Lambert: Fire Has Changed the Face of Plainfield

The Inquiry

I have heard that fires destroyed the original commercial buildings along Lockport Street. How many fires destroyed the business district?    

The Facts

Fire has always threatened Midwestern settlements. As communities grew and wood-framed buildings were built close to one another, the rapid spread of fire became an increasing threat. 

By the Civil War, most communities had established an organization of watchmen who walked the streets after dark, looking for any signs of fire or other calamities.

Beginning in 1867, the Sanborn Map Co. surveyed the configurations and materials of the buildings located in America’s large cities and small towns. The information was, then, compiled onto maps that were used by insurance companies to assess fire risk. 

After 1869, when B.F. Goodrich invented the rubberized fire hose, many urban communities purchased horse-drawn, steam-powered or hand-powered pumpers as well as several hundred feet of fire hose.

However, through the 19th century, many small towns — including — relied on volunteer brigades of local men. 

When a fire alarm sounded, the townsmen would gather and form a line, passing buckets of water drawn from local wells and cisterns. The buckets of water would be thrown onto the fire in an effort to extinguish the blaze. More often than not, the engulfed building was allowed to burn while the brigades worked to wet down neighboring structures. Not unexpectedly, these fire brigades were often unsuccessful.

Midwestern Devastation

In October 1871, the tinder-dry landscape created by a months-long drought provided the perfect conditions for blazes to break out across several states, many sparked by common, everyday activities: milking by lamplight, an errant match, an overheated stove.

On Oct. 8, 1871, at about the same hour, two devastating fires started, one in Peshtigo, Wis., and the other in Chicago. They remain today among the worst disasters to befall the Midwest. 

The Great Chicago Fire is still the most destructive metropolitan blaze in the nation's history, resulting in more than 250 deaths and more than $200,000,000 in property damage.

On that same day, there were also numerous fires on Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, including Holland, Lansing and Port Huron.

Downtown Plainfield Blazes

Fire has consumed many of Plainfield’s earliest downtown businesses and residences, but many have been forgotten over time. Several, however, left an indelible imprint on our town.

In 1877, the Brown Drug Store building was destroyed by fire. The two-story, wood-framed building stood next to the two-story, limestone Strannahan Block at the southwest corner of the Lockport Road and Illinois Street. 

Four years later, another fire consumed several buildings near the west end of that same block. 

The most devastating fire occurred 120 years ago in the waning days of December 1891. One cold, wintry evening, a fire began in one of the wood-framed businesses on the north side of Lockport Street. The cause was suspected to be an over-stoked heating stove. 

Within a short time, all of the buildings — save three — were destroyed. By 1896, the north side of the street had been re-constructed with brick buildings thought to be fireproof.

Many years before the fire, U.S.G. Blakely, the outspoken editor of newspaper, advocated the establishment of a local fire department. Blakley also recommended the Plainfield Village Board purchase a fire engine and fire hose. Blakely lost his business in the fire.

In 1897, a fire department was established by the village of Plainfield. Erected in the shadow of the village’s only water tank, the fire station was located in downtown Plainfield. The small building housed a hand-pumper and several hundred feet of fire hose, manned by volunteers.

About this time, portable fire extinguishers had been developed but were not perfected until the early 20th century.

In February 1898, Plainfield’s original , erected just nine years earlier, burned to the ground early one morning. A devastating loss for the residents, the Opera House fire destroyed the theater and several businesses, including the community’s only bank and the building next door, which housed the post office.

Clarence W. Marks, a Chicago-based shoe wholesaler who had lost his own business in the Great Chicago Fire nearly 30 years earlier, came to Plainfield’s rescue and erected the new Opera House Block, which opened in January 1899.

About 1900, the Sonntag Harness Shop, spared in 1881, was consumed in another fire that destroyed the former DeMerritt Livery Barn and the Daniel Zimmerman Cobbler Shop.

Ninety-seven years later, a fire consumed a former automobile dealership building in downtown Plainfield. Erected in about 1945-46, the building at Lockport and Des Plaines streets had been converted into retail and warehouse space.

Like the Opera House fire a century earlier, the fire threatened the near-by post office, which was then located on Des Plaines Street. And, as before, a new building was erected a short time later.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect date for when the auto dealership, which burned down in 1979, was built.