and contended people.”