As our Restoration Association gets to the point of requesting grants to help with the restoration of the Burwell building, it's been necessary to dig into the history of this wonderful structure, as many grants require a written history of the building. It's been an interesting and fun process, to say the least.
The Gibson City Courier and the Daily Pantagraph have been wonderful sources of information. I'd thought I'd do a series of blog posts about the building, starting with the fire of 1883.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, January 30, 1883, a fire started in the northwest corner of the Burwell Building. A night watchman, O. C. Bowen, noticed smoke coming from the building and sounded the alarm. The night watchman knew there were occupants on the second floor of the Burwell Building, so he quickly went to alert them and help them to safety. He was relieved to find they were already awake and in the streets.
According to the Pantagraph, "Professor Alex, a music teacher, J.L. Wray, manufacturer of stone chimneys, with his wife and child, and Mr. W.H. Hollis, clerk in the bank, also with his wife and one child were all living in the upper rooms of the Burwell Building. When Mr. Wray first discovered the fire...he hurriedly grasped his child, but two days' old, and carried it across the street, and on returning for his wife he could hardly reach her room, so dense and suffocating was the smoke. She had given up in despair of ever seeing him again, but he reached her room and hurriedly made his way with her safely down the stairs, and she was carried to a house on the opposite side of the street." Mr. Hollis and family barely made it out of the fire without injury. It's amazing that no one was killed in this horrific fire.
The Burwell Building was lined with building paper and was a wooden structure, so the fire took hold very quickly and it didn't take long for the whole building to become engulfed in the flames. The first floor housed the clothing store of F. P. Baker and grocery store of C. F Buckman & Co. The hardware store of J. H. Collier adjoining it on the North, was also consumed by the fire.
The building north of J.H. Collier was made of brick and this is where the flames "received their first check", according to the Courier article of Feb 2, 1883. The brick building was the grocery store of J.E. Crummond. The wooden storeroom attached to the rear was the first of the building to be engulfed. The Courier reports "the main building might have been saved, had there been an organization to take charge of the work or a head to direct the hundreds of willing hands which were by the time on the scene."
It would be this fire that would prompt Gibson City to start a fire department and to pass an ordinance requiring that buildings within a certain area of the downtown area must be built out of brick.
When all was said and done, five buildings were destroyed by the fire and thousands of dollars in goods. All the building owners and occupants had insurance with the exception of the upper occupants of the Burwell building. It was estimated that $32,000 worth of damage was done by this fire.
It was never discovered what started the fire, however, many feel it was incendiary in nature or the result of a faulty flue. There seemed to have been more fire in the upper floors when the blaze was discovered, leading one to assume it started upstairs.
While this fire was horrific to those lives who were so greatly impacted by it, it paved the way to a bigger and better way of life for the citizens of Gibson City. After the fire, M. T. Burwell and other businessman vowed to rebuild. And rebuild they did...
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